A ROBBER who targeted teenage boys and stole their mobile phones has been jailed for three years.

Jessie Dobinson, 20, from Wickford, tricked his victims into handing over phones by asking to make reverse charge calls on the devices, then made off without handing them back.

He targeted seven people in different towns, including Wickford, Billericay, Hockley, South Woodham Ferrers and Shenfield, and threatened to stab one of his victims.

Judge John Lodge, sentencing at Basildon Crown Court, told Dobinson: “These offences show a pattern of offending in which you go throughout various towns, obtaining expensive mobiles from young boys by deception, and on occasion use force or threaten force when the young boy asks for his phone back.”

Richard Scott, prosecuting, told the court Dobinson appr-oached a 16-year-old boy sitting outside the Ladygate Centre, in High Street, Wickford, and asked to borrow his mobile, on August 17 last year.

The boy initially refused, but relented because Dobinson was persistent and promised to reverse the charges on the call.

While appearing to make a call on the Blackberry Curve, worth £200, Dobinson, formerly of St David’s Way, began to walk away and the boy demanded he hand the phone back.

Mr Scott said Dobinson then reached inside his jacket and said: “Step away or I’ll shank you.”

The boy told police he thought he was going to be stabbed because Dobinson appeared to be removing something from his jacket.

In a similar incident on March 16 last year, Dobinson convinced another 16-year-old boy to hand over his mobile phone, then threatened violence before leaving the scene with it.

The court heard the robber was sleeping rough at the time and committed the offences to buy food, drugs and alcohol.

Dobinson pleaded guilty to one count of robbery and asked for six mobile phone thefts he had committed to be taken into consideration by the courts.

He also admitted one count of fraud, by using a friend’s mother’s credit card to buy £217 worth of takeaway pizzas over a two-day period, and one count of theft for stealing alcohol worth £10 from a convenience store. Dobinson was sentenced to a total of three years in a young offenders’ institution for all the offences.