TWO Bulgarian women have been jailed after stealing purses from female shoppers in stores across the city.

Nadezhda Taneva, 33, and Senada Petrova, 22, appeared in the dock together from custody for sentencing at Glasgow Sheriff Court.

A charge which one of the women plead guilty to revealed that the oldest victim was 78 years old.

The charges also revealed that the pair’s victims were targeted in a number of well-known retailers across the city.

Taneva, who is currently a prisoner in HM Prison Polmont, was jailed for eight months after pleading guilty to three charges.

She admitted that she stole a purse containing £50 from a 73-year-old woman.

The woman was robbed in Accessorize in Braehead Shopping Centre on June 5, last year.

Taneva also plead guilty to stealing a purse worth £110 from a 78-year-old woman.

The elderly woman was robbed at Peacock stores in the Mitchell Arcade in Rutherglen on August 15, last year.

Taneva’s final victim was a 76-year-old woman whose purse worth £150 was stolen while she was in a Poundstretcher store in Crow Road in Glasgow’s West End.

She was robbed on December 12, last year.

Petrova, who is also a prisoner of HM Prison Polmont, plead guilty to one charge and was handed a four month jail sentence.

She stole a purse from a woman at Mothercare in Crow Road in Glasgow’s West End on February 2, this year.

There was no value given for the amount contained within that purse.

The court heard from the Procurator Fiscal depute that the money obtained from the purse robberies was never recovered.

The court also heard that both women had been remanded in custody since June 16 and had planned to return to their native Bulgaria after completing their prison sentences.

Their prison sentences were backdated to when both women were first remanded in custody.