Exposed... vultures who buy stolen war memorials: The Mail unmasks money-grabbing scrap metal dealers fuelling a sickening crimewave

Etched into three brass war memorials were the names of men who had made the ultimate sacrifice for this country in the fight to defend freedom and overcome the rise of dictatorship.

But the plaques honouring those who had fallen during two world wars were tossed into an oil-spattered iron bin, on top of a pile of mangled piping and frayed cables.

The memorials that should have been treated as priceless objects of British history — tributes from a nation indebted to those they commemorate — were instead considered mere junk and valued as scrap metal worth less than £30.

Shameless: One of the replica war memorial plaques is bought for scrap

The men behind this unscrupulous trade in second-hand metal can be exposed today after an undercover investigation by the Mail that reveals the tip of the iceberg of a multi-million-pound scrap metal business where few questions are asked about the provenance of the material bought.

Across Britain, 13 million tons of scrap metal are recycled each year, with at least 15,000 tons — estimated to be worth £800 million — believed to have been stolen. The whole business is said to be worth £5.6 billion a year.



There is widespread public anger about the huge amounts of stolen metal being traded — including war memorials, lead from church roofs, cables from railway lines and even parts of the track, manhole covers and irreplaceable sculptures.

Network Rail estimates the problem has cost it £43 million over the past three years — causing countless delayed trains and commuting misery — as criminals cash in on the rising price of raw materials. (What the potential safety implications are of people helping themselves to bits of a 125mph railway, you shudder to think).

Father Denys Lloyd pictured in the place where the bronze statue of Jesus once stood at St Joseph's Catholic Church in Sheringham, Norfolk

Most sickening is the big rise in the number of reports of thieves plundering war memorials, leading to a series of court cases with criminals — many in Eastern European gangs — jailed for selling stolen metal. To investigate the illicit trade, an undercover Mail team set about trying to prove how easy it is to sell stolen metal.

Our team posed as odd-job men with relatives in the building industry who had hired a gang of Eastern Europeans to wrench war memorials from a garden of remembrance.

Rather than use genuine plaques (and risk damaging them or not be able to retrieve them after our ‘sale’), we asked one of the country’s leading engravers to make copies of originals using bronze and copper.

So as not to arouse suspicion with potential buyers, we included in our haul of metal for sale a collection of power cabling we said was stolen, empty Calor Gas bottles and abandoned earthing strips of copper from a power station, which we’d bought for our investigation.

The cabling was inch thick strips of copper encased in rubber (which thieves normally burn off to maximise profit).

We included the empty gas cylinders in view of the fact that 200,000 are stolen every year to be sold as scrap.

Then there were the war memorials.



Stolen: A new law barring scrap yards from taking cash payments aims to tackle the epidemic of thefts, such as the one of a Barbara Hepworth sculpture from Dulwich Park

The only difference between our specially made plaques and the originals from which they were copied was that we changed the names of the 21 servicemen who had died in the two world wars in order not to cause offence to the memory of the dead.

The engraving on one of our plaques was a tribute to a pilot officer who served in the Royal Air Force and died at the age of 20 in 1942.

It read: ‘Stuart Edward Robinson, who lost his life on 21st June, 1942, in service to this country’. It added that the memorial was dedicated on the 65th anniversary of his death, in June 2007, by his surviving relatives.

Another one, for World War I, listed how two soldiers fell in 1914, another two in 1916, four in 1917 and six in 1918. The final plaque listed six men who died between 1942 and the end of World War II in 1945.

The next stage in our operation was to choose which area of the country to target. We decided to go to the West Midlands, where there has been a dramatic increase in the number of reports of sales of stolen metal.

It has to be said that several scrap metal merchants refused to buy our haul (it being considered ‘too hot’ to handle or because it would be ‘immoral’).

Indeed, workers at one yard were clearly well-versed in checking for stolen goods or for material that could be traced.



They tested our metal with an infra-red light to establish whether it had been stained with an anti-theft chemical, which is often used as a security measure by rail firms and local councils and which police look for during spot-checks on scrapyards.

But we were soon pointed in the direction of some back-street outfits that were considered more likely to buy metals we would say were stolen.

After several abortive attempts to sell our lorry-load of metal, we went to Pitford Metals in Brownhills, near Walsall in an area that was once the centre of the booming coal industry.

Though our undercover team told workers in the yard that the memorials and cabling had been stolen, they didn’t seem to mind and were happy to buy it.

Our undercover reporter told a worker that all of our metal had ‘obviously been nicked’, adding: ‘All of this is stolen!’

The man commented: ‘To be fair, half of the stuff in here is probably nicked probably, pal.’ Laughing, he added: ‘We don’t f***ing ask.’

In view of all the cabling we were offering to sell, someone joked: ‘Somewhere there’s a f***ing small town that’s lost its electricity.’ The yard worker then got some large bins and gave instructions about where to put the different metals, dividing up the cables and war memorial plaques, saying: ‘Copper is pink. Brass is yellow.’



He then weighed the total haul inside the plant. The so-called scales man gave a cursory look at the supposed war memorials, apparently to establish what kind of metal they were made of.

He told our undercover team how, as a schoolboy, he used to bring scrap to the yard, which is at the top of a small industrial estate.

Once the bins had been weighed, our undercover team was handed a piece of paper on which was written the weight of each type of metal. This had to be taken to the pay room, where the day’s trade price was calculated and cash was handed over.

No proof of identity was required — as is often routine in this trade — and our team gave a false name and a wrong address.

The yard handed over the cash — a total of £178 cash, which would work out at a paltry £30 for the plaques. We had said our load had been stolen, but not that it included war memorials.

Our team returned the next day with more metal — no war plaques this time — which we told yard workers had also been stolen. Our van-load this time was electrical ‘high-grade’ cabling we had, in fact, bought.

Crimewave: A brass plaque was stolen from the memorial stone at Christ Church in Willaston, Cheshire

The man in the pay room scolded our undercover team for handling metal we said had been stolen, insisting that the company would not take such items in the future.

He said his company normally only dealt with reputable traders and that the material we brought was ‘scraggy’ (worn out and old) and so ‘did not count’.

At one point, one of our under- cover team asked the man who had processed our metal (including the war memorials) the previous day if they still had the plaques or if they had been disposed of already.

He replied: ‘Yeah, they’re going now. They are weighing them up.’

Another ‘scrappie’ (as the yard staff are called) explained how the metals were shipped off to a larger scrap company and then sold abroad.

Subsequent research showed that Pitford Metals (which has operated at the site for more than 20 years) has two directors: Stuart Kirby, 38, from Penkridge, Staffordshire, and Lee Banford, 52, from Bilston, Wolverhampton. The company’s latest accounts show it has more than £1.2 million in the bank.

A few days after our undercover team’s sting operation, we contacted the company to explain what we had done.

Mr Kirby was livid at the suggestion that one of his staff had taken our specially created war memorials that he was told were stolen, insisting that his company would never take stolen goods. He threatened legal action against us.

Sadly, this cannot be the only firm prepared to deal in metal without knowing where it has come from. The extent to which the crime is spiralling out of control is illustrated by the dramatic increase in scrap metal thefts.

Of 12 scrap merchants our undercover team visited and who were told our hoard had been ‘illegally’ obtained, four said they would take the cabling, but rejected the war memorials (clearly worried about their provenance).

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that in the year 2008 to 2009, there were a reported 2,600 thefts of metal valued at £6.2 million in the West Midlands.



But last year, the local police force investigated a staggering increase: 17,107 thefts of metal worth nearly £28 million.

The British Transport Police, playing a leading role in fighting metal theft crimes, regularly assesses how many of the country’s 2,074 registered metal recyclers are suspected of trading in stolen goods. Using a traffic light system (with red meaning the company needs to be inspected regularly by police because they could be up to no good; amber that they are a cause for concern; and green suggesting the company is operating within the law), it identifies 107 as red, 290 as amber and 1,677 as green.

However, our undercover team’s research, suggest the problem is far worse, with about 40 per cent of scrap dealers we approached saying they were prepared to buy our ‘stolen’ metals — albeit not the war memorials.

No wonder the Government has stepped in to toughen up the law and introduce much bigger fines. The Government has woken up to the problem and announced plans to outlaw cash payments and increase fines for those involved in handling stolen scrap.

Under a new law to come into force later this year, traders will have to keep records of all transactions and be registered.

Home Secretary Theresa May said: ‘People who deal in stolen metal are criminals. Their activities bring misery to individuals and communities.’

The Commons Transport Select Committee has produced a report that called for laws governing the scrap metal industry to be reformed, and a new offence of aggravated trespass on the railways to be introduced after reports that there are eight cable thefts on the network every day.

The worry about introducing stricter laws, though, is that stolen metal will simply be sold abroad, instead.

While the UK Borders Agency invests a great deal of energy targeting illegal immigrants trying to enter Britain, less is done to monitor materials being shipped out of the country.

Graham Jones, the Labour MP who proposed laws to tighten up how metal merchants are policed, wants the Government to introduce a licensing system for the industry. He also praised the Mail’s undercover operation.

‘Well done to the Daily Mail for uncovering just how unscrupulous some scrap metal yards are,’ he said.

‘To think that only a handful of yards declined to take this metal is shocking.

‘It’s also alarming that none of the scrap metal yards appeared to have had the honesty to report to the police the names or registration plate of the undercover reporters, despite knowing full well that a crime had been committed.

‘There can be no excuses for not bringing in a tough licensing scheme for this part-criminal industry.’ The Mail did not report our case to the police because the scrap was not in fact stolen.

A spokesman for the Energy Networks Association, the industry body for power wires and piping, said: ‘Metal theft is at epidemic levels because of the ease with which criminals can buy and sell illegal scrap for cash with no questions asked.’

In recent months, attracted by spiralling trade prices for copper, lead, bronze and brass, thieves have become increasingly audacious.

A bronze statue of Jesus on a crucifix was stolen from a grave at a church in Sheringham, Norfolk. Around the same time, a 2ft solid silver cross was also stolen from an altar in a chapel at Manchester Cathedral, where it had stood for more than 50 years to commemorate the building’s destruction during the war.

A man was jailed for 12 weeks this month for trying to sell nine remembrance plaques stolen from a Manchester cemetery.

He admitted handling stolen goods after scrap merchants with some sense of decency reported him to police.

Last month, it emerged that a plaque honouring the bravery of a World War I hero who was awarded the Victoria Cross was stolen from a park in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

Sgt William Henry Johnson single-handedly charged a German machine-gun emplacement in Ramicourt, France, in 1918. Police believe the memorial was sold for just £10. In some of the worst cases, children as young as 14 have been found risking their lives to steal metal from the railway network in the North-East.

Many councils have also recorded how drain covers and disabled ramps have been stolen. Even children’s playgrounds have been stripped of metal.

The increase in thefts has been found to be directly related to the increase in the trade prices for specific types of metals.

Last night, Deputy Chief Constable Paul Crowther, from the British Transport Police, said: ‘Scrap metal dealers have a responsibility to ensure the metal they buy is from legitimate sources and that they keep appropriate records.

‘It is not acceptable to turn a blind eye to stolen metal.



Toppled after 90 years: Vicar Kevin Scott at The Old Malden monument, in Surrey, after thieves pushed it the ground to steal a strip of lead worth £5

‘By helping criminals to turn stolen metal into cash, often quickly and easily, dealers are fuelling this crime, which is blighting our infrastructure and disrupting the lives of ordinary people on a daily basis.

‘In the longer term, we are looking for a change to the legislation to make it harder for stolen metal to be sold. We will continue to work within the current legislation to target the business practices of those dealers who wilfully flout the law for their own gain.’

Our undercover investigation team established that while some of the dealers we approached would have once taken goods we had said were stolen, there was a clear concern that police were carrying out far more inspections and so there was a much greater risk of being caught handling such goods.

But the fact that several of those we approached were still happy to take metal they were told had been stolen shows that more must be done to prevent war memorials made to honour those who died fighting for freedom — as well as parts of the country’s transport and energy network — being stripped and sent abroad piecemeal for paltry sums of cash.