A BUNGLING burglar who was caught with a Playstation 4 after logging in with his personal email address has been jailed.

Michael Hall admitted three charges of burglary and asked for 11 other offences to be taken into account when he appeared by videolink at Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

The court heard how the 39-year-old had carried out three burglaries in the Darlington area near his home on May 9, July 22 and September 3.

Rachel Masters, prosecuting, said the burglaries happened in the early hours of the morning, with Hall sneaking in while the occupants were asleep.

On one occasion, he stole the handbag of a 78-year-old lady as she slept in her chair in her living room.

He took £90 in cash and her bank cards before she discovered the bag strewn across her driveway the next morning.

Another lady, who had fallen asleep in a living room chair after a long shift at work also became a victim when her handbag, cigarettes and nicotine patches were taken.

She had mistakenly left her patio door unlocked after letting her cat out and falling asleep before it came back in.

An open kitchen window was the means by which Hall gained entry to another home. The homeowners had mistakenly left it open during the heatwave and Hall managed to climb in and steal a man's wallet, blu ray dvds and his Playstation 4 along with two controllers before letting himself out through the patio.

Hall, who was on licence at the time of the burglaries, also attempted to cover his tracks by using towels to rub away his footprints from the kitchen.

However, after the victim supplied the police with the station's unique identification number, the police managed to trace it back to Hall's home address after he logged on to it with his own email address.

Miss Masters said the "prolific" burglar initially denied the allegations but when faced with forensic evidence from footprints he had left, he said he wanted to make admissions and claimed his heroin addiction meant to could not remember the offences.

Stephen Hamill, mitigating, said his client, of High Northgate, Darlington, had been "plagued" by drugs his whole life and was not in a proper state of mind when he committed the offences.

He also said he had volunteered information for the other 11 offences which the police would have otherwise not questioned about.

Judge Peter Armstrong sentenced Hall to a total of four years in prison.