Power tools were stolen from warehouse to sell on eBay site

A forklift truck driver has been jailed for 2 years after he was caught having stole £40,000 worth of power tool from the warehouse which he worked in. On Tuesday, at Oxford Crown Court, Anthony Hart, of Lodden Avenue, Berinsfield, was sentenced after pleading guilty to three accounts of theft by an employee. Yunus Cevahir, his 30-year-old accomplice, received a 12-month suspended sentence for accepting the stolen tools and selling them over the internet. Jehad Mustafa, who is prosecuting Hart has said, “Hart stole Milwaukee power tools from a warehouse in Purchas Road, near Didcot, belonging to logistics firm Kuehne & Nagel.”

The barrister said that the 44-year-old had used his forklift truck in order to load goods into a waiting car on September 25, September 26 and October 8, 2012. Mr Mustafa said the father-of-five was caught on the warehouse’s CCTV, which was recently installed after his employers first realised that tools had gone missing from the warehouse.

He told Judge Gordon Risius, that when Hart was seen acting suspiciously on the CCTV footage; he hired a private investigator to follow the car he was meeting. It was from this that led them to finding out Cevahir was involved. His role was to take the tools and then sell them on eBay – he pleaded guilty to one account of handling stolen goods.

He added that Hart has 11 previous convictions for 18 offences, but Cevahir did not have a criminal record. Jonathan Coode, Hart defendant, said although his client had been a team leader he had not been in a high position of trust. Before adding that the crimes were partly to cover debts of £35,000 which the forklift truck driver had run up. Judge Gordon Risius gave him to two years in prison, but suspended Cevahir’s sentence, partly because he was suffering from familial Mediterranean fever, a hereditary inflammatory disorder.