A DUO posed as good Samaritans by returning lost bus passes to an elderly couple - before burgling their home after being invited in for a cup of tea.

Stuart McMullen was jailed for three years and his accomplice, Lisa Ward, imprisoned for 32 months for what was described as a "mean and ugly" offence at Bolton Crown Court .

Brian McKenna, prosecuting, told how Veronica Howard and her partner Harry Kay, who are both aged in their 70s, returned to their Farnworth home from a night out on August 9.

But as they got off a bus, Mrs Howard dropped her mobile phone and their bus passes.

The next morning, Ward, aged 34 and McMullen, aged 31, found the items and, noticing a slip of paper containing a phone number in Mr Kay's pass, rang it and offered to return the passes.

Mr Kay gave the couple his address and they turned up on the doorstep, where a grateful Mrs Howard, who was alone at the time, took pity on them because they were wet, and invited them in for a cup of tea.

Whilst there, Ward and McMullen each asked to use the toilet, and an hour after the couple had left, Mrs Howard discovered that two necklaces and three rings, together worth £750 had been stolen.

One of the rings belonging to Mr Kay had been from his late wife.

"It was the last gift she bought for him so it was very special," said Mr McKenna.

He added that Mrs Howard has been affected by the crime and now feels insecure.

"They just seemed so nice and it was wet so I let them in," she said in a statement read out in court.

The goods have never been recovered.

Ward, of Camrose Gardens, Bolton, and McMullen, of Cawdor Street, Farnworth, both pleaded guilty to burglary and theft.

Paul Hodgkinson, defending Ward, said she had not been the main protagonist of the crimes but had gone along with them.

"She accepts this was a mean offence," he said, adding that she has replaced a previous drug addiction with one to alcohol and now lives in a tent in her mother's garden.

"She is ashamed of her actions and knows what harm she must have caused."

Colin Buckle, defending McMullen, added that he does not ask for clemency from the court but is remorseful.

Sentencing the pair, Judge Timothy Stead described their crimes as "despicable".

"You were purporting to be there as Good Samaritans returning a bus pass," he said.

"The householder felt sorry for you as well as grateful.

"She was simply being kind and trying to repay a kindness, as she saw it to be."