A man almost got away with more that €2,000 worth of alcohol from a Tesco supermarket using a cardboard box marked "Honest". The 20-year-old man walked through the checkout of the shop in Athlone with items in the box lined with tin-foil.
He had been told the tin-foil would prevent the cash register from detecting the goods. He left the store but was later stopped by security guards in the Golden Island centre. Minduagas Zemaitas, a Lithuanian with no fixed abode, was brought to Athlone "to go shopping" on October 22nd. He was given a 12-month suspended sentence after Athlone District Court heard he had co-operated with gardaí and would leave the country.