Mom cons neighbors for PS2 fund

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.