A FORMER care assistant was jailed for six months after cashing £3,000-worth of cheques stolen from her elderly clients.

David Hall, prosecuting, told York Crown Court that Adele Candida Carter-Waller, 32, helped a 92-year-old woman in her Strensall home and a 94-year-old woman in her Huntington home.

In November 2001, she stole the Huntington woman's handbag and used her cheques eight times in 19 days to gain £1,780 in cash.

She also gained £1,497 by cashing cheques belonging to the Strensall woman. Some were stolen when the woman's handbag went missing just after Carter-Waller had visited the house and chatted to the victim for 20 minutes.

She claimed to police that she had bought the cheques from a man she refused to name.

"No reason to believe a word of truth in that," said Judge David Bentley QC. "She has been in the house and the handbag was found to be missing after she left."

The other cheques belonging to the Strensall woman were stolen in a burglary and again Carter-Waller claimed she had bought them from an unnamed person. She cashed four cheques between October 30 and November 9, 2001 and four more between March 27 and April 13, 2002 when staff at a money shop became suspicious and called police when she attempted to cash a further cheque.

Carter-Waller, of Broadstone Way, Clifton Moor, admitted theft, two charges of handling stolen cheques, snatching a shopper's handbag in Tesco's Clifton Moor store while on bail and several deception charges. She had originally faced charges of burgling the elderly women.

The judge jailed her for six months.

"There is every reason to suspect she was the thief," said the judge. "The Crown have accepted pleas to handling for which there is really little supporting evidence at all."

"Whoever the thieves were, you were very close to these thefts," he told Carter-Waller.

Mr Hall said the former care assistant, who had no previous convictions, had told police she had stolen to fund a drug habit.

But Simon Hickey, her barrister, told the court she had used the money to pay off mortgage debts that were really the responsibility of her long-term partner.

She was full of remorse and had learned her lesson. Since the crimes, she had got a job as a cleaner and was willing to repay the money.

Updated: 11:15 Thursday, January 16, 2003