Claudiu Popa, of no fixed address, was jailed for three years and 10 months at Taunton Crown Court on Friday, after admitting conspiracy to commit burglaries. The conspiracy charge related to offences committed in Tickenham, Nailsea, Dyrham, Chilton Polden, Wedmore and Glastonbury between 20 and 28 January this year.
PC Mark Pollock, from the Operation Remedy team, said: “Popa was one of a professional gang of burglars who carried out a series of offences in our force area. They would smash windows at the homes they were targeting and steal silverware, jewellery, and in some cases war medals. The crime group would courier the stolen property out of the country and into mainland Europe. We recovered DNA evidence at some of our burglary scenes and this evidence directly led to the arrest of Claudiu Popa in Scotland, where he was working at a hotel after fleeing Romania”.
“In interview, Popa admitted his involvement in multiple burglary offences and said items found in his car had been stolen from homes within our force area. We are now in the process of working with officers in Romania to obtain photographs of all the recovered items and reunite as many as we can with their rightful owners, but this is going to be a complex and painstaking process”.
The full story can be read at https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/media/32957824/stopcheck-in-romania-leads-to-conviction.pdf |
