Mrs McKeevney bought cooked ham with this

A Brocagh octogenarian had been buying groceries in her local shop since 1998 with monopoly money, Cookstown Court heard today.

The pensioner was apprehended last week when the aging shopkeeper’s son finally took over the family business.

Mary McKeevney (88), of Ballybeg Road, had been given the popular Christmas game in the late 1990s and mistakenly paid for a tin of corned beef and a pint of buttermilk on St Stephen’s Day 1998 using a Monopoly fiver. Having realised her good fortune, McKeevney continued to swindle the owner of Davidson’s Greengrocers, Ignatious Davidson (85), on a daily basis until her final purchase last Saturday night.

Davidson’s son and new proprietor of the shop, Kieran, filled in the blanks:

“Daddy always had a notion of Mary, ever since she won the Miss Wrangler Jeans at Brocagh Sports Day in 1966. Even as they approached their 80s he’d be flirting with her in the shop, making suggestive remarks about beef sausages and lemon tarts. I’ve no doubt that Mary’s initial purchase of the corned beef with the fake fiver was a legitimate mistake but it’s also clear her skulduggery spiralled out of control.”

Mrs McKeevney admitted purchasing nearly 400 Monopoly boards over the following years, dishing out £500’000 in Monopoly money in that time for bananas, teabags, Nutty Crust bread and sucking sweets mostly.

“My da is a deadly hoarder can just kept all takings under his bed in a big box. He has over a million pounds in it. Unfortunately half of it is useless unless you want to buy Mayfair or Marylebone Station. He was too busy ogling Mary’s aged and decrepit  features to realise he was being hoodwinked. He retired last week so Mary got some shock when she saw me behind the counter. The brazen hussy tried it on with me but I knew straight away it was a Monopoly £20 she was using to pay for the Irish News and 20 white bonbons. She’s good looking for an 88-year old, I’ll give her that.”

Police now suspect that McKeevney’s husband wasn’t actually murdered in May 1991 by Professor Plum with a piece of lead piping in the billiard room as initially believed following his wife’s statement that fateful night.