Leeds man jailed after admitting stealing nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs

A Leeds man has been jailed for 18 months after he admitted to having stolen nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs before surrendering to the police.

Joby Pool, 32, used a metal grinder to break into an industrial unit in Telford, Shropshire on February 11, 2023, before making off in a stolen lorry cab with a trailer loaded with almost 200,000 of the chocolate goods worth more than £31,000.

Peel, of Dewsbury Road, Tingley, was jailed at Shrewsbury Crown Court on Thursday July 20 by Judge Anthony Lower for a year and a half, with half of that to be spent in prison and the other half on licence.

Six months of sentence has already been spent in custody and will count towards the nine months behind bars.

The court heard Pool had used a tractor unit which had previously been stolen in Yorkshire in October the previous year to tow away the trailer, itself worth around £23,000, full of the Creme Eggs from an industrial unit that belonged to SW Group Logistics in Stafford Park, Telford. 

He then drove the stolen goods onto the northbound M42, where he later surrendered to police near junction 11 by walking towards the officers “with his hands up”, a court hearing previously heard.

Pool had previously admitted theft, criminal damage to a lock at the trailer park and to driving without insurance. 

Debra White, who defended Pool, said he has shown “genuine remorse” and was sorry for the effect his actions have had on the company involved and on his own family.

She said: “There were two significant losses in his life, then a third loss in terms of his relationship, and a fourth in terms of the loss of his business.

“There were difficult things he was dealing with and he turned to drugs and alcohol as a crutch, which made things much worse for him.

“He has taken full responsibility. He is not self-pitying, he feels remorseful for the company involved and his family because he knows he has let them down.

“He has been away from them for nearly six months now and they have had to try and cope with that.

“The action he took getting involved with this has impacted on so many people and he is genuinely sorry for that, but he has been punished already by the fact he has been in custody for five and a half months.”

Judge Lowe told the court he was not convinced Pool had been the only person involved in planning the heist.

“Whatever the reason as to why you got involved and whether or not you appreciated the seriousness of what you were doing at the time, in my opinion, you got involved in very serious offending”, he said. 

“If one looks at what must have happened here, we are looking at a significant degree of planning.

“There was the taking of a tractor unit that was driven from Castleford down here to carry out the theft. There must have been inside information or a recce to identify the trailer and if it was worth taking.

“An angle grinder was taken and false plates were obtained to put on the trailer. I am pretty sure others would have been involved in this enterprise. I don’t know what you intended to do with the trailer.

“You are not a man of good character as you have committed theft before in 2019.”

Judge Lowe also added one month to be served concurrently in addition to the jail sentence for the criminal damage offence as well as six points to Pool’s driving licence for driving without insurance.