A MAN has been jailed after using false details to fraudulently obtain more than £18,000 worth of high-value mobile phones.

Michael Challenger used other people’s names to set up 60 separate accounts with BT between July 10 last year and March 1 this year.

Challenger later told police his benefits had been stopped and it had been “easy money” to sell the phones to strangers over the internet.

However, the fraud was not particularly sophisticated in that the defendant used his own address to secure the 26 phones and gave details of a previous bank account in his name.

Inquiries eventually led police to raid his home in Roman Road, Middlesbrough, on March 20 and Challenger was arrested and charged with fraud by false representation, which he later admitted.

Alex Bousfield, mitigating, said Challenger, who is on jobseekers’ allowance, had accrued debts worth £6,500 following the breakdown of a relationship.

He said: “He foolishly tried to deal with those debts and spent the money he gained on his family and his children.”

Recorder Simon Phillips, sitting at Teesside Crown Court, said: “This was deliberate and pre-meditated offending on your part.”

The 36-year-old was jailed for six months, while the judge added a further three months to his sentence by activating part of a previous suspended sentence he had previously given.