Gang stole £25k worth of goods after cutting through wall of Argos in Wales

A gang stole £25,000 worth of goods from an Argos store in Swansea after cutting through the warehouse wall.

The six men travelled from the West Midlands to steal a haul of phones, games consoles, laptops and watches from the Pontardawe store and were caught fleeing across the border following a police chase.

Swansea Crown Court heard that just days earlier, members of the gang had carried out a similar raid on an Argos store in South Yorkshire, taking over £50,000 worth of electrical items.

Jaguar Voicu, Daniel Ungureanu, Florin Tanase, Florin Cosma, Stefan Samson, and Paul Stanchu have all been jailed for their part in the commercial burglaries.The burglary of the South Yorkshire store had taken plan in the early hours of 4 March this year, the court heard, where a hole was cut in the metal wall of the warehouse.

More than £51,000 worth of high-value electrical goods were taken in the raid.  The court heard that a VW Passat car was picked up by automatic number plate recognition cameras travelling to and from the location.The same VW then travelled to Wales on 5 March, along with a Mercedes. Megan Jones, prosecuting, said that the alarm in the Pontardawe Argos went off just after 6am.

When security staff and the key holder arrived, they found a hole had been cut in a fence at the rear of the shop, with another hole cut in the wall of the warehouse area.

More than £25,000 worth of electrical items were missing, including 21 laptop computers, 15 tablet devices, and 45 phones along with a number of watches and PlayStation games consoles.

Both vehicles were detected later that morning in the Gwent Police area and were stopped after a police pursuit and the use of a "stinger" device to puncture the tires.

The occupants of the VW were chased and caught after they ran off. In the Passat, police found a significant number of items stolen in the Pontardawe raid along with a sledgehammer, crowbar, screwdrivers, gloves and a balaclava.

While the items stolen from the Pontardawe Argos were recovered, the whereabouts of the items stolen from the Rotherham store remains unknown, the court heard.Paul Stanchu, 52, of Waterloo Street, Hillfield, Coventry; Stefan Samson, aged 27, of Trafalgar Road, Smethwick, West Midlands; Florin Cosma, aged 38, of Phillimore Road, Saltley, Birmingham; and 37-year-old Daniel Ungureanu, of no fixed abode, had all previously pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary when they appeared in the dock for sentencing.

Florin Tanase, aged 39, of Bordsley Green Easy, Bordsley Green, Birmingham; and 27-year-old Jaguar Voicu, of Woodvale Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, had both previously pleaded guilty to one count of burglary - the Pontardawe burglary - when they appeared in the dock alongside their co-defendants.Stanchu has 11 previous convictions for 27 offences; Samson has one previous conviction for two offences of burglary and theft; Cosma has no previous convictions; Ungureanu has nine previous convictions for 12 offences; Tanase has one previous conviction for an offence of shoplifting; Voicu has no previous convictions.With discounts for their guilty pleas Stanchu was sentenced to 32 months in prison, Samson to 32 months, Cosma to 26 months, Ungureanu to 21 months, Tanase to 21-and-a-half months, and Voicu to 16-and-half months.

The defendants will each serve up to half those sentences in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.

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