Pair stole and torched vans
TRADESMEN LEFT £300K OUT OF POCKET AFTER 29 VEHICLES WERE EMPTIED AND STRIPPED
TWO men who stole 29 vans before stripping out the engines and torching the vehicles during an eight-month crime spree have been jailed.
Denver Finney and Lee Woodmansey, both 32, left tradesmen more than £300,000 out of pocket from the thefts across Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Humberside, and West Yorkshire.
Chris Jeyes, prosecuting at Lincoln Crown Court, said 28 Ford Transits and one Sprinter van were stolen.
He said: “The vehicles would be broken into and once stolen would be moved to a more remote spot where the engine and gearbox were removed.
“Afterwards the vans would be burned out and absolutely destroyed. The overall loss to the owners of the vehicles when it is added up comes to £331,000. That is both the value of the vehicles and of their contents.
“The victims were tradesmen. They lost stock and tools as well as their vans.”
Mr Jeyes said Finney and Woodmansey were arrested after police raided their business premises at Hemswell in August 2017 and found items linked to the thefts.
Finney, of Victoria Close, Gainsborough, and Woodmansey, of Richmond Road, Gainsborough, each admitted conspiracy to steal motor vehicles between January 1 and August 15, 2017.
They were both jailed for two years. Finney admitted an unrelated charge of dangerous driving involving an incident at Westgate roundabout in Grimsby on May 29, 2019.
He was given a six-month consecutive jail sentence and banned from driving for 33 months.
David Eager, in mitigation, said: “The main mitigation is the way the defendants have conducted themselves since these matters came to light. They were both interviewed in August 2017 and they were placed on bail. They looked at themselves and were determined to change their conduct and they did so.
“They have got on with their lives knowing they faced a prison sentence.”
He added: “They have worked as landscape gardeners. When coronoavirus came along they had to stop and then they were confined to their homes for three months.”