A husband, wife and sister team with an address in Scotland have been sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for a shoplifting spree in Donegal last summer. William and Rosemary Laidlaw and Anna Watson, sister of Mrs Laidlaw, from Bonnyrig in Edinburgh, pleaded guilty at Letterkenny Circuit Court to the larceny of a large number of goods from Stores in Letterkenny and Ballybofey on 2 June last year.
Gardaí later discovered goods to the estimated value of £100,000 in a house in west Donegal belonging to the parents of the two sisters. £45,000 worth of those goods belonged to McElhinney's store in Ballybofey and £55,000 worth remain unclaimed.
Sentencing the three, Judge Matthew Deery described it as a very extensive operation which had been carried out by the three over a period of time. He said that it was well planned with the design of depriving traders of a very substantial quantity of their goods.
