Woman PC faked her own mugging to cover up losing her handbag after drinking session

Davinder Gill, 30, lost the phone when she left her handbag in a bar during a drinking session.

But to cover up the fact that she had also lost her police warrant card she claimed she had been shoved to the ground and robbed of her handbag.

The fake story meant her insurance company gave her a better model of phone worth £150.

Scroll down for more...

Gill, a constable who was on the Home Office's High Potential Scheme, which offers accelerated chances of promotion, sobbed after being convicted by a jury of obtaining property by deception.

She had denied the charge, but admitted making a further three false claims to get new phones.

The judge, Recorder David Elvin, adjourned the case until October 9 for a pre-sentence report.

He told Gill, who has now left the force, he was granting her bail but said "all options" including custody would be considered.

Kingston Crown Court heard that at 4pm on April 6 last year Gill, who had been a police officer for just under two years, finished her shift at Peckham police station in South London.

She drank half a bottle of wine with a friend before going to O'Neill's bar in Soho for a police leaving party where she downed numerous glasses of vodka and Diet Coke.

She left just after midnight and said that by that time on a scale of one to ten - one being stone-cold sober and ten being blind drunk - she was an eight.

Later, she realised she did not have her handbag and when she returned home to Surbiton in Surrey she told a neighbour she had been mugged.

Gill dialled 999. She told police who arrived to find her 'smelling strongly of alcohol' she had caught the last train home.

Quinn Hawkins, prosecuting, said she then gave her 'fabricated' account to officers.

"She said she noticed a group of people behind her once she had left the station," he said.

"She said that she had either been pushed forward or tripped and then fell on her face."

In a statement given later, "her lie became more detailed", Mr Hawkins said.

This time she said "she saw a white hand grab her bag and then the person running away".

She said her only injury was a broken finger nail.

The morning after the 'attack' Gill called her mobile phone company, Vodafone, to report the loss and her "stolen" Motorola V3 was replaced with a superior model, a £150 Motorola V3i.

Police began to smell a rat, however, after they found her tan leather bag at O'Neill's - still containing the phone.

In court, Gill denied she made up the mugging to cover up the loss of her Metropolitan Police warrant card.

She said: "I'd lost my warrant card on another occasion and I reported it through the correct procedure. I genuinely believed I had my bag stolen on the way home."

A warrant card is an officer's main means of identification and must be carried by officers whether in uniform or plain clothes.

The loss of one without a good reason is a potentially serious disciplinary offence.

Earlier this month, Gill, who now lives in Chessington, Surrey, pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining property by deception, in 2005 and 2006, and one count of attempting to obtain property by deception, in 2004.

She told the court that on two occasions her phone had been stolen but she made up a crime number because "I was too lazy to report the crime and because I'd heard that other people did it".

In the attempted deception, she told Vodafone her phone had suffered water damage. But that time the company did not accept her story.