Pair sentenced after faking robbery in Alford

Police received a call at 5.45am on January 13, 2013, alleging that a robbery had occurred at McColl’s Newsagents in the Market Place, Alford.

Shop assistant Lynn Jones, 47, of Westfields in Alford, maintained that she had been attacked whilst opening up and forced to open the safe, whereupon the ‘offenders’ had stolen £3000 in cash and a large amount of cigarettes.

Enquiries revealed that it was actually a fake robbery set up by Jones with the help of her friend Michael John Wilkinson, 44, from Freer Gardens in Louth.

Wilkinson admitted the offence straight away but Jones continued to claim that she was the victim of a robbery for the next 18 months.

However, at the start of her trial at Lincoln Crown Court on Monday June 23, she changed her plea to guilty to the charges of theft from employee and attempting to pervert the course of justice, and she was sentenced to eight months for each offence to run concurrently, suspended for two years.

Wilkinson was sentenced to four months, suspended for two years, for theft.