Key-switch thief took vehicles worth £115,000

A thief who stole vehicles worth more than £110,000 from Staffordshire has been jailed for four years.

Lee Guest went into dealerships on the pretext of placing an order but used a key switch trick to get away with the vehicles.

The 42-year-old took an £80,000 lorry from Lichfield and a £35,000 van from Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford Crown Court was told yesterday.

Mr Paul Farrow, prosecuting, said a Renault lorry went missing from Allport Truck Centre in Lichfield in December 2009 after Guest had been there asking to measure the vehicle before placing an order.

The following month, police followed the stolen lorry to a cafe on the A5 near Stafford and arrested Guest who gave a false name. While on bail he absconded and went on the run.

Then last November he used the same key-switch ruse to steal a brand new Mercedes van from Enza Motors in Stoke-on-Trent.

He took it for a test drive and swapped the keys.

The stolen van was cloned with the registration number of a similar vehicle belonging to Midlands Truck & Van in Willenhall. When the company began receiving speeding tickets and notices of reckless driving not involving their drivers, their van was taken off the road.

In February this year, one of the company's employees saw their registration number on a van in Heath Hayes and alerted the police, who stopped it on the A5.

Guest was driving it and he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to two charges of theft and a breach of bail at court.

The court heard that Guest, of Fledburgh Drive, Sutton Coldfield, had committed 69 previous offences, many of them for dishonesty.

Miss Elizabeth Power, defending, said Guest now had some serious health problems but was an "articulate and intelligent man, who has fallen by the wayside".