Gang who stole over 100 cars to use in "chop shop" are sentenced

One of the country's biggest "car chop shops" has been stopped following the sentencing of the gang behind it.

Amaan Zameer, Nadeem Arshad, Zahir Hussain and Mohammed Nadeem conspired together to steal more than a hundred cars from across the West Midlands, with a total value of more than a million pounds.

The group bought wrote-off cars from salvage yards and fixed them up using parts from the stolen cars. The new, potentially unsafe vehicles, would then be sold on to unknowing buyers online.

The four men have been given prison sentences of between four and a half and seven years for their rolls in a car theft operation.

The court heard how the gang handled parts from 117 stolen vehicles across the Midlands and operated in 4 illegal garages in Birmingham.

The police discovered the chop shop after a man from Derby tracked his stolen car all the way to the gang's premises in Sparkhill in Birmingham.

Dash cam footage from West Midlands police showed officers entering the yard, where two of the men attempted to run away.

Detective Inspector Whitehouse said: "For each of those 117 vehicles there's 117 victims.

"Some of those vehicles have been stolen from the street. Some of them have been stolen in burglaries where offenders have entered people's houses and stolen their keys and then stolen their vehicles.

"And other vehicles have been stolen using violence and robberies and car jackings."

Police say that car thefts have doubled in the last 4 years. They believe this rise has been fueled by an increase in chop shops, where a number of cars are targeted simply because they match a write-off that needs fixing up.

West Midlands Police are now calling on the government for tighter regulation around how people buy vehicles from salvage yards.