A 48-year-old British woman, who stole 905 designer handbags and even sold some of them online at competitive prices to fund her lavish lifestyle, was today jailed for 18 months.
Jayne Rand, a housewife and mother of two, carried out a nationwide "campaign of shoplifting" and took handbags and purses worth up to 135,000 pounds.
She was eventually caught at a shopping centre in Cwmbran, south Wales.
Her haul during a three-year period from 2009 to 2012, included bags made by Mulberry, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior and Burberry valued at up to 200 pounds each.
Rand sold some of the bags on online auction site eBay.
She is known to have made 88,000 pounds in sales from the stolen bags but their retail value would have been closer to double that figure, the BBC reported.
Judge Rhys Rowlands of Newport Crown Court told Rand that she had "made a business of stealing" and her actions had been "planned, calculated and persistent".
"I have not seen such a case before. You travelled significant distances to steal from up and down the country and target high value bags," the judge said.
"How you got away with it for so long without being caught was deeply remarkable. You showed professionalism and that is why you went undetected for so long. The values are quite outside of what the court comes across even from professional shoplifting gangs," the judge remarked.
The court was told that Rand even stole to order for some of her online buyers.
Prosecutor David Wooler said: "Her usual method of theft was to go into the store without a bag, pick up one from the display, walk around with it on her shoulder for a while, then simply walk out of the store."
"Sometimes she would have to remove the security tag, but usually she wouldn't have to," Wooler said.
But her crime spree came to an end when security staff at a shopping centre in Cwmbran caught her and alerted police.
The court heard after officers began to investigate they found she had listed a significant number of handbags for sale on eBay priced competitively.
"Her house was full of sealable grey delivery bags and Post Office receipts," the prosecutor told the court.
"She set up a legitimate business and no one, not even her husband, knew what she was doing.
"Rand told police she needed money to fund her lifestyle."
She admitted stealing 905 handbags and four purses from House of Fraser and various retail businesses between December 2009 and December 2012.
