Members of a high-end vehicle theft ring have been jailed for more than 17 years after a West Midlands Police investigation uncovered their car cutting den.
Akhtar Zamir, Khuram Razaq and Nakash Javaid stole four luxury Audis in the space of five days last year in Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull before mechanic accomplices Thomas Winkett and Wayne Williams stripped them down at an industrial unit.
Using a key-copying device − allowing them to steal security data from on-board computers and program it onto blank keys − they drove off with two Audi RS5s, an A5 and an A4 with a combined value of almost £200,000.
The unit was owned by 23-year-old Javaid and run as a car wash and part-worn tyre business to act as a cover for the crooked enterprise; police search teams found a wall of tyres piled high against the entrance to the cutting workshop.
Three days earlier officers intercepted associates Carlos Hemmings and Adam Leek travelling north on the M6 in a van crammed with body panels taken from a £50,000 RS5 stolen from an address in Clifford Bridge Road, Willenhall, on 30 September.
“It was a sophisticated set-up and the group worked quickly to strip down the stolen cars and move on the parts − in fact body panels recovered from the van on the M6 were from an RS5 stolen in Coventry just 14 hours earlier.”
The group stole an Audi A4 from Daventry Road, Cheylesmore, in the early hours of Serptember 26 last year and three days later drove off in an A5 parked at a house in Melton Drive, Edgbaston.
Later that evening Razaq sent a text message to Zamir saying “fne (phone) me…found a present” refering to an RS5 he’d spotted on a driveway in Clifford Bridge Road, Willenhall, which was stolen in the early hours of September 30.
Also at 1.40am on 1 October CCTV caught members of the gang snatching another RS5 from The Village Hotel in Dog Kennel Lane, Solihull.
