A 41-year-old Blakedown man has been given a suspended jail sentence after making false insurance claims for TV sets he said were stolen in a burglary.

Anthony Gauntlett was paid £6,000 by Direct Line insurance after a burglary at his home in Wannerton Avenue, Blakedown, in August, 2008.

He told the company a number of items were stolen including a Bang and Olufsen TV but after he made a claim for another Bang and Olufsen TV set following a burglary in November, 2010, police went to his home and found the original TV set there from the claim he had made two years earlier.

Gauntlett pleaded guilty to two fraud charges at Worcester Crown Court.

Daniel White, prosecuting, told the court his Range Rover, worth £60,000, had also been taken in the 2008 burglary but this had not been paid out by the insurance company because he had not activated the tracker device in the correct time.

In November, 2010, he went away with his wife and returned to find burglars had struck again. He made a claim for £17,695 for the items stolen, including another Bang and Olufsen TV but Direct Line became suspicious and hired an independent investigator.

They called the police, who went to his home in May, 2011, and found two Bang and Olufsen TV sets with the identifcation numbers removed. One of them was found to be the one he claimed for two years earlier. They also found forged documents relating to the purchases. The claim was not paid.

Balbir Singh, defending, said Gauntlett had also lost out following a raid on his business premises in 2006 because he was under insured. He had decided to inflate the claims but the burglaries had genuinely taken place and he had not been fraudulent from the outset.

As a result, he has not been able to get household or car insurance so he is unable to drive. Mr Singh said the family had suffered a great deal and were facing an uncertain future after getting into debt.

Judge Robert Juckes told Gauntlett that until recently false insurance claims always resulted in an immediate jail sentence. He gave Gauntlett eight months suspended for two years with a community order for 150 hours of unpaid work over 12 months. He will also have to repay the £6,035 and pay £1,400 court costs.