A BLACK Country fraudster who pocketed money donated to a cancer charity by caring Dudley families has been jailed for two years.

“This is serious offending and it is the tenth time you have committed this type of crime,” Judge Robin Onions told 25-year-old David Armson.

“This trades on the goodwill of people prepared to give money to worthwhile causes when many of them may have been touched by the scourge of cancer.”

Armson conned more than 100 householders into donating an average of £4 a time in sponsorship after maintaining he was going to take part in the Great Christmas Pudding Race for Cancer Research.

But he kept all the money and he used it to fuel his drug habit, Nick Wadsworth, prosecuting, told Wolverhampton Crown Court.

Armson, who has a total of 128 previous convictions on his criminal record, admitted fraud, burglary and going equipped for theft.

Mr Wadsworth said that when he got no reply to a knock on the door of a house in the Coseley area, Armson broke a window and pushed his hand inside but the householder was on the premises.

He was able to take a photograph of Armson as he fled from the scene and he was quickly recognised by police officers.

Mr Wadsworth said the father-of-one, who had been committed to the court for sentence by Dudley Magistrates, had been troubled by his drug addiction for some considerable time.

David Wallace, defending, said Armson, of Dimmock Avenue, Coseley, had collected around £400 from his offending which was not a “high level way of maintaining the drug habit he was trying to feed".