MOBILE phone bosses tracked down a would-be insurance cheat in York - when the young woman continued using the handset she claimed to have lost.

Justine Fifi Speight, 20, told her insurers that she had lost her £200 Samsung E800 mobile phone in December.

But York magistrates were told that company workers grew suspicious when it continued to be used and called in the police.

Speight, of Chapelfields Road, was arrested and, after she declined to comment in a police interview, her home was searched and the phone discovered.

The court heard that a replacement phone worth £203 was not sent out because of the investigation into the deception.

Deputy District Judge Fraser Morrison sentenced Speight to a conditional discharge and ordered her to pay £50 court costs. She admitted deception and agreed to pay the money straight away.

He said: "In the light of the fact that you attempted to commit this offence and did not succeed, and because you were straight forward with the police in the end, I give you a conditional discharge."

Martin Butterworth, prosecuting, said Speight signed up for a policy with Policy Administration Services, a specialist mobile phone insurance company, in September last year.

He told the court that she then reported her phone "lost or stolen" on December 14 and was in line to receive a replacement phone as a result.

He said: "The company traced calls she had been making on the phone. She was caught by using that phone when it became apparent she had not lost it."

Solicitor Nick Darwin, representing Speight, said: "It was anything but a sophisticated attempt to defraud anyone."

York Police figures reveal that the value of mobile phone crime in the city last year was £238,398, with phones worth £136,000 stolen from the Guildhall and Micklegate wards alone.

Senior police officers believe that many reports of stolen phones are spurious, and may in fact be the result of people losing their handsets or attempting to deceive their insurer.

Updated: 10:05 Monday, February 21, 2005