Woman distracts clerk while child steals phones

A Fagan-like mother has been branded "Mom Of The Year" after video allegedly showing her distracting clerks at a US phone store while her small daughter ducks behind the counter to pocket a mobile phone emerged online.

The footage appears to have been captured by the store's surveillance cameras on February 26 last month and was posted online yesterday.

The clip titled 'Mom Of The Year Distracts Clerk While Kid Steals Phone' starts with two women talking to a male and female clerk behind a desk at what appears to be a phone store.

While the customers engage the pair in conversation two small girls barely as tall as the counter stand behind them.

When a clerk at a second desk in the background gets up to presumably help another customer one of the woman at the desk in the centre of the shot appears to motion to the child behind her.

The small girl with the afro then quickly makes a dash behind the vacant counter ducking as she disappears and grabs two phones.

Moments later she reappears and makes a brisk exit with one of the women who was speaking to the clerks.

One World Star Hip Hop user called the woman in the video " a disgusting piece of trash” while another compared the action to the character Fagan, who runs a gang of child thieves in the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist.

"She's setting her kids up for a life of crime in and out of prison,” another wrote. “They should be taken far away from her nasty influence."

It is unclear if the alleged theft was reported.