Two Polish men jailed over duty free theft
09.11.07
Two Polish men who stole 69 bottles of ladies' perfume worth £2,276 from a duty free shop at Durham Tees Valley Airport were jailed for six months yesterday.
Polish farmers Kamil Legan, 23, and Bartlomiej Wilczab, 32, were removed from a bmi flight to Heathrow by suspicious cabin crew, who called police and removed their luggage. The men admitted to the police officers that they had stolen the Chanel perfume from the Alpha Airport Shopping outlet.
As previously reported, the men were returning to their farms near the German border via Berlin and claimed they had stolen the perfume because trying to recoup the £840 cost of a failed business trip to the UK. But a detective noticed that Mr . Wilczab was wearing a jacket with the pockets ripped out, something often used by professional shoplifters.
Graham Silvester, defending, told Teesside Crown Court that the perfume counter was unattended when they stole the massive haul of perfume. He said that the coat was bought at a jumble sale, that the men had cooperated with police, had been in custody for 43 days and had no previous convictions.
However the judge, Recorder Martin Bethel QC, told the men: 'It has been suggested to me that this offence was committed on the spur of the moment. I do not believe that that was the case. You were equipped with a jacket adapted to make it easy to steal, and you took a very large quantity of perfume of a very substantial value. I believe this was planned and deliberate theft.' Legan from Ul Sikouslaepo and Wilczab from Desziznr were each jailed for 6 months.
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