Thieves who stole seven cars from a Dundee garage in a single break-in were jailed at the city’s sheriff court yesterday.
John McGrandle, Stewart Burns and Damien Forbes broke into Ancrum Autos on Charleston Drive and stole Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Nissan cars.
The trio made off with the vehicles –with accomplice Kevin Chaplin taking away one of the stolen cars – and dumped keys for a further 20 cars in a nearby park.
Depute fiscal Charmaine Gilmartin told Dundee Sheriff Court DNA from the men was found inside the cars and on the keys that were recovered.
In total the cars were valued at £40,000.
A week later McGrandle and Burns broke-in to the Size? clothing shop on Dundee High Street, making off with £3,150 of designer goods before stealing computer items from C&K Communications in St Andrews later that day.
Miss Gilmartin said the car dealership was locked at 4.30pm on Sunday December 11 and keys for the cars were locked in the safe inside the office.
The owner arrived shortly after 8am the next day to find the metal shutter at the front of the office and the lock on the door had been forced.
The safe that contained the car keys was missing, as were the seven cars.
Mrs Gilmartin added: “The owner found that the alarm wire had been pulled from the box and two CCTV cameras had been moved and were now pointing to the roof.
“Police investigated and 20 car keys were recovered from the park next to the garage.”
She said seven sets of key along with the seven keys for the vehicles that had been stolen were still outstanding, and over the next few days six of the cars were recovered from various car parks, all of them undamaged.
She said cell site analysis put the accused’s mobile telephones near the location of the offence at the time.
The accused were also found with the car keys at their home addresses, while footprints matching their footwear were found at the scene beside abandoned cars and DNA from inside the vehicles and on cars keys matched the accused.
McGrandle, 25 and Burns, 33, both of HMP Perth, pled guilty on indictment to charges of theft by housebreaking.
Chaplin, 31, also of HMP Perth, admitted a charge of reset over the garage break-in.
Forbes, 31, of Dunholm Road, Dundee, pled guilty to charges of theft and theft by housebreaking – the second over a raid on a business in Dundee’s Strathmartine Road on January 3.
Sheriff Alastair Brown jailed McGrandle and Burns for 33 months each, jailed Chaplin for nine months and Forbes for three years.
The sheriff said: “Your criminal records are all deplorable.”
