Dad pays £1,500 fine to spare drug addict son prison (From Worcester News)

Dad pays £1,500 fine to spare drug addict son prison

9:00pm Sunday 19th August 2012 in News

Dad pays £1,500 fine to spare drug addict son prison

A LAST-minute phone call to his dad saved a drug addict from a stint in prison.

Benjamin Kreisler’s father agreed to pay his £1,500 court fine debt, sparing him from being sent to prison.

The 27-year-old was at Worcester Magistrates Court on theft charges after he stole alcohol from a supermarket and a mobile phone from an acquaintance and one charge of fraud by false representation after he sold the phone to Cash Converters for £10.

After it became clear he had outstanding fines of £1,557.37, district judge Bal Dhaliwal remanded him in custody while efforts were made to call his father to clear the debt.

She told Kreisler: “You have to deal with those fines if you expect to walk through the front door or you will be walking through that back door.”

Court officials had about an hour to track down his father, who agreed to pay the fines.

The court was told Kreisler, of Blakefield Road, St John’s, Worcester, had taken a bottle of Bell’s whisky, to the value of £23.99, from the Co-op in St John’s on July 9 and two bottles of vodka on July 20.

On July 12, Kreisler had been talking to homeless friend Andrew King, whom the court was told was “spaced out on heroin” in Trinity Passage.

When he came to he found Kreisler and his mobile phone had both disappeared.

The following day Kreisler sold it to the Cash Converters and signed a contract falsely claiming the phone belonged to him.

Susie Duncan, defending, said Kreisler was trying to turn his life around and address his 10-year drug habit through the rehabilitation centre Pathways.

She told the court he needed to sell the items to buy some food after his benefits were wrongly stopped because of an address error.

The judge sentenced him to 12 weeks for theft of the phone and four weeks for fraud by false representation to run consecutively, both suspended for 12 months.

He was also handed a four- week sentence for the two other theft offences, suspended for 12 months to run concurrently as well as being ordered to complete a 12- month drug rehabilitation course.