A JUDGE has told householders letting out their properties to beware identity theft after a tenant posed as the owner to try to sell a house.

Angela Hargreaves, 32, used a false name to take over the tenancy of a five-bedroom semi-detached house in Hale, near Altrincham, Cheshire. She assumed the identity of the owner, Catherine Litherland, 60, a former fashion designer and now a sailing instructor in America and the Bahamas.

Manchester Crown Court was told that Hargreaves stole Ms Litherland’s birth and marriage certificates from a locked cupboard and passed them off as her own to put the house up for sale. She attracted two potential buyers and instructed two firms of solicitors to carry out the conveyancing.

Joanna Rodikis, for the prosecution, said that the bogus sale was uncovered when police arrested Hargreaves for shoplifting and found a driving licence application in Ms Litherland’s name and a loan application in the name of Jane Wright.

It emerged that she had used this name when she approached a lettings agency in August 2003. A driving licence and bank account details made out in the false name were enough to get the keys.

Once inside, Hargreaves raided a locked attic room and stole 19 antiques worth £14,200. She tried to sell the property to the potential buyers for £430,000 and £480,000.

Hargreaves, who admitted theft and deception, was spared jail after the judge accepted that she was not the main player in the fraud. She claimed that she had been asked by a man to help him to look after a house that he was selling.

Mark Graffius, for the defence, said that the offences happened after Hargreaves had fled a violent relationship that left her heavily in debt.

Judge Adrian Lyons told her that while in normal circumstances she would have faced jail, the benefits for her and the losses suffered by others were “nothing like as great as they might have been”. He ordered her to complete a 200-hour community punishment order.

He told her: “Any fraud of this nature is serious, involving as it does an offence which is becoming more prevalent, which is theft of an identity.”

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