Serial Balgownie thief and father-of-four Engin Celik failed to convince a magistrate he had cleaned up his act after he landed himself in familiar territory earlier this week.
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The 47-year-old spiralled into drug use before he was arrested for his latest petty crimes, Wollongong Local Court heard, one of which included breaking into an elderly woman's home and fleeing with two of her handbags in September last year.
He went on to withdraw $2000 in cash from the banks cards inside the 86-year-old woman's bags at a Corrimal ATM, before spending about $1000 on two transactions at a nearby Coles.
A month after the break-in, Celik was caught on CCTV driving a red Toyota Corolla into the car park of the Aqua Apartments on Ocean Street in Wollongong.
He was captured crawling under a new Subaru Outback with a cutting tool, spending several minutes trying to cut out the car's rare catalytic converter exhaust - but failed due to a security feature.
Celik drove off in the Corolla, however caused more than $2000 worth of damage to the victim's Subaru.
In court on Tuesday, defence lawyer Graham Morrison said his client had been engaging with drug and alcohol programs however "spiralled" back into his bad habits.
Celik pleaded guilty to drug driving, larceny, damaging property, two counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, and two counts of furnishing false information to a licensee.
He was jailed and will be eligible for release in June this year, meaning he will miss the birth of his fifth child next month, the court heard.
Magistrate Michael O'Brien lambasted the former BlueScope rigger for spending the formative parts of his children's lives in jail and "leaving the parenting to others".
"It's a tragedy that one has squandered one's life when it's too late to do anything about it," Magistrate O'Brien said.
"I don't know whether for Mr Celik that epiphany is yet to have occurred.
"If you're not in custody, it seems you're out breaking into someone's house."
You don't appear to have learnt anything.
- Magistrate Michael O'Brien
Celik was sentenced to 18 months behind bars with a non-parole period of six months.
He was also fined $500 and disqualified from driving for three months.
Read more Illawarra court and crime stories here.
Grace Crivellaro
Court reporter for the Illawarra Mercury.
Court reporter for the Illawarra Mercury.
