THREE conmen posed as water company workers to steal £80 from a pensioner’s purse, a court heard.

The three called on the 79-year-old woman at a sheltered housing complex in Hereford and said there was something wrong with her water supply, Gloucester Crown Court was told.

Police eventually caught the three in a roadblock, but not before they tried to both drive and run away.

Michael Connors, aged 52, of no fixed address, Michael Berry, aged 42, of Chandos Crescent, Edgeware, Middlesex, and Patrick Cawley, aged 24, of Harbour View Court, Northampton, all admitted charges relating to a series of similar offences.

A teenager – who the court ordered not to be named – was charged with the men, but had the case against him adjourned because prosecution and defence barristers disputed his true age.

Connors was sentenced to three years, eight months imprisonment, Berry to three years, four months, and Cawley to two years, nine months.

Simon Burns, prosecuting, said the men were an organised gang sent from a travellers’ site in Birmingham in a stolen vehicle with a cloned registration plate to avoid detection.

They had travelled first to Cheltenham and then to Hereford, where they carried out the burglary in Macmillan Close, Moorfields.

Charles Row, for Connors, told the court he was “extremely intoxicated” on the day of the Hereford offence and played no active role.

For Berry, Nick Sefton said the motive for the offence lay in an addiction to alcohol and drugs.

Ian Halliday, for Cawley, said the father of three now realised he had been a “fool” and was “deeply ashamed.”