Law puts end to home shopping

A sales assistant at Marks & Spencer who stole thousands of items of clothing and other property from her bosses, was jailed for two years yesterday.

During a 10-year campaign of "systematic" dishonesty, Gina Corfine, 59, amassed women's wear worth pounds 44,632.

When police raided her four-bedroomed, semi-detached house in Cricklewood, north London, they found 2,367 items of knitwear, 1,310 pairs of knickers, 614 blouses, 243 nightdresses, 314 skirts, 176 dresses, 82 pairs of shoes and 20 belts.

Knightsbridge Crown Court heard most of the goods, which also included 106 items of children's wear, still had price tags and were in their original packaging.

Judge Christopher Hordern QC told Corfine, who has two children, that for 10 years she had "deliberately and ingeniously" betrayed her employers at the chain's Edgware Road branch in central London.

Corfine, who admitted six sample counts of stealing goods and till receipts between September 1984 and September last year, was also told her and her husband's pounds 28,000 savings would be seized to compensate her former employer.