Jail for man who left trail of victims

ONE of South Yorkshire's most prolific crooks has been jailed for six years after admitting to a one-man crimewave which left a trail of almost 60 victims.

Tony Finley, aged 24, who confessed because he had “had enough of offending,” toured the Thorne and Stainforth areas of Doncaster handcuffed to detectives to point out where he had committed nearly 60 crimes.

He would probably have got away with most of them had he not owned up, a court heard.

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One of his robberies was on a 69-year-old gambler, whom he knocked to the ground as he left a betting shop, stealing 500 of horse racing winnings. The man is still traumatised by the mugging last March.

Finley, of Fieldside, Thorne, also asked for 27 burglaries and 25 thefts - many of them bag snatches from women - to be taken into consideration. The court heard he contacted CID officers to tell them about his crimes “to clear all matters up so he could make a clean breast of things.”