Three members of a gang that sold stolen machinery worth more than £1m from across the North West have been jailed.
Items including diggers and dumper trucks were stolen from sites around the region before being sold around Europe and Australia. The stolen machines cost between £8k and £105k and had a total value of about £1.3m.
In total, 46 plant machines were stolen between 2015 and 2018 before being sold on to the gang, which operated out of an industrial unit in Nelson, Lancashire. Once there, the stolen goods were cloned before being sold on to innocent buyers.
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Those who purchased the machines only realised they were stolen when police later seized the equipment, Lancs Live reports.
Detectives launched an investigation after one victim, who had a digger stolen from him, noticed an identical vehicle was being sold from the unit on the Lomeshaye Industrial Estate in Nelson. Officers visited the site and although the digger had been moved on, they caught two men, Max Wynn and Alex Grice, in the act of cloning another stolen machine.
The stolen digger was later tracked down with another two stolen vehicles in the Clayton-le-Moors area.
Police raided the unit in September 2017 and seized a Kubota digger belonging to an equipment hire company in Blackpool, and a Kubota mini excavator, along with genuine and cloned PINs, grinding equipment, sanding pads, stencils and stamping equipment.
The same day, officers attended another unit in Clayton-le-Moors where they seized three more stolen machines. During the investigation, evidence relating to 41 more machines was uncovered.
Wynn, from Wigan, was the “driving force” behind the sham operation, Preston Crown Court heard. He was the director of the company that bought and sold on the stolen machines and his name was on the lease of the industrial unit where the work was carried out to get rid of any identification numbers on the stolen machines.
He is believed to be connected to the handling and sale of all 46 machines. The money from the sales was then laundered, being transferred to his friends, family and associates.
He also spent some of it on himself and used it to buy further stolen items. Paperwork revealed that he charged all of his customers VAT but never submitted a tax return, instead pocketing the extra money himself.
He initially pleaded not guilty to the counts put to him, but later admitted conspiracy to handle stolen goods, entering a money laundering arrangements and converting criminal property. Wynn, 34, was jailed for eight and a half years.
Alex Grice had a variety of roles in the conspiracy and was a highly-trusted employee of Wynn's. He received a fee or commission for every machine he helped to hide the identity of. He was jailed for five years and eleven months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to handle stolen goods.
Richard Wynn, the older brother of Max Wynn, helped to transport and deliver machines to customers. He sometimes dealt with prospective purchasers and helped facilitate the money laundering part of the operation.
Wynn, of Ravenoak Lane, Burnley, was jailed for eight and a half years after a jury convicted him of conspiracy to handle stolen goods.
In victim impact statements read out in court, two buyers who lost multiples machines, described how they had suffered significant financial losses and anxiety over the loss of their professional reputations.
One said: "I have been trading in the plant/machinery business for over 20 years and my business has been built on trust and goodwill. Immediately on receiving the information from the police I have felt like my good name has been tarnished, and helpless to do anything about it.”
He added that he has been worried about financial difficulties, saying: “I have lost confidence in doing business, worrying how other businesses now view me.”
The men received the following sentences:
PC Neil Goodison, of Lancashire Police, said: “We linked the high-value thefts of plant machinery to Max Wynn, and our investigation then led us to the other six men, and the industrial unit in Nelson. In total we uncovered a conspiracy involving more than a million pounds worth of equipment, which was stolen from innocent victims and – via Max Wynn and his gang – then modified to hide its identification and sold on to further innocent victims.
“The group’s audacity was staggering, with stolen machinery sold on to unsuspecting buyers locally and as far away as Spain, Sweden and even Australia. We welcome these sentences and hope they serve as a warning that we take criminal activity like this very seriously. We will not stand for our rural communities being targeted in this way, leaving innocent people suffering financially and mentally.”
Susan Taylor, Senior Crown Prosecutor for the North West Complex Casework Unit said: “Max Wynn was the driving force behind this million pound criminal organisation and recruited others in order to fund his lavish lifestyle. Even when authorities were on to him, he still thought he was unstoppable and brazenly attempted to offload more machines by shipping them out of the country.
"We worked closely with Lancashire police in this complex case to dismantle Wynn’s criminal empire and to bring him and all those who assisted him to justice. We will now pursue each man to strip them of their ill-gotten gains from these crimes.”
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