A homeless teenager was sentenced to nine months in prison in Magistrates? Court yesterday for buying a stolen bag of jewellery for $50.

Steven James O?Neil, 19, of no fixed abode, got a hefty sentence due to his previous convictions ?including receiving a stolen motor cycle 1998.

O?Neil pleaded guilty with an explanation to the charge of receiving stolen property; namely a gold pendant and a diamond earring, some time between June 1 and December 1, 2004.

In court yesterday, he said the man he bought the bag from said the jewellery belonged to his dead mother.

But Principal Crown counsel Juan Wolffe said that in Police records O?Neil admitted to ?buying the bag from an ?unknown male for $50? and there was nothing about the jewellery belonging to a dead mother.

Mr. Wolffe told the court that in July, Mrs. Sharon Ward put her gold pendant? valued at $45? and diamond earring ?worth $250 ? in a drawer in her home.

He said on December 1, they were found as ?part of a suspicious jewellery bag in (O?Neil?s) shirt pocket?.

And he said O?Neil also had four counts of breaking and entering between 2000-2002.

There were a number of other charges against O?Neil for other crimes.

He pleaded guilty to all of them including four charges of driving while disqualified between October 1 and November 21, for which he was fined $1,600 and another six months to run concurrent with the nine months.

He was given another three month concurrent sentence for driving dangerously on Crow Lane on September 19.

Finally, he was sentenced to 20 days for two tickets for not having his crash helmet fastened.

?You are to serve the default time concurrent with your other offences,? Senior Magistrate Archibald Warner told him. ?If there were no receivers there would be no thieves, because there would be no one to sell it to. I sentence you to nine months imprisonment.?