A WOMAN who was arrested for stealing a £10,000 Rolex watch invented a lurid story about being threatened by a drugs gang that she would be forced into prostitution for a cocaine debt.

Virginia Hopson, 22, said she owed £2,000 to the Middlesbrough gang, who had spoken of involving her in a staged robbery to recover the money.

The truth was that she stole the Rolex from her mother's former partner in revenge, said her barrister, Duncan McReddie.

Her mother returned the watch to him at an arranged meeting outside Darlington police station.

Jo Kidd, prosecuting, said Hopson, of Gordon Lane, Ramshaw, near Bishop Auckland, told police she built up the debt over six or seven months from a weekend use of cocaine.

She added: "She said she had been given the option of stealing or being made a prostitute to pay the debt."

Mr McReddie told Teesside Crown Court: "The watch was taken from a former partner of her mother, by way of a rather juvenile act of revenge arising from the emotional trauma she felt at the breakdown of the relationship.

"The version of events put forward in a tape-recorded interviews is a complete fabrication.

"She quite simply did not know what to say and made up a most outlandish story."

Hopson was in breach of a suspended 13-month jail sentence imposed by South Durham Magistrates on January 27 last year for stealing £600, using cheques from a firm where she worked as a receptionist.

Judge George Moorhouse told her it was clear from reports that she was suffering from depression brought about partly by the breakdown of her mother's relationship.

Hopson was given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with 18 months' supervision and a Think First programme after she pleaded guilty to the January 6 theft of the Rolex.