Pair followed antique sellers home to steal £300,000 of collections

TWO men spent 15 years following antique dealers to their homes to steal more than £300,000 of prized jewellery collections.

Alan Skavydis, 56, and Paul Stephenson, 58, would watch traders at historic houses and hotels, and travelled to a fair in Cardiff, to see what they were selling.

They would then follow the dealers home, often driving hundreds of miles, to raid their homes.

Their crimes took place in 13 different police force areas and cost victims combined losses of more than £300,000.

After 15 years of raids they were finally caught after going to the toilet outside one of their victims’ houses.

Police analysed the soiled toilet paper left behind for DNA to identify the pair and linked it to the other burglaries.

Prosecutor Michael Hammett told Cardiff Crown Court: “These men have committed a series of planned, professional burglaries across the United Kingdom, deliberately targeting traders of antique jewellery.

“The victims were identified at antique fairs and then followed significant distances back to their home addresses, where burglaries took place some days later.”

The court heard the pair attended fairs at venues including the Copthorne Hotel in Cardiff along with places in London, Carlisle, Essex, Hampshire and Surrey to locate their victims.

Mr Hammett said: “Police later located a quantity of soiled toilet paper in the garden. This yielded DNA hits on both defendants.”

Officers then used numberplate recognition technology and CCTV to identify Skavydis and Stephenson at several of the antique fairs.

The court heard their victims valued losses at hundreds of thousands of pounds but the two men argued the value was much less.

Skavydis, of Romford, East London, and Stephenson, of Dagenham, Essex, admitted eight burglaries between 2001 and 2016.

They were each jailed for six-and-ahalf years by Judge Jeremy Jenkins.

Speaking after the sentence, Millie Davies from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “These men were calculated and professional in the way they chose their victims, sometimes following them across the UK.

“The prosecution showed evidence which proved that for many years Skavydis and Stephenson had been plotting to steal valuable antiques from collectors and their actions were linked to several burglaries.

“ANPR evidence played an important part in the case presented by the CPS to identify how the defendants had followed their victims home and gave them little choice but to enter guilty pleas.”

Detective Inspector Paul Raikes added: “Burglary is a traumatic experience for anyone, but knowing you have been targeted and followed home must have been particularly disturbing for the victims in this case.

“The officer in the case Detective Constable Ann Jones put in a significant amount of hard work and dedication in order to help ensure Skavydis and Stephenson were finally brought to justice.”