Gang member jailed for £500k mobile burglaries from warehouses

An Eccles man who worked as part of an organised crime gang helped to steal £500,000 worth of mobile phones from commercial warehouse. Dylan Azzopardi from Eccles was involved in a series of high-value burglaries across the north of England.

Today (Friday) the 29-year-old was told he will spend three years and nine months behind bars for his part in the crimes. Azzopardi had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary.

Earlier this year, Adam Brown, 39, Lee Seddon, 46, Scott Walker, 43, and Robert Pinkney, 41, were jailed for a combined 13 years and six months for their involvement. Greater Manchester Police said that between November 2022 and January 2023, £500,000 worth of mobile phones were stolen from commercial premises across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire, and West Yorkshire.

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Driving stolen cars with cloned plates, the gang forced entry to warehouses armed with crowbars and sledgehammers. Once inside, they would ransack the storerooms and bundle thousands of phones into bags, police said.

Experienced and organised, the gang took measures to avoid being caught by police. However, they were put under a period of surveillance and in January 2023 GMP detectives, supported by the Tactical Vehicle Intercept Unit (TVIU) interrupted Brown, Seddon and Walker in the middle of committing a burglary in Castleford, West Yorkshire.

Officers armed with tasers were waiting at the premises, and after hearing the men inside, police stormed the building before detaining and arresting them. In the days that followed, officers executed a number of warrants which resulted in the arrests of Pinkney and Azzopardi.

Following the