Drug addict fuelled habit with stolen petrol

A drug addict who fuelled his £150-a-day cocaine habit with thousands of pounds of stolen petrol has been jailed for one year and two weeks.

Ian Hassell deliberately got jobs that allowed him to fill up a vehicle at a garage and charge the bill to his employer, a judge heard yesterday.

Then the 45-year-old used it to put fuel in the cars and vans of friends who paid cash to him for half the cost which was covered in full by the company charge card.

The crook had been operating the same scam since 2003 and had several previous convictions for the offences, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told. He had also once stolen £10,000 worth of kitchen equipment from a firm he was working for at the time and sold it to pay off a loan shark after falling into debt with a drug dealer.

Hassell, of Naunton Road, Walsall, was given a suspended prison sentence in May of this year after admitting stealing £700 fuel from his bosses at Woodbridge Bags in Willenhall by filling up the vehicles of other people 12 times in a fortnight at garages in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Willenhall.

He was committing carbon copy crimes within two months of receiving that punishment and continued with the racket for a further three months before being arrested again, revealed prosecutor Mr Makkan Shoker.

First he took £75 petrol on the charge card of ABC Removals before buying a further £200 fuel during several visits to the Co-op garage in Bloxwich Road, Walsall during which he failed to honour signed promises to settle the bill.

Finally he used the company fuel card of Trade Magic six times to steal £600 of petrol with 16 other offences involving a further £1,100 of transactions also taken into consideration.

"The method was almost identical in every respect, " explained Mr Shoker. "He managed to find employment with a company where he had use of one of their vehicles and, as part of the employment, was issued with a fuel card.

"Then he used it to obtain fuel which he sold at half price for cash."

Miss Sam Powis, defending, said: "He did this because he could not afford his terrible addiction to cocaine and was not prepared to tell his family of the terrible mess he was in."

She said the married father of two faced losing his family home because the mortgage could not be paid and he had little chance of ever finding work again on his release from jail because of his criminal record.