A cheating Romanian who thought he could escape justice by fleeing back home spent almost three weeks in jail after being caught at Pembroke Dock as he embarked off a ferry from Ireland.

Christian Iancu, aged 28, had been part of a three man gang who travelled to Pembrokeshire to try a new method of scamming cash machines.

Iancu, and fellow countrymen Lucian Ghiurcuta, aged 29, and Mihai Patrascu, 25, devised a “glue and jell” capturing device they inserted into an ATM at the Lloyds bank in Main Street, Pembroke, in 2012.

The machine “swallowed” the debit card of the next person to use the cash point but the scam failed to work because the trio were not able to retrieve the card and the pin number.

However, they had more luck at the cash machine outside the Tesco store in Tenby.

Kay Kees failed to get her card back but Iancu and his friends then spent almost £1,000 of her money gambling at a Ladbrokes betting shop.

In 2014 Ghiurcuta and Patrascu were jailed for nine months and eight months respectively, the sentences suspended for two years.

But Iancu stayed in Romania until May 3 when police in Pembroke arrested him as he left the ferry.

Iancu admitted fraud by false representation, possessing an article for use in fraud, and theft.

Tom Scapens, prosecuting, told Swansea crown court the trio had operated a “sophisticated set up” and had deliberately targeted west Wales.

After their arrests they claimed at first to have been sight seeing.

The judge, Mr Recorder Greg Bull, said his hands were tied as the judge in the case of Ghiurcuta and Patrascu had passed suspended prison sentences.

If he had been the sentencing judge, he added, they would have gone to jail immediately.

“You escape justice for four years because you left the country. You have a bad record for dishonesty,” he told Iancu.

Iancu was jailed for six months, suspended for two years.