Margaret Ruth Eames pleads guilty in Warwick Magistrates Court to stealing wallet

A woman has been labelled as ‘opportunistic’ by her own lawyer after she took advantage of a man’s bad luck. Find out how here.

A woman labelled as ‘opportunistic’ by her own defence lawyer has faced court after being caught red-handed.

Margaret Ruth Eames pleaded guilty to one charge of stealing and one charge of failure to appear in Warwick Magistrate Court on Monday.

The 47-year-old was at an Injune hotel on November 2022, where a man dropped his wallet.

The court was told Eames picked the wallet up, and it is believed she used the man’s cards to obtain the money from the victim.

Defence lawyer Philip Crook noted the service station attendant’s offending could be categorised as “perhaps opportunistic”.

Magistrate Andrew Cridland noted Eames had “a number of entries” on her criminal history, which includes drug offending, the last being last year.

“There is a drug history there, and there is an entry for violence back to 2003 and otherwise disorderly type behaviour, but there is no offences of a dishonest nature in your history which I will take into account,” Mr Cridland said.

Eames was ordered to pay a $900 fine for the crime as no restitution payment was requested.

Originally published as Margaret Ruth Eames pleads guilty in Warwick Magistrates Court to stealing wallet