Romanian scrap metal raiders
are jailed

Leeds Crown Court heard the men, all Romanian nationals, travelled from Birmingham to
carry out the night-time raid at European Metal Recycling. The offenders used a pick axe to smash a hole in a wall before passing blocks of copper through it.

An alarm was triggered during the break-in at about 2.30am on July 9 this year, and security services notified police who arrived at the scene 10 minutes later and arrested the men. Surveillance camera footage showed the group stealing the metal worth £17,841 over a 40-minute period.

Marius Mare, 24, Leontin Florea, 48, Costinel Bodescu, 20, and Andrei Trandfir, 21, were each jailed for two years after pleading guilty to burglary. A 17-year-old, who cannot be named, was given a 16-month detention and training order after pleading guilty to burglary.

The court heard the youngster has a previous conviction for a similar offence after he was caught stealing metal from a scrap dealers in Wolverhampton weeks before the incident in Leeds.

After their arrest, the men admitted to police that they had planned to stay at the premises longer and steal more but had been caught in the act. The court heard how the men had agreed to take part in the burglary after coming to the UK and were unable to find work. Kate Bisset, for Trandfir, said he had been offered £50 to take part in the offence.

Jailing them, Judge Sally Cahill said: “This was in my view a well planned commercial burglary. You specifically targeted a premises over 100 miles from where you lived. You did so at 2.20am and each of you will have realised what was going to happen. It is clear from the degree of planning, from the fact that you went equipped for this burglary and the fact that you were in a gang, makes this a high culpability case.”