Man stole £55,000 worth of goods from Boots stores in Wales and England in 'staggering' crime spree

A man who stole £55,000 worth of goods from Boots stores in Wales and England in a "staggering" six-month crime spree was caught following a UK-wide police initiative.

Opal, a central policing intelligence service, launched a new specific team to target organised retail crime in 2023.

Their work led to the arrest of Alexandru-Iulian Dima.

Dima, 25, stole from Boots branches in Pontypridd, Haverfordwest and Cardiff Bay - with the value of the thefts totalling several thousand pounds on each occasion.

Opal identified his pattern of offending, which took place in areas covered by different police forces.

South Wales Police then took on the investigation and Dima pleaded guilty to six counts of theft and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Another offender, Brendon Brain, stole more than £33,000 worth of goods including electricals, sunglasses, fragrances and baby products in areas including south Wales.

Opal's intelligence helped locate him and he was arrested by officers from Devon and Cornwall Police force - he was subsequently given a 16-month prison sentence.

Between May and August 2024, Opal's serious organised retail crime group identified 152 "high harm individuals" involved in organised retail crime and affected 23 arrests impacting at least 16 businesses.

Stephanie Coombes, head of intelligence at Opal, said: "Opal has been carrying out this role for other crime types for a number of years and we have seen significant successes from having a national overview of what’s happening in the organised crime world.

"As we’ve seen, organised crime groups may be targeting one retailer using the same tactics across multiple regions and without a national team to bring together that information, we could have several police forces each looking into the same group.

"Our role is vital in centralising intelligence, building strong evidence packages and then working with the relevant force/s to deal with these high harm offenders.

"Our work can be as light touch as putting CCTV images through the Police National Database to identify an individual or as extensive as building a detailed intelligence package of offending across multiple areas and retailers but either way it’s proving extremely effective.

"For far too long these groups have been damaging retailers and communities with thefts reaching hundreds of thousands of pounds and we are now quite literally ensuring they have nowhere to hide."

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