Two young children have been caught stealing wallets and credit cards from under dining tables in fancy Melbourne restaurants after watching their mother’s sticky fingers, an online news outlet has reported.

After appearing in a Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday, the mother of the two told the judge her children, both aged under seven, were just copying her.

The 35-year-old pleaded guilty to using her children to steal a handbag containing a diamond ring worth more than $12,000.

The bag also contained credit cards that were later used to withdraw money, the dailymail reported.

The mother denied she trained her children to steal the handbag, and claimed it was a case of ‘monkey see, monkey do.’

“My client says she did not train them specifically to do that,” her defence lawyer Andrew Shears told the court in Melbourne.

“She had them with her … in her words, it was ‘monkey see, monkey do’.”

Magistrate Carolene Gwynn said CCTV footage and the crime’s elements contradicted that explanation.

“She distracted the maitre d’… then opened the door so they could leave,” she said. “I do not accept that the children’s behaviour was ‘monkey see, monkey do’. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous.”

The CCTV footage shows one of the children creep up behind a table of diners and snatch a bag, before racing out of the restaurant and down a flight of stairs. At one stage in the video, something falls from the handbag, and the child stops fleeing and goes back to pick up the item.

The children have been in the custody of a family relative since the mother was arrested and refused bail at the beginning of October.

Magistrate Gwynn spared Hutchenson any further jail time when she handed down a sentence on Monday, however the 35-year-old mother has been ordered to complete 200 hours of community work and given an 18-month community corrections order.