[A] “PROFESSIONAL” shoplifting gang member who helped to steal goods valued at almost £4,000 from Carlisle supermarkets has been jailed.
Valerica Dragoi, 21, went to four different city stores with increasing numbers of partners-in-crime on three separate dates.
Dragoi and another male made off with more than £1,100 worth of alcohol from the Warwick Road Tesco on January 20. He returned to the store on January 29 with two others and abandoned a trolley-full of items worth £812.
Later that day he was one of four males to pinch £500 worth of products from a city ASDA outlet after using distraction techniques. And on January 31 he was finally apprehended after alcohol and other household items valued at £1,377 were removed from a Carlisle branch of Sainsbury’s.
Dragoi, of Bridge Street, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to four crimes which, his barrister said, amounted to “a mean-spirited sort of theft, coming to Carlisle to do so”.
Judge James Adkin imposed a 12-month prison term, telling Drago he had become involved with “a gang of professional shoplifters”.
