'Tip of an iceberg'
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TWO HAULAGE contractors — described by a Crown Court judge as the tip of a lorry hijacking iceberg — have been given suspended prison sentences.
And after hearing how the two men had helped hide £39,000 worth of stolen car parts, Judge Myrella Cohen told them she considered their business "highly dubious."
Richard Crossman, of Tantaloon, Birtley, near Gateshead, was sentenced to 12-months in jail suspended for two years after admitting two charges of assisting in the retention of stolen property.
His business partner, Frederick McGregor, of Lime Street, Chester-le-Street, was given a suspended nine-month sentence after pleading guilty to two similar charges. The court heard both men had been running a firm called Gallowgate Transport at the time of the offences.
Police discovered the haul of car parts in a trailer parked inside a lorry park owned by the two men at Birtley. The parts had been stolen from a transport depot near Staines, Middlesex. The original lorry was found abandoned on the Al in North Yorkshire. Both men claimed they had been asked to look after the trailer and towed it into their yard after it had become a magnet for vandals and children.
At the time, claimed their counsel Glen Gatland, the company was in a bad way and the men had strayed over the very thin line of honesty and dishonesty to keep it going.
Judge Cohen •did not agree.