A MAN who preyed on an elderly Bradford woman who had given money to his friend over a fake sob story has been jailed.

Terrence Barlow, 31, targeted the woman, asking for help on two occasions when she was kind-hearted enough to give him £20 each time.

In June this year, when he returned to her house at Halifax Road in Buttershaw, and asked for more, she refused.

She opened a window in order to hear what he was saying better, and the court heard how he forced the window open further and pulled himself inside the house.

Once inside he shouted that he needed money and the pensioner gave him her purse, which he took around £10 from, leaving by the front door.

He admitted burglary and was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

It later emerged he knew a woman who had previously been given £200 and a new TV and telephone by the former nurse and Sunday School teacher after telling her "a false tale of woe" about how she had cancer and was subject to domestic violence.

Judge Ahmed Nadim said: "This was a mean and nasty offence against a vulnerable elderly victim - you knew her to be so and targeted her for that very reason."

Barlow, now of Dodd Road, Watford, was said to be "utterly ashamed" and this had been a "huge wake-up call".