Trio jailed for 'carefully co-ordinated operation' to steal dozens of cars

A MAN suffered a heart attack after falling victim to a million-pound car theft gang.

- BY ADAM EVERETT

Curtis Morrison, Sean Fagan and Daniel Johnston conspired to steal a staggering 82 cars over a six-month period before having the “high value” vehicles sold off for parts after they were dismantled at “chop shops” across Merseyside.

The latter was linked to the scheme after leaving a bag full of car keys and cannabis at a caravan park’s coffee shop amid a spree of thefts in North Wales.

His accomplices were, meanwhile, rumbled following two separate car crashes with one, a taxi driver turned drug dealer, being found “sweating and out of breath” after he unsuccessfully attempted to run from the scene of the crime.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that the three defendants were “part of a gang of professional car thieves” who were “responsible for stealing high value keyless motor cars from residential addresses” between April and October 2022.

This saw a total of 82 vehicles, valued at £1.4million, from the driveways of homes “mainly in Liverpool”, as well as in Southport, St Helens, Widnes and the Wirral area.

Tom Challinor, prosecuting, described their criminality as “a case of stealing goods to order” using automatic key programmers, devices used legitimately by locksmiths which had “fallen into the hands of the defendants”.

Having forced the doors of the cars and gained access to their onboard computers, these gadgets would enable the offenders to programme blank keys to become compatible with the vehicles in question.

This allowed them to simply drive away with the stolen goods without having to get their hands on the real keys.

Mr Challinor added: “In many cases, the vehicles ended up in chop shops where a mechanic would strip the vehicles down for their valuable parts to be sold on the black market in such a condition that they were not traceable.”