EAGLE-EYED bank staff caught a woman who stole more than £100,000 from other women's bank accounts.

Jennifer Selby-Springthorpe, 60, used false passports to impersonate women after being given their bank details. On Friday Recorder Simon Foster sentenced her to two years and nine months in jail after Selby-Springthorpe, of Redbridge, north east London, admitted 13 counts of obtaining property by deception, three attempts to obtain property by deception and going equipped to cheat.

Staff at the Market Place, Chippenham, branch of the Abbey have been praised by head office after they halted her string of offences. When she was taken to the police station officers found details of other accounts she was to plunder on cards she had thrown in the toilets.

Richard Thomas, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court: "A very smartly dressed woman would enter a branch armed with a passport in the name of the account holder she was about to defraud.

"She would produce utility bills which were false and give a mail drop address. The utility bill would allow her to change the address of the account. On some of the accounts she would simply request new cards to be directed to the mail shot address.

"Over £103,000 was obtained where she would purport to be the account holder, withdraw cash and then leave. She was apprehended as a result of an attempt in Chippenham to transfer of £200 between two bank accounts at the Abbey bank.

"It became clear it was fraudulent and she was arrested. The whole inquiry started from there."

Selby-Springthorpe took £103,254 from five women's accounts between November 2005 and May 2006 year and tried to obtain a further £126,712.

Christopher Coltart, defending, said his client had been put under pressure to commit the offences by a man, and urged the court to give her a second chance. He said she only received about £5,000 for her part in the scam.

The manager of the Chippenham branch of Abbey, who asked not to be named, said: "I identified suspicious transactions and called the police. A subsequent investigation confirmed the fraudster was using fake identification and was impersonating a genuine Abbey customer. We will always pursue cases of suspected fraud."