A GANG of four Romanians have been jailed for their part in a �700,000 conspiracy to steal from railway ticket machines. The gang was responsible for a spate of thefts and damage to ticket machines at railway stations – including Harpenden on September
A GANG of four Romanians have been jailed for their part in a �700,000 conspiracy to steal from railway ticket machines.
The gang was responsible for a spate of thefts and damage to ticket machines at railway stations - including Harpenden on September 1 last year - over a two-month period.
As a consequence of the thefts, which occurred across south London and the southern and northern homes counties, British Transport Police set up a dedicated squad of detectives to trace the culprits.
Plain clothes officers had a breakthrough in the early hours of September 10 after ticket machines had been broken into at Christ's Hospital and Arundel Stations in West Sussex
Within an hour of the break-ins, officer tracked the quartet after they were spotted in a car parked outside Ifield railway station.
Romanian nationals Adrian Timis, aged 22, Damian Pop, 23, Jonut Jepu, 20, and Nan Vasile, 18, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and were sentenced to a total of eight years and four months imprisonment
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