A prolific shoplifter who was cleared of stealing £19,000 worth of designer items because of ‘mental health issues’ has walked free again – after stealing more than £1,000 worth of perfume.
Melissa Grant, 56, was formerly part of a professional shoplifting gang dubbed ‘The Spice Girls’ who raided exclusive shops in London’s West End, nabbing huge quantities of lavish clothes and lingerie.
In 2009, she was sentenced to almost two years behind bars for her crimes with the gang, who also hit stores in Bluewater, Kent and Lewes in Sussex.
And she struck once again in Selfridges in December 2024, over four days, later appearing in Westminster Magistrates Court charged with four counts of theft from the high-end store.
However, the mother-of-two was cleared of her crimes as prosecutors decided that the ‘public interest wasn’t met’ in pursuing a conviction against her due to her mental health problems.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail at the time, Grant claimed she did not want to steal but ‘the voices in her head ‘tell her to do it. In 2025, she said: ‘Because of my mental health, I have an urge to steal. I can’t stop myself.’
But it has since been revealed that the 56-year-old, who was previously cleared for her crimes in 2024, has gone on to steal nearly £1,500 worth of perfume from a shopping centre in Essex.
Grant of Catford confessed to stealing an exorbitant amount of perfumes from the Perfume Shop in Lakeside Shopping on December 8, 2025.
Melissa Grant (pictured), 55, was cleared of stealing £19,000 worth of designer items because of her ‘mental health issues’
Grant (pictured) claims she suffers from kleptomania and can’t help swiping things from shops
She was later sentenced to an 18-month suspended prison sentence at Bromley Magistrates’ Court on February 5 of this year.
The 56-year-old was also banned from the store for the next year and a half and has been ordered to pay a £187 surcharge as well as undergo 25 days of rehabilitation activity.
In her previous brush with the law in 2024, she was charged over the theft of two designer handbags worth £4,730, four Optika shirts worth £2,800, five Cas Lee shirts to the value of £6,620, a £1,810 medium logo bag, and a £325 Oblique Bylon cap, as well as a £2,650 Alalia dress.
After being spared a conviction for the shoplifting spree, Grant said there would be no ‘benefit’ in putting her back behind bars.
‘The judge did what he thinks is right…because sending me to prison, what is the benefit in that?’ she said.
‘When you go to prison, there’s nothing there for you. I have been there already. I went back to prison in December, and nothing changed; everything is worse.’
She added: ‘I want help and I want the support.’
At the time, Grant said she ‘would love to change’, maintaining she had ‘remorse’ for shoplifting and insisted: ‘I’ve tried to turn my life around, I’ve tried to change.’
‘I have remorse, I’m not happy about anything that I have done. I also take full responsibility,’ she said.
‘I am not happy about anything that I have done. I am not proud of it, but I do need help.
‘All I need is help and reassurance, but no one is there to help me. What do you do? So I end up back down the same path.’
She claims that due to her mental health struggles and her troubled background she often ends up back ‘down the wrong path’
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She also claimed that she was diagnosed with kleptomania, adding: ‘I take stuff I don’t want or need; I just can’t help myself. I’ve tried, but I get anxiety and panic attacks.
‘I can’t stop myself. Something in my head is telling me I need to take it. The voices in my head are telling me I need to take it.’
‘A lot have mental health problems, a lot of us are troubled, there is no cure, and nobody tries to understand,’ she argued.
Kleptomania is a mental health disorder that involves repeatedly being unable to resist urges to steal items that you generally don’t really need. Often, the items stolen have little value, and you could afford to buy them.
During her 2009 court trial for shoplifting, it was heard that Grant ‘behaved aggressively towards a shop assistant’ during the gang’s stealing spree, saying to her companion, ‘I feel like spitting in her face’.
One of her accomplices was then stopped by officers who found the bags were full of stolen clothing from GAP, Uniqlo, Oasis and Next, which included 15 pairs of trousers, four tops and three pairs of shoes.
Police later spotted Grant and the rest of the gang loading more black sacks into the boot of an Audi before arresting them.
The bags were also found to contain stolen clothes from All Saints and Warehouse, with all the items totalling a value of around £1,500.
They later raided a flat in Southwark linked to the gang and found £10,700 worth of clothes and underwear from La Senza, Topshop, Next, Monsoon and River Island with the security tags still on them.
There was a further £10,700 worth of goods with the tags off, including underwear from upmarket erotic boutique Coco de Mer.
Grant first came to the UK from Jamaica when she was 18 in 1990, with her two children, looking for a better life.
But she says she soon fell into a life of crime because she claimed it was difficult to decipher ‘right from wrong’ because of her alleged personality disorder.
Recalling her time in jail previously, Grant said prison didn’t rehabilitate her – and said she returned to shoplifting to ‘feed’ her drug habit and feed her family during the cost-of-living crisis.
‘You’re just locked up in your cell, there’s nothing structured for you. Prison isn’t always the answer because while you are in there, you aren’t learning,’ she said.
‘For rehabilitation, you need something in the community. You need something there to help people with mental health.
‘There was no support for me. I couldn’t get a job because of my criminal record. It’s hard for people like me. I’ve tried to get a job.’
She claims that due to her mental health struggles and her troubled background, she often ends up back ‘down the wrong path’.
In an exclusive interview from her home in Forest Hill, south London, Grant (pictured) claimed that she doesn’t want to steal but the ‘voices in her head’ tell her to do it
She said: ‘When someone calls me or different gangs, I don’t know how to say no because my mental health makes me feel like I need them for reassurance.’
‘No one asked me why, to get to the bottom of it.’
When asked why she turned to shoplifting in 2025, Grant said: ‘Well, one was to feed my drug habit, and to feed my children and my family. I didn’t have any status in this country, so I couldn’t work.
‘The only way of finding food for my children was by doing what I was doing and stealing to feed them.
‘People see me as a bad person, but no one understands that I came here with two young children on my own.’
Detailing her difficult and impoverished childhood in Jamaica as well as the loss of family relatives to violence, Ms Grant quipped: ‘It’s not like I have an upbringing where I know right from wrong.’
