Two men from Romania have been jailed after they admitted to a burglary in which they stole copper wire from a Wrexham scrap dealer.
Lionica Ganescu, 37, and Iohut Predusca ,24, from Romania but living in Birmingham, were part of a gang of five “professional thieves” who had travelled to North Wales as they viewed scrap dealers in the area as easy targets.
Paulinus Barnes, prosecuting, told Mold Crown Court how officers had received a call about suspicious activity in the early hours of March 26. They found a Transit van parked around the corner from Haywards scrap yard and the two defendents were in the back pretending to be asleep.
There was stolen copper wire in the vehicle, which staff at the scrap yard identified as belonging to them.
The court heard the premises had been targeted at least five times previously and bosses had been forced to splash out £15,000 on a new CCTV system which could be monitored from a mobile phone.
Haywards managing director Cari Hayward told the Daily Post newspaper: “The thefts started in December 2011 and they just kept happening. I would set my alarm to go off every hour through the night, so I could check the CCTV cameras on my phone.
“It started to take over my life and I was so paranoid about it happening again that I couldn’t do things I normally enjoyed.”
She added that with other thefts separate to this one, the company had lost £20,000 in total.
The two defendants were jailed for 12 months.
