Three men have been jailed after stealing underground BT cabling and risking havoc in Birmingham city centre. Altafin Poenaru, aged 49, Marian Agarlita, 37, and Sorin Condrache, 45, were caught red-handed by armed police at a manhole on Great Charles Queensway at the junction with Newhall Street on January 20 this year.
They had cut seven live cables which contained nearly 8,000 phone and internet lines serving the area, which includes countless businesses as well as government departments. One of the risks was that alarm systems would have been disabled, causing safety hazards for anyone trapped in a lift or a building fire.
BT Openreach, which maintains telecommunications infrastructure, stated the incident involved a complex and dangerous repair operation requiring weeks to put right and costing them more than £96,000. The three men, all Romanian nationals, arrived in a white van wearing high-visibility jackets, boots and hard helmets with torches while they blocked off the manhole with red barriers. Bizarrely, none of them had previously committed a crime, despite the evidently well-planned raid. But they were ultimately caught out after the disturbed cables triggered alarms at BT. Coincidentally an armed police unit with a Channel 5 camera crew were nearby and they stopped them at the scene.
Court Proceedings
Poenaru and Condrache, of Montague Road, Smethwick, and Agarlita, of Avenue Road, Sandown, in the Isle of Wight, all admitted a single charge of theft. At Birmingham Crown Court today they were each sentenced to three years.
Prosecutor David Iles said: "At 7.30pm on January 20 the cable security alarm went off in the BT control centre reporting a substantial telecommunications outage. The BT Openreach team attended the location and saw these three defendants loading cables into the van. The van was parked next to an open manhole. Accordingly police were immediately informed and by coincidence there was an armed response unit around the corner with a Channel 5 TV camera crew on board - nothing to do with this case."
Agarlita was still down the manhole when police arrived. He eventually emerged saying: "I didn't steal any metal I'm homeless." Body worn camera footage was played to the court showing the men being arrested. An officer could be heard saying: "All of you get out of there. How many of you are down there? Tell your mate to come out now." One of the thieves was also warned: "Tell your mate to get out of there it's dangerous."
Planning and Impact
Mr Iles continued: "This must have been carefully planned. They had purchased and were wearing orange high visibility clothing, boots, hard hats with torches fixed to the front and were using a white van. They were posing as workers in case anybody wondered who they were or what they were doing." He added: "The impact on BT on behalf of the general public was enormous. Given the location which is one of the busiest parts of the city centre the repair was extremely complex and challenging. All repair work had to be done at night to avoid disruption. Due to the confined nature BT had to engage a third party rescue team while engineers worked in the cramped environment underground."
Some of the cables were 60 years old and had to be manually tracked to their respective buildings due to inaccurate records. And some of the cables were no longer manufactured and had to be replaced by new ones. BT calculated the repairs cost £96,612. Mr Iles stated the impact on public safety could have been 'devastating' due to building alarm systems not working.
Defence Statements
Stefan Salhan, defending Agarlita, told the court the father-of-three had been in the UK for 15 years with skills in construction and plastering. He said: "He expresses genuine remorse, feelings of shame and regret for his involvement in this offence. This was an isolated incident rather than a pattern of offending." Lewis Perry, representing Condrache, stated he worked online and had a family, including two children back in Germany. Jasvir Mann, for Poenaru, said the incident was a 'huge fall from grace' for his client - a grandfather - who had 'built a successful and lawful life in this country' since arriving in 1999. He stated Poenaru was recruited a matter of hours before the theft as a driver and was not involved in the original planning.
