Thief Jailed for Stealing Printer Inks

Between the two trips, the 25-year-old made off with goods, mainly printer ink, five times until he was eventually caught and arrested.

Costea appeared in custody at North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court, where he pleaded guilty to five counts of shop theft. He first travelled from his home on January 4 this year and targeted the Tesco stores on Towers Place, in South Shields, Norham Road, in North Shields, and Trinity Square, in Gateshead.

From the South Shields branch, he made off with £1,594 worth of spirits, printer ink and clothing, from North Shields he took £3,534 of printer ink and from Gateshead he stole £1,593 of printer ink.

Mr Lawson said Costea successfully fled back to Coventry without being detained but returned three weeks later on January 25. This time, he stole £1,681.95 worth of printer ink from the Tesco, in North Shields, and £97.85 worth of printer ink from the South Shields store. Costea was caught in the act and was arrested.

In total, the goods were worth £8,500.80 (US$11,712). In jailing Costea for 26 weeks, District Judge Paul Currer said the thefts were “planned” and “part of a group action”. Costea was also ordered to pay a £128 victim surcharge.

In recent years there have been a number of cases around the world involving theft of cartridges, including:

• a former public library employee in Austin, Texas, fraudulently bought US$1.5 million in printer toner, stole at least US$1.3 million worth and then sold it online.
• NHS administrator, Madeleine Webster, 47, from Liverpool, UK, spent years defrauding her own department by ordering £160,000 of printer cartridges with public money before selling them on eBay.
• Australian police say a 35-year old thief stole about 23,000 toner cartridges over six years with a total retail value of about $ 2.4 million. They found 313 stolen toner cartridges in his home;
• 21 US crooks swindled 50,000 people, selling them toner for 10 times the regular price;
• James Worrall, a night time shelf-stacker in a UK supermarket, stole ink cartridges every week for 4 years;
• Simon Hall, in northeastern England, told police God gave him the stolen ink so he could change the color of the River Skerne;
• Police caught 3 Chinese, red-handed, selling counterfeit ink and toner cartridges worth 9.5 million US dollars in the Emirates;
• two former Cartridge World store owners stole a million dollars-worth of cartridge supplies from their Dallas based customer, only to resell them back to the same customer again;
• Police apprehended four youths in possession of a 9mm pistol and drug equipment after they tried to steal printers and cartridges from a Walmart store in Chicago, injuring a store employee;
• Joshua Hubbard, who stole 11 printers from railroad freight containers in Utah and got caught selling them online.