Episode 5 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our cars, our valuables,

just about anything they can get their hands on.

To cut down on crime and antisocial behaviour,

police and other agencies are using new technology

and tactics where the bad guys are actually getting caught in the act.

I can see the man actually commit the robbery. Lovely! Thank you very much.

Local councils, shops and businesses are laying some traps of their own.

Why should we feel frightened for the rest of our lives?

And the general public, too, can help unsuspecting crooks

get their comeuppance.

No way are you getting away!

We did it for everyone else, as well, that she might be stealing from.

We will name and shame you.

So, anyone who's up to no good had better think twice.

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today...

a tale of missing mail and stolen identity.

Well, I was quite stunned, really, cos we live in a place where

nobody passes.

Steve hatches a plan to catch the culprit.

And it leads to the arrest of one of Britain's most notorious fraudsters.

Also today, performance artists? No.

Shoplifters who put on a show to cover their crime.

She says, "Come feel how cold it is." She puts her hand on my cheek there.

As soon as she did that, my guard went down.

But the cameras are rolling. This performance is on TV.

And the disappearing motorcycle that kick-starts a campaign

to catch bike thieves.

Hemyock in Devon...

situated in the Blackdown Hills,

it's an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,

and not the sort of place where you'd expect to find a crimewave.

But this tiny hamlet has been a key location in a large-scale scam.

Over the years that I've been on CID,

this is definitely the biggest fraud I've dealt with.

Local residents, like Steve, try to live like the TV show,

The Good Life.

When something bad comes along, they can be just as self-sufficient.

I just thought, "I got the bugger!"

That was...that's all I thought.

At first, Steve, a roofer by trade,

doesn't know the scale of the crime he's dealing with, but, eventually,

his hard work will uncover a sophisticated credit card fraud.

DUCKS QUACK

Steve lives just outside Hemyock Village with his wife and family.

It's just a rural little hamlet with half a dozen houses,

and we all know each other, so...

yeah, anything different we would know of something.

Being off the beaten track a bit,

there aren't many who come through this way.

The only daily visitor is the postman.

One day I received my mail

and I had this letter from a credit card company.

"Your balance is £6,119.95."

I looked and it was my name, my address and my postcode!

I thought, "Well, I know it's not me."

And I was going to just throw it in the bin,

probably like a lot of other people would have done,

but my wife and some friends said that you ought to just ring

the company anyway and tell them that it's not you and see what they say.

Fortunately, Steve does make that call

and the credit card company tells him some very disturbing news.

It looks like some of his post is most likely being stolen.

I was quite stunned, really, cos we live in a place where nobody passes.

It's only the mailman...you know, obviously.

Like many other houses in rural areas,

Steve's postbox isn't in the front door of his house.

I put the mailbox there cos I thought it would be quite

easy for the postman.

He doesn't have to get out of his van, he just pokes it straight

through in the flap here and then I just collect it from the back, like.

The problem is someone else could easily collect it too.

Not only can someone steal your mail -

it turns out, they can steal your entire identity.

Stealing post from somebody's postbox, that's just the beginning.

All that was, really, was to get the initial information,

to get the person's details cos then once he's got those details,

he can go online and he can find out everything

he needs to know about those people - their dates of birth,

their children's names...and by doing so, you can actually

gather a lot of information when you go to apply for the credit cards.

And if the credit card company only has information about you,

then it's you they'll track down to get their money back.

It's stressful.

My wife worried probably more than I did, and trying to

get your credit rating back, as well, is another task in itself.

The fallout from having a low credit rating can bring misery

if you need any sort of loan, and it can take many months

of battling the system to get it back to where it should be.

Credit card fraud is slightly regarded as a victimless crime

because it's the credit card company at the end of the day,

they're the ones that are out of pocket,

but it's not a victimless crime.

It's very, very much a crime that affects people

and affects them quite badly.

Steve is incensed by what's happened, so he starts his own

investigation to find the identity of his identity thief.

To try and eliminate who it could be, whether it was the postman or

whether it was just somebody coming to my house, I thought,

"One of the first things I'll do is

"I'll put a little stone on the side of my gate." So that,

if somebody comes in the gate, the stone will have obviously moved.

All that week, the stone was getting moved,

so I knew immediately then that it was nothing to do with the mailman.

At that time, Steve and his wife were working away

from home on weekdays, so, he enlisted the help of a neighbour.

I said, "Do you think there's any chance that

"you could just have a look tomorrow after the mailman comes?

"Just see if anybody does come."

And sure enough, he gives me a call on my mobile

to say that a black vehicle

has been down through and had stopped,

but he couldn't really see the plate or nothing and he had a baldish head.

That's all the description he gave me, but it was something.

Now, they know to keep an eye out for a similar car.

I was working down in the orchard with me dad

and my wife was out the front here,

and a black four-by-four came down and he was on the mobile phone

while he was driving, but we don't get no mobile phone signal here,

so it sort of...it did make us really suspicious.

My wife, obviously, took the plate number

and that's how we first knew then...

We didn't know who we had, but that was the first signs of, you know,

that we did get the right person we thought was doing something.

Steve informs the police about what he's found out so far,

but from their point of view, there's not enough yet to go on.

I'm not sure up until that point that Mr Broomfield had

actually seen the person go to his postbox,

he just knew that somebody was coming cos he was suspicious,

so for us that would have been really difficult

cos there's not a lot to go on.

Spurred on to gather more evidence, Steve comes up with another plan.

I went to the local store and bought a little CCTV camera.

Not a very big one, just a very small basic one, really.

Um, the first couple of places I put it,

I tried putting it back here in the hedge

so I could sort of see who it was coming down the road,

but unfortunately, this thing's only got, like, a 5m range on it,

which wasn't... It was too far away.

Another place I put it was...I took the end cap of my gutter off and

I sat the camera inside the gutter, just looking out around the corner.

It may look small, but that little camera can show Steve

and the police a bigger picture of what's going on.

Later, police put a name to the man who's been stealing names.

It's a fishy business and they've landed a very big fish.

A picture tells a thousand words, but the picture of a criminal

caught on camera tells a thousand people who to look out for.

This is the car park of an office building in Farringdon, London.

If you look at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen,

a motorbike has been parked.

The bike doesn't belong to any of these three men,

but they're very keen to take it away.

This is Ken, the bike's owner,

and he's very proud of his brand-new Triumph superbike.

It's worth £12,000 and he's normally careful where he leaves it,

but today he's only popped into his office for five minutes.

A man on a push-bike arrives.

After a quick scout around, he heads off.

But four minutes later,

he comes back and goes into the door of the office building.

He's making sure Ken doesn't suddenly appear...

..because outside, his accomplice turns up on a moped.

He shakes the bike to see if it's alarmed.

It's not.

Now, the third man cycles up.

His speciality is breaking steering locks.

Job done. Now, number two comes back without his moped.

He seems to be having some trouble with the ignition.

Eventually, they hot-wire it

and make off with Ken's £12,000 superbike.

The lookout makes his exit too, though not before struggling

with the door, the only tense moment in this whole operation.

Ken never got his bike back,

but he put these CCTV pictures on the internet and gave them

to the police, and later one of the thieves admitted guilt.

But Ken's gone further and set up a website so motorcycle theft victims

can share their experiences and point out the bad guys in the area.

He wants to make sure that the new superbike that he's bought

with the insurance money stays more secure than the last one.

Career criminals can rob you in a matter of seconds,

so make sure everything is secured every time.

Even if you're just popping into the office or popping to the shops,

go through all your safety measures.

Make sure your car or your bike is secured every time.

Coming up on Caught Red Handed,

one of these customers is a shoplifter, but which one?

You do have to try and work out who are the genuine ones,

who are the crafty ones.

But spotting those crafty ones is easier with an extra set of eyes.

Back in Hemyock, Devon...

Steve, a local roofer, is trying to discover who it is that's

stolen his identity and used it to spend £6,000 on a credit card.

He's found that a man raids his mailbox shortly after

the post has been delivered.

He used to come back for any statements cos

if you had no statement, you had no idea a card was out in your name.

Steve has set up a small CCTV camera.

I sat the camera inside the gutter just looking out around the corner.

Hopefully, to catch the thief in the act.

All that week, I used to come home like a little boy going to

a sweet tin, really, going up to see what I caught on

my, um...you know, film.

Steve's camera triggers to record when it senses movement

and only records in four-second bursts,

but it manages to capture a fraudster at work.

A car parks up right outside Steve's house.

The man casually walks to the gate and, without hesitating,

enters Steve's property.

He's checking the postbox for any correspondence from

a credit card company or bank, then he beats a hasty retreat.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it the first time.

There you see him just going to the mailbox,

but there was nothing in there that day.

This is day two.

He came down the road.

Once again, goes into the mailbox.

This day I've got some mail.

The thief seems to visit every day,

so, Steve experiments with some different camera angles.

The mailman always used to be about 11 o'clock.

By ten past, he'd be behind him.

He was so abrasive, I just couldn't believe it.

This was the last day he came to my house.

He's making out he's dropping off some mail.

I had the camera on the top of the dish

and I was pretty sure that that was the day that he actually saw

the camera and I thought that would be the end of it.

Steve now has proof of the man's face,

his number plate and what he's up to.

I thought, "I've got the bugger!"

That's all I thought.

I just...I still didn't know the bloke, no idea who he was,

you know, never seen him before, so, I just thought,

"I got him," and that's...that was it, really.

He gives the footage to the police

and it lands on the desk of Detective Constable Allison Berry.

When the case first came in, it came in as theft from a postbox.

So, initially, it didn't appear to be anything terribly serious,

but then when I saw the CCTV, I then obtained

the details of the person's car, did a check and got the name.

Allison makes a quick search of that name on the internet.

It came up with a press release.

I think the title of the press release was Casanova Conman.

The man's name is Kevin Castle, who's well known both to the police

and to the British press.

He's a career criminal with a long history of scams that have

netted him hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years.

In 2008, he had been caught and sent to prison for...I think there

were 11 counts of deception and 76 offences taken into account.

On that occasion, he had been arrested for a major

shoplifting scam as well as stealing from unfortunate lady friends.

At that time, he was living quite a luxury lifestyle -

an apartment in Knightsbridge, shopping in Harrods,

his cars were all BMWs, Porsches, and obviously,

that was all funded by his criminality.

Most of his crimes had occurred in the Nottinghamshire area.

Since leaving prison two years before, he's worked out a new

method of stealing money - plundering rural postboxes in Devon.

What he hadn't banked on was the detective work of

local roofer, Steve.

I followed him for days just working out where he went to

and I pinpointed two or three other letter boxes that

I was pretty sure that he would be doing.

The red line is Kevin Castle's address

and the blue are the victims, so you can see they've quite close

proximity to where his actual house was.

Allison and a search team pay a visit to Kevin Castle's house.

It's quite a big long driveway down to this large house

and Mr Castle, at that moment in time,

was in the field with his horses

and he was easily identifiable as being the person from the CCTV.

The conman is arrested and after an extensive search,

police find a tin full of credit cards,

statements and ledgers buried deep in a large hedge.

A bank statement in somebody else's name in a tin buried in

Mr Castle's garden - it was like the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle.

It just sort of... Cream on the cake!

In court, Kevin Castle was found guilty on 28 charges

of fraud and theft.

He was sentenced to four years in prison.

It was very rewarding when we got the conviction that we got.

It was very rewarding

and it was nice to be able to ring the victims and say,

"This is what's happened."

A lot of thanks is also due to Mr Broomfield, we can't forget

about him cos he played a big part in the beginning, so he did.

After a long year of battling the paperwork...

As you can see, statements upon statements...

..getting his credit card rating back up...

Back to 997 now.

-..and moving his postbox.

-Which I've put in my new white door.

Life is back to normal for Steve, although he was called out

one evening in honour of helping to put away one of Britain's most

notorious conmen.

I was awarded the High Sheriff of Devon Award.

It's nice to have...you know,

to think that somebody else has actually thought that you have

done something well worth, you know, doing, and at personal risk.

So, how do we protect ourselves from identity thieves?

You wouldn't leave your laptop outside for someone to take,

so don't do it with your personal details either.

Make sure, if you've got an outdoor letter box, you secure it

and keep it locked so people can't steal your mail

and valuable personal information.

Make sure any documents

and papers you wish to put in the bin are really well shredded.

If you find someone has stolen your identity or stolen a

credit card or opened an account in your name, don't just inform

your bank, make sure you report it to the police or Action Fraud.

People who want to steal from us can be both calculating and cunning.

They might dress smartly or act friendly

so that we don't suspect them.

They might even put on an act to distract us from their real purpose.

This man in South London seems to be in the middle of

a very important conversation,

talking loudly into his phone.

It's a ploy to buy him time

because he's not here to buy anything else, he's here to steal.

He stops by a confectionary section.

Making use of the distraction caused by another customer, he swiftly

stuffs four boxes of chocolates into his large white plastic bag.

And then, why not? Another one!

Deep in loud conversation, he still manages to escape suspicion

and takes two more boxes.

A member of staff appears. This could make things trickier.

But the thief with a sweet tooth is clearly a sweet talker too.

He pretends to be asking for directions...

presumably to where the next chocolate stockist is.

It seems to work and allows him even more time,

so, he goes back to his favourite section.

Two more boxes are grabbed,

but this time he has to take evasive action

because of a paying customer and then takes advantage of that

customer paying to nab two more boxes.

Stealing 11 boxes of chocolate is obviously thirsty work

because he snatches a nice bottle of wine as well!

And, still nattering away to nobody, he leaves.

The chocoholic shoplifter hasn't been caught yet,

but, if he goes through that lot,

he might turn up at a diet club or the dentists for a few fillings.

-Thank you.

-You're welcome.

In a busy shop, it's impossible to keep on checking

the security cameras for shoplifters.

'At times, shopkeepers need to rely on old-fashioned gut instinct.'

How a thief behaves in the first few seconds of walking in,

can often give them away, but if they're good actors,

first impressions can be deceptive.

In Cambridge, this convenience store enjoys a busy trade as workers

pick up groceries on their way home.

A woman with a pushchair comes in.

She happily chats with the assistant,

showing him how cold it is outside.

Everything looks normal.

But this woman will walk out of the store without

paying for £80 worth of goods.

That's a lot of money for a small shop to lose.

The young shop assistant is about to be treated to

a masterclass in shoplifting, a lesson he'll never forget.

This shop has been run by Iftikhar and his family for nearly ten years.

It's good to be a shopkeeper, it's good fun...

and sometimes not.

His son, Moghees, started helping out when he was 13 years old.

After school or at the weekend, I used to come in to give Dad

a hand, basically, like, help him for an hour or two.

It's been good for me to see how he works at picking out the people,

cos lots of people say it's going to be mine one day.

The shop has changed over the years.

Iftikhar has expanded it in stages to keep profit margins up.

There's one group of customers who've always been around -

the shoplifters.

The past ten years, it's on the increase.

It's not, you know, declined, it's more and more.

So, most of the times, customers are actually very good,

but you do have to try and work out who are the genuine ones,

who are the crafty ones.

And there's a lot at stake if they don't stop those crafty ones.

I lose about 5-6% of my yearly sale to shoplifting

and I'm touching roughly half a million.

5% of half a million turnover is a massive £25,000 a year,

and that sort of sum can really damage a small business.

When this lady with a pushchair enters the store,

Moghees is working alone on a winter's evening.

She's been here numerous times before, and my dad said to me

that you've got to be a bit careful with her sometimes

because she had the tendency to be a bit too friendly,

but I thought maybe my dad was overreacting a little bit.

-The woman calls Moghees over.

-She says, "Come here. Come here.

"Come feel my hand, feel how cold it is."

And then I walk over, around the counter towards her, she puts

her hand on my cheek there and I agree, "Yeah, that's really cold."

As soon as she did that, she gained my trust

and when she did that, like, my guard went down.

The friendly mum sets off for a mooch around the aisles.

While Moghees serves another customer,

she's actually stuffing as much as she can into her bags.

When someone is a mother, it does make you think that she's

a very caring person and automatically someone you can trust.

Satisfied with her haul, she heads towards Moghees.

She comes back to me and then she says,

"Oh, can you give me a box so I can do my shopping in it?"

This light-fingered lady sets off once more round the aisles

with a box.

At the moment, she putting on a bit of a show, basically.

She's making it look like, "OK, I've done my browsing now.

"Now I'm ready to start purchasing."

With the box full, she returns to Moghees at the counter.

First she asked me, "I need to top up my gas and my electric."

So, she gave me her gas card, she gave me

her key for her electricity and then I topped it up

and then it totalled to £35 and I gave it back to her with

the receipts and then she realised...

"She realised!" that she didn't have any cash on her.

But it's OK, a solution is found.

She's going to pop to the cashpoint

and come back in five minutes to pay for her shopping in the box.

As soon as she walked out and left the shop,

I just realised at that moment there that

she's not coming back, basically,

and then I realised that everything that my dad talked about her

being too friendly, I just remembered everything

and I just felt really bad about that.

Moghees breaks the news to his father.

When he told me that she did top up for, you know,

gas and electric, £35, and she didn't come back, I said,

"It's not £35, it's a lot more." We checked the video and I said,

"Moghees, you see what happened?"

£35 with top up, plus £60 other stuff.

That made me feel even worse and even more upset.

She set a trap for me, basically,

and I just fell for it, just like that.

But they had a trap of their own -

the CCTV cameras, and they hand the evidence over to the police.

When the shoplifter is eventually arrested for another offence,

she is matched to this one too.

In court, she pleads guilty, which is taken into account.

She's given a community order for 20 days of unpaid work,

a 12-month supervision order and has to pay £65 compensation.

It's been a tough lesson learned for Moghees,

but one that may help to prevent any more thefts.

The best thing for me to do is just to move on from it

and learn that, you know,

just how to deal with people like that again in the future,

because there are, unfortunately,

there are people like that and then you can't avoid it,

but the best thing that you can do is just to face it and then,

when you do face it, don't make the same mistakes again,

just do it and...you know, stand...stay strong, basically.

Iftikhar has also now strengthened his security with a larger

array of the latest cameras.

As soon as something's happened, we can access it on the computer.

And a new gadget on the door.

If ever a customer has done anything crafty like that, we just

lock the door and they can't leave and we can keep them there.

Once they retrieve their stolen items,

they then ban the shoplifter from coming back.

I'd rather, you know, let them go.

Not waste my time, not waste police time, you know.

'Hopefully, in the future,

'their goods will stay in and the bad customers will stay out.'

Join us next time when more crooks

and con artists get caught red-handed.