Three men aged 31 to 48 have been imprisoned in Chester Crown Court for stealing small amounts of cash from slot machines. The gang was targeting gaming machines in pubs across the country and never thought they would be caught.
But they were spotted on CCTV and eventually arrested. The crime spree was described by the police as quite brazen, but it did not last long – from October 2017 to April 2018, Luke Partington, 35, Ian Parker, 31, and David Gordon, 48, conspired to steal from gaming machines across the country. The three men had apparently devised a plan they believed would keep them from getting caught. Rather than robbing shops or committing some other offence for easy money, they decided to target the gaming machines at pubs in North Wales, Chester, Ellesmere Port, and many other regions across the United Kingdom.
They started on 17 October 2017 when Parker stole £392 at a pub on Heath Road in Chester after breaking a gaming machine open. Just a few hours after that, he visited a pub at Grosvenor Street in Chester and after distracting staff, managed to snap the padlock of another machine and took £215. On 17 January 2018, David Gordon, of Waggon Walk in Birmingham was identified on CCTV while “interfering” with a gaming machine at the Royal Oak pub in Hoole. After two months, on 22 March, he was caught breaking the padlock of another machine at a pub on Northgate Street in Chester.
Parker, of Burton Road in Chester, continued the crime spree with a £50 stolen from Airbus Sports and Social Club in Broughton. In March, he took £700 from a machine at the Woodlands Hotel in Ellesmere Port and another £346 from a hotel in Bebington. The next month, he was at Old Star in Winsford and broke a gaming machine after covering a camera with toilet paper.
There were many more offences at various pubs and in different parts of the country. Eventually, the men’s tactics failed and they were arrested and jailed for their crimes.
Touring the Country for Gaming Machines Cash
The gaming machines turned out to be easy targets for the three men because, in order to open them, they simply had to break the padlocks. Another fact that was in their favour, at least for some time, was picking machines at pubs and smaller venues. Not all of these places had security cameras installed.
They probably believed that since they steal cash from pubs in different parts of the country, they would not be tracked and caught. They broke open machines in Chester, Ellesmere Port and Winsford as well as Birmingham, Merseyside, North Wales and Humberside. The various locations, however, did not make it more difficult for the police, especially with the ample security footage of the thieves.
Their tactics – touring the country, stealing relatively small amounts of cash from small pubs and covering the cameras, did not prove to be effective. On Tuesday, they were sentenced to different jail terms after pleading guilty to one or more accounts of theft and conspiracy to steal. Luke Partington was jailed for 12 months, Gordon received 9 months in prison, while Parker was sentenced to 19 months in prison.
- Author
Daniel Williams
