A Zimbabwean thief made over £150,000 by stealing expensive pairs of trousers from department stores, a UK court heard.
Mandla Ngwenya made the huge sum by leaving stores with trousers on underneath tracksuit bottoms and conning refunds.
A judge at Teesside Crown Court branded him a liar and a devious professional criminal and ordered him to pay the full amount of money back .
Judge Roger Scott said of Ngwenya: ‘He is a proven liar. I don’t believe a word he says. I have in front of me a devious professional criminal. I think very little of him. He’s a grade zero witness.
He told Ngwenya, 36, he must pay the entire £150,889 in six months – or be jailed for 27 months.
‘I don’t think there is a scintilla of injustice in this case in saying that the whole of that sum is realisable.
‘One only has to look at what’s been happening in this case, from first to last, without a single piece of evidence that is reliable from the defence.
‘He has demonstrated an ability to dispose of money, to deal with money and to explain it away in a very unfortunate way.’
Ngwenya stole trousers from Marks and Spencer stores by putting several pairs on at once in the changing rooms before putting his baggy tracksuit bottoms over the top to avoid detection.
He then returned the smart garments – costing £79 per pair – and claimed refunds using forged receipts.
The BMW-driving crook was foiled by a vigilant Middlesbrough shop worker in September 2007.
He was jailed for 18 months in March 2008 after he admitted conspiring to steal and concealing criminal property.
Investigators probed his finances over the previous six years. Then on the day the courts ordered his assets be frozen, Ngwenya transferred £16,000 to another account.
For this contempt of court, he was jailed for 15 months in June this year.
This week, he was brought back to court under the Proceeds of Crime Act, designed to seize ill-gotten cash and assets from criminals.
Under the tough legislation, Ngwenya was called upon to explain his finances since he came to the UK seeking asylum in 2002.
He had to prove his property probably wasn’t obtained through crime. He tried to explain away his dodgy dealings with car and house sales and the activities of a mysterious cousin called Arnold.
Some £28,500 was withdrawn and ‘disappeared’ from one account – Ngwenya claimed he had the cash at his home, for no good reason.
The judge said Ngwenya repeated on oath lies he told to a court in the past and steadfastly refused to accept a verdict against him.
Ngwenya had worked for Securicor as a security officer between 2004 and 2006, and at one point worked for the Leeds courts.
Ian West, prosecuting, said Ngwenya was a professional criminal incapable of telling the truth, while Philip Standfast, defending, said Ngwenya’s benefit from crime, if any, was ‘trivial’.
Ngwenya’s co-accused Smallmaider Mvundla, 31, of Bradford, who was also jailed for 18 months for taking part in the conspiracy, was ruled to have made £3,324 from crime. She was ordered to pay £243.
Detective Inspector Dave Turnbull of Cleveland Police said today: ‘This is an excellent result. Cleveland Police will always make full use of the Proceeds of Crime Act legislation to make sure criminals do not benefit from their crime.’ Source: UK Mail Online
