The French teenager paid just under £8 for a new PlayStation 4 by weighing it as it was a bag of fruit (file photo)

A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.

The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.

He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.

Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.

A new PlayStation 4 at the correct retail price is usually around £297.30 (€340).

Adel then went on to sell the PlayStation for £87.43 (€100) in order to pay for a train ticket to his home town of Nice, in south eastern France, French newspaper L'est Republicain reports.

The hapless thief would have gotten away with the crime if he had not returned to the same shop the next day to try and carry out the scam again.

He was arrested by police and charged with theft, but did not appear in court for the hearing.

Last week at a magistrates court in the town of Montbeliard Adel was sentenced to four months in prison.

The teenage French man paid under £8 for a PlayStation 4 at a supermarket in the town of Montbeliard in the east of the country

Nice France, where 19-year-old Adel was from and was trying to buy a train a ticket to get to with the proceeds of the PlayStation 4 scam

Earlier this month in Alabama four suspects were arrested after the theft of a PlayStation went wrong.

According to the Limestone County Sheriff's Office four suspects tried to steal a PlayStation from a man who advertised it social media.

But the owner tried to stop the culprits by grabbing hold of the games console and was dragged along the road as the gang drove away, suffering serious injuries.