Mothers have been known to go to desperate measures to fulfill their children's needs. Whether it's working two jobs to put food on the table, body-checking rivals in a mad dash to grab the hottest toy, or lifting compact cars to free their pinned offspring, the mother-child bond has proven to result in some spectacular feats.

On the flip side, less-talented and driven mothers may resort to more nefarious actions to please their little ones. Such was the case in Shropshire, a region in central England. The Shropshire Star's Web site is reporting that Bridget Marie Taylor, posing as a schoolteacher, asked for cash from the community to help out a little girl injured in a car crash.

The money was to go toward preventing such further tragedies through the installation of a new speed camera, which watches the speeds of automobile traffic.

There's just one problem: Taylor is not a schoolteacher, and there is no little girl.

The woman was collecting cash to help another child: her son. But her son wasn't critically injured or in need of special attention. Apparently, he was critically bored and wanted a new PlayStation 2.

The mother, who couldn't afford the console, concocted her deception by asking local villagers for help, at times throwing in the lies that she was married to a policeman and that her own child had died of cancer.

Taylor was ordered to complete six months of supervised community service and was fined 43 pounds ($76), around 40 percent of the PS2's 104-pound ($184) MSRP in the UK.