A former member of a vice gang who took over a pensioner's home to run a drugs and prostitution racket has been jailed after he admitted burgling a neighbour's flat.

Anthony Brown, 30, was made the subject of a five-year anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) in September last year after a Court heard how he and three other people, Caroline and Yvonne Styslo and Mohammed Hussain, took over the home of 76-year-old Jeremiah Horgan, at St Blaise Court, Bradford, and used it for their activities.

After an interim order was imposed in May 2004, Brown and Caroline Styslo moved their operations further down the road and picked on a mentally ill person who subsequently ended up in Lynfield Mount Hospital for treatment.

A judge at Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday that Brown had again preyed on an elderly victim in December last year.

Heather Weir, prosecuting, told the court that 76-year-old Edith Schpyrka was watching television in her flat at Evans Towers when she heard noises coming from her bedroom.

When she went to investigate she saw Brown carrying a red metal box and recognised him as a man who lived in the same block of flats.

Brown ran out of the flat and the pensioner gave chase, but when she lost sight of him she went straight to the flat Brown shared with his mother.

Mrs Schpyrka told the defendant's mother what he had done and the police were called and arrested Brown a short time later.

He pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary. His barrister, Michelle Colborne, conceded that her client had been involved in taking and dealing drugs in the past but had now put all that behind him.

She added that the burglary was out of character and had been committed on the spur of the moment.

The court was told that Brown had recently been the victim of a vicious assault that left him unconscious for a number of days when he was beaten with a hammer.

Miss Colborne said that the attack had left Brown suffering from painful headaches which meant that he was having a hard time in prison where he had been on remand for 80 days.

But jailing him for 16 months, Judge Roger Scott said that the offence was so serious that only a custodial sentence was justified and told Brown that the burglary was aggravated by the fact he was subject to an ASBO.

He said: "This was a nasty little offence, what I call a 'creep burglary'. You took £45 worth of property and she's not going to get that back."