A WOMAN has been jailed for seven months for being involved in a “racket”, where gangs of rose sellers distract people coming out of nightclubs while other gang members steal their handbags and mobile phones.
Insp Mick Coppinger warned at Galway District Court yesterday that gangs selling roses to people, in order to distract them while their handbags and phones were being stolen, had become a common problem in the city centre late at night.
Anna Mirabella Armean (20), Lurgan Park, Renmore, Galway, a Romanian, pleaded guilty to handling two mobile phones knowing they were stolen when searched by Garda Emma Kerins at the Promenade, Salthill, Galway, last June.
One of the phones along with a handbag had been stolen the night before from a woman leaving a Galway nightclub, while the other phone had been snatched from a woman’s hand outside a Dublin nightclub the previous week.
The Galway victim had been approached by a gang of Romanian rose sellers hassling her to buy roses. While the gang distracted the woman, other gang member stole her handbag.
Armean’s husband, Josif Grancia, is serving a nine-month sentence for the same offences.
Judge Mary Fahy activated a suspended sentence which she had imposed on Armean last February for the theft of €1,000 worth of perfume and aftershave from Brown Thomas. She imposed a consecutive three-month sentence for the handling offence.
The judge said such distraction thefts by gangs operating in concert was a racket.