£400,000 of vehicles stolen in house burglaries

Jonathan Sandiford and Denise Breen-Lawton recently concluded a long running prosecution where the main offence was a sophisticated conspiracy to handle over £400,000 worth of vehicles stolen in house burglaries.

Jonathan Sandiford and Denise Breen-Lawton recently concluded a long running prosecution where the main offence was a sophisticated conspiracy to handle over £400,000 worth of vehicles stolen in house burglaries.  Over £240,000 worth of the stolen vehicles were given false identities supported by forged documentation and shipped to Japan to be sold at auction. Unusually this enabled the three defendants to dispose of very high value vehicles such as Bentleys, Porsches and high specification Mercedes.  In addition two of the defendants were sentenced for a conspiracy to defraud involving the clocking of high mileage vehicles that were then sold on eBay with forged MOT certificates and service histories.

The case was further complicated by the fact that one defendant revealed himself to be a police informant and tried to have the indictment stayed as an abuse of process and then ran the defence of duress before the jury. He was unsuccessful and received a sentence of 9 years imprisonment.

The two remaining defendants pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 6 ½ years and 4 years 9 months in prison respectively.