A 40-year-old serial handler of stolen goods caught with a £7,500 motor cycle just days after it was taken in a raid on a Dudley shed has been locked up for six months.

Judge Michael Dudley told James Tipton he had a bad record for dishonesty adding: "You have been given many chances in the past."

He said Tipton had avoided custody in 2009 for a substantial number of handling offences when he had been hit with a compensation order for £32,000.

"It seems to me you simply have not learned that you cannot go on offending in this way," added the judge at Wolverhampton Crown Court.

The motor cycle disappeared after the shed at Holly Hall was broken into and Tipton was stopped just days later in his van by patrolling police officers who recovered the machine.

Tipton, of Chestnut Road, Walsall, admitted handling stolen goods and Stephen Cadwaladr defending said it was accepted he had a bad record although he had kept out of trouble with police for four years.