A PICKPOCKET found hiding in a bush with 24 mobile phones stolen from people on one night has been jailed for six months.

Andrei Gheonea had been enjoying punk band Flogging Molly at the Sub89 nightclub in Friar Street when he stole the smartphones worth more than £7,000 from unsuspecting punters.

The Romanian had been in the UK for less than a month when he pickpocketed the mobiles, mostly iPhones, but was discovered in a nearby bush with the phones lying beside him after a man activated the locator service on his stolen phone.

Kathryn Hirst, prosecuting at Reading Crown Court on Wednesday, said nightclubbers at the music venue suddenly started realising their phone had been disappearing throughout the evening.

She said: “One man in particular through a friend’s phone, activated a finder app.

“The defendant was found to the rear of the pub The Gateway hiding in a bush and 24 mobile phones lined up next to him.” She said 20 phones were reunited with their owners with the remaining four left unclaimed.

The court heard how bricklayer Gheonea had moved to London in May to work and send money back home but had found living in the capital expensive.

He had gone to Sub89 with the intention of enjoying himself on the evening of Thursday, June 12 this year.

But Lara Akande, defending, said his brother in Romania had called him that day demanding cash for their sick mother’s medical bills.

She added: “He took advantage of the situation and took the mobile phones as a way to get money to send back home.” Judge Johannah Cutts told Gheonea he had caused considerable inconvenience to the phone owners who keep “valuable data” on them to function day to day. She said: “Whatever reasons for needing money you are not entitled to take other people’s property.

“You only arrived in this country in May this year and this offence we are here for today was in June.

“I do not accept your behaviour was opportunistic. There was a plan to steal, not simply one or two of them, but 20 of them.” Gheonea, of no fixed abode, admitted 20 counts of theft when he appeared at Reading Magistrates’ Court on June 14.

On Wednesday, he was jailed for six months for each count to run concurrently.