Creme Egg thief jailed for plot to steal 200,000 treats and ruin Easter
A thief who made off with 200,000 Cadbury’s Creme Eggs worth more than £31,000 has been jailed for 18 months.
Joby Pool admitted stealing a trailer of the chocolate from an industrial unit in Telford, Shropshire, in February this year.
The heist was described by police in a series of tweets as an “eggs-travagant theft” of a “chocolate collection box"
READ MORE: Police 'save Easter' after solving mystery of 200,000 stolen Creme Eggs worth £40,000
"West Mercia police has helped save Easter for Creme Egg fans after almost 200,000 of the chocolate treats were stolen from a unit in Stafford Park in Telford,” they said.
Although Pool, 32, was on his own when captured by police, a judge said he was not convinced Pool had acted alone: "If one looks at what must have happened here, we are looking at a significant degree of planning," Judge Anthony Lowe said.
Pool, referred to as the “Easter bunny” by police, used an angle-grinder to break into an industrial unit belonging to SW Group Logistics in Park, Telford, before hauling the chocolate-filled trailer away using a stolen lorry cab.
Prosecutor Owen Beale told Shrewsbury Crown Court that Pool was stopped by police as he was travelling northbound on the M42 in the stolen truck. He walked towards police “with his hands up” near junction 11 on the motorway.
“This clearly wasn’t spur-of-the-moment offending, if I can put it like that, because he had taken with him a tractor unit and he had to know that the load was there in the first place,” Beale said. “This is clearly an organised criminal matter.
“You don’t just happen to learn about a trailer with that kind of value being available.”
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Debra White, the defendant's solicitor, said in mitigation that there had been "no interference with the food products that were taken" and that the Creme Eggs were able to go back on the shelves.
She added that he had shown "genuine remorse" for his crime.
"There were two significant losses in his life, then a third loss in terms of his relationship, and a fourth in terms of the loss of his business," she said.
Pool, from Tingley, near Leeds, was sentenced to 18 months with half to be spent in prison. He has already served six months of his sentence on remand.
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