Organised crime gang who stole more than £130,000 worth of goods from shops across Southern England sentenced

Between January 2022 and Feb 2024, police said the gang targeted shops as far apart as Suffolk, Somerset, Surrey, and Cornwall stealing everything from toilet roll to alcohol, nappies to cleaning products, and selling them on at cut-down rates like their very own criminal supermarket chain.

But their plan of avoiding capture by spreading out their offending far and wide was unravelled when PC Ben Marshall in West Surrey was allocated one shoplifting case from Tesco in Guildford in November 2023.

Here the cocky thieves had brazenly filled seven trollies worth of goods before walking out without paying.

Having found links between this offence and some others with similarities across Surrey and Sussex, PC Marshall noted they often targeted Tesco stores and contacted their national security hub.

With their help, and now with access to information from all their UK stores, he was able to gather evidence which exposed a sprawling web of offences spanning 13 different police force areas.

Working out that the gang would deliberately travel significant distances between offences, PC Marshall was able to methodically gather evidence and plot out every offence he could link to them over a two-year period.

His work eventually led him to identify six thieves, who were all living in Essex.

As the odds of being able to arrest all six at once were not high, PC Marshall instead took a bold step and sent them all an ultimatum – a letter to say they were under investigation for theft in Surrey and offering a two-week window to come in voluntarily or face arrest.

His plan worked and a solicitor representing all six suspects reached out to arrange an interview date.

PC Marshall and two colleagues made the journey to Essex and conducted six back-to-back interviews over the course of one 17-hour-shift hitting them with not just the Surrey offences but all the others he had painstaking linked to them - 86 crimes in total.

Each of the defendants was then charged with conspiracy to commit theft from a shop.

Surrey Police said they are individually thought to have been responsible for the following amounts of stolen goods:

• Tania Patmore – 231 trollies – £116,163
• Jason Raven – 188 trollies – £94,539.20
• Nicola Patmore – 152 trollies – £76,436
• James Mytum – 143 trollies – £71,910.40
• Samantha Drum – 116 trollies – £58,332.80
• Marlie Patmore – 27 trollies – £13,576.80

PC Marshall said: “I am incredibly pleased that these individuals have now been held to account for years of deliberate and targeted offending.

“I knew I had something when I linked the first few similar offences, but I had no idea at the start of this how far and wide this ‘simple’ shoplifting case in Guildford would eventually go.

“These criminals assumed they could hide the breadth of their offending by travelling far and wide across the south of England – but they were wrong.

“Their sentences will have a significant impact on reducing their propensity and their ability to re-offend.”

Hannah Galloway from Tesco Security Hub said: “Thanks to the incredible support from Surrey Police during this investigation, these offenders who were targeting our stores up and down the country are no longer.

“This has made our stores safer for our customers, colleagues and communities in general.”

On Monday, March 31 at Guildford Crown Court, Surrey Police said Nicola Patmore, 50, of Colchester was given a two-year custodial sentence suspended for 18 months.

At an earlier hearing on Tuesday, January 28 at Guildford Crown Court, the other five defendants were sentenced to the following:

• Jason Anthony Raven, 50, of Stanford Le Hope – three years in jail.
• James Mytum, 41, of Colchester – three years in jail.
• Tania Patmore, 52, of Stanford Le Hope – two-year custodial sentence suspended for 18 months.
• Samantha Drum, 30, of East Tilbury – two-year custodial sentence suspended for 18 months.
• Marlie Patmore, 29, of Basildon – 20-month custodial sentence suspended for 12 months.