How one Surrey PC brought down an OCG

Back in 2023, Surrey Police officer PC Ben Marshall was assigned what seemed to be a straightforward case – two reports of shoplifting at a branch of Tesco in Guildford, where suspects had filled trollies with goods before brazenly walking off.

But the initial threads of this investigation would unravel a criminal network responsible for the theft of more than £130,000-worth of goods across 13 police force areas.

The OCG was stealing everything from toilet roll to alcohol, nappies to cleaning products, and selling them on at cut-down rates. They targeted shops in Suffolk, Surrey, Somerset and Cornwall to avoid detection.

As PC Marshall began investigating, he found links between the offence in Guildford and others in different counties. Noticing that the group often targeted Tesco branches, he reached out to the supermarket’s security hub.

Help from superstore

With their help – and access to information from all Tesco stores in the country – PC Marshall exposed a sprawling web of offences. He plotted out every offence he could link to the group over a two-year period, and eventually identified six thieves, all of whom were living in Essex.

Knowing the odds of being able to arrest all six at once weren’t high, he instead took a bold step and issued the group with an ultimatum – a letter to say they were under investigation and had two weeks to come in voluntarily or face arrest.

The plan worked, and a solicitor representing all six contacted the officer to arrange an interview day. With colleagues, PC Marshall travelled to Essex to conduct six back-to-back interviews over the course of a 17-hour day.

In total, his painstaking work allowed the CPS to charge all six with conspiracy to commit theft from a shop.

Criminals charged

The criminals are:

A 50-year-old woman of Colchester stole 231 trollies of goods with a value of £116,163. She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for 18 months.

A 50-year-old man of Stanford Le Hope stole 152 trollies of goods with a value of £76,436. He was sentenced to three years in prison

A 41-year-old man of Colchester stole 143 trollies of goods with a value of £71,910. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A 30-year-old woman of East Tilbury stole 116 trollies of goods with a value of £58,332. She was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for 18 months.

A 29-year-old woman of Basildon stole 27 trollies of goods with a value of £13,576. She was sentenced to 20 months in prison, suspended for 12 months.

“Deliberate and targeted”

PC Marshall said: “I’m incredibly pleased these individuals have now been held to account for years of deliberate and targeted offending.

“I knew I had something when I linked the first few similar offences, but I had no idea at the start of this how far and wide this ‘simple’ shoplifting case in Guildford would eventually go.

“These criminals assumed they could hide the breadth of their offending by travelling far and wide across the south of England – but they were wrong.”

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