TWO bogus couriers who fleeced pensioners were labelled mean and despicable by a judge.

Tricksters David Maverick and Paul Carter spent weeks planning the scam using fake Cash on Delivery parcels and even buying 600 metres of brown paper wrapping.

They told police that they got the idea from an episode of the television series Hustle, said prosecutor Jolyon Perks at Teesside Crown Court.

They got victims to sign clipboard receipts printed First Choice Couriers and they demanded £20 payment for one parcel which contained just a battered box and another with a Batman jigsaw.

Carter, 17, who knocked on doors while Maverick, 20, sat outside in a blue van, at homes in Redcar, Ormesby and Eston.

Maverick told one 82-year-old woman that she had a parcel from Knitters Direct, but relatives contacted police concerned about the activities of the pair.

Police caught them the same day, and in Maverick's van they found four undelivered parcels. In his home they discovered a large number of addresses, names and phone numbers which clearly were to be used in continuing the deceptions.

Robin Turton, defending Maverick, said: "They were two young men who had seen an episode of Hustle in which an incident of a similar thing takes place and they went on to consider putting together this scam.

"But they were not targeting pensioners. They went out during the day and it just so happens that the only people who were at home were elderly people."

Robert Mochrie, defending Carter, said that his client was being treated for depression over his fear at going to prison.

Maverick of High Street, Eston, and Carter of Millbrook Avenue, Middlesbrough, were both ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work with a 12 month community rehabilitation order with supervision after they pleaded guilty to five fraud offences committed on May 18 last year.