Thief stole £18,000 of brass band's instruments for just £61 scrap... and here's all that's left of the cornet



Lenient sentences prove an insufficient deterrent



Graham Jones, the Labour MP is trying to introduce a bill to ban scrap dealers trading in cash and secure tougher sentences for those caught

An estimated 15,000 tons of stolen scrap metal are sold every year

For more than a century, the Pontardulais Town Band has played its rousing and sometimes mournful brass music to accompany key moments in its Welsh community’s history.



When tearful families waved off the young men boarding trains to go to fight in World War I, the band was in place on the station platform to ensure the event did not pass without suitably solemn music.



Formed in the late 1800s out of the tinplate, steel and coal mining industries that once thrived around Swansea, few things have ever silenced the cornets, tubas and trombones of the ensemble.

Jailed: Andrew Beer served just three months for burglary Brassed off: Band treasurer Neil Palmer with the remains of his stolen cornet

It was only when so many of the band’s musicians signed up to fight in World War II that the group was ever forced to disband.



To this day, despite its reliance on donations as a registered charity, the nationally acclaimed and award-winning group remains a vital and celebrated part of the South Wales community.

But recently it endured one of its toughest challenges when it became the unlikely victim of the escalating criminal trade in stolen scrap metal.

In a case that highlights the extent to which both local thieves and organised criminal gangs — many from Eastern Europe — will go for a slice of the £800 million a year illicit trade in valuable metals, the band’s musical instruments were stolen and crushed. Despite being worth more than £18,000, the inept thieves sold them to a local scrap dealer for just £61.



Astonishingly, when the Mail tracked down the leader of the gang that stole the brass, he insisted that if he’d had tougher punishment and been jailed earlier in his career as a scrap metal thief he would never have targeted the band.



Around 13 million tons of metal are recycled in the UK every year. Of that, an estimated 15,000 tons are stolen — though the true figure is probably far higher. Despite the economic slump, the £5 billion scrap metal business is booming, in part because of the insatiable demand for resources from emerging economies such as China and Brazil driving up prices.



Pride and joy: Pontardulais Town Band with their gleaming instruments before the thieves struck

To the criminally minded, there are few crooked enterprises as alluring as stealing metals. While jewellery or computer parts drop in value if they are ‘hot’, stolen metals like copper (currently fetching nearly £5,000 a ton) invariably achieves the full market value.



Unscrupulous scrap dealers usually pay in cash, reducing the risk of the perpetrators being caught.

In comparison to drug dealing and robbery, the punishment meted out for the burglary of metal is far more lenient.

Indeed, scrap merchants who turn a blind eye to stolen metals face the lesser charge of handling stolen goods — few, if any, are jailed.



It was for these reasons that Andrew Beer from Gorseinon, a town six miles from Swansea, and his two younger partners in crime broke into The Band House where Pontardulais Town Band stored their instruments.



Speaking this week about his six years of scrap theft, the 40-year-old father of one says: ‘Everyone knows metal prices are soaring and there’s good money in it. It was too tempting.’



Setback: Chairman Nigel Buist, Secretary Zoe Whetton, Treasurer Neil Palmer (from left) and the rest of The Pontardulais Brass Band have had to adjust to their new instruments following the theft

On that cold winter’s afternoon, the gang broke into the rehearsal rooms then loaded up their grey Volkswagen Polo car with tubas, cornets, tubular bells, a giant gong, cymbals, brass mouthpieces and other percussion instruments which had been locked away for safe keeping.



After causing £4,000 worth of damage — ripping off a security door — they also grabbed a Christmas hamper and some gifts for children. Later, they drove their plunder to nearby Egan Metals in Gorseinon. Despite the band’s chairman ringing all the scrap dealers to warn them of the theft, scrapyard boss Marcus Egan, 35, welcomed the thieves and offered them cash.



Beer believes if he had been dealt with more severely by the courts when he was first caught he would have abandoned his criminal career

He was even filmed on his own CCTV security system unloading the instruments before crushing them in his heavy-duty machinery, an act that left the brass worth a fraction of the value it held when it was crafted into musical instruments.



Despite having insurance, the band lost instruments that had a tremendous sentimental value. It also had to improve security and its insurance premiums rose by £700 a year.



Nigel Buist, chairman of the band and a tuba player, says: ‘You get used to an instrument, it becomes part of you. It’s taken a good year or so to get used to my new tuba which the insurance money paid for. At the time the theft was a setback for us all.’



It was Mr Buist who, upon discovering the break-in, rang the local scrapyards to prevent the instruments being destroyed. ‘I telephoned Egan Metals and was encouraged when I spoke to Egan. He came across as a person I could trust. The whole thing was heartbreaking.’



Risibly, despite the CCTV evidence, Egan later told police that he didn’t recognise the instruments as matching the description of those reported stolen by the band.



After a trial last year, Andrew Beer was jailed for six months for burglary (he served only three months). His accomplices, Christopher Davies, 23, and Jason Power, 36, both received suspended sentences. They had all pleaded guilty.



Crushing: Members of the Pontardulais Brass Band with their ruined instruments

Egan, who denied handling stolen goods but was found guilty, also escaped with a suspended sentence and has returned to running his scrap metal company. He was ordered to pay £500 compensation to the band.



Mr Beer, who had been funding his drink and cannabis habit by stealing scrap metal, says: ‘It’s so easy to sell this stuff: take the metal to a scrapyard, weigh it and take the cash. There are no questions asked.’



But, more tellingly, Beer believes that if he had been dealt with more severely by the courts when he was first caught stealing scrap he would have abandoned his criminal career.

He was first brought to book in 2006 after being caught removing copper piping from a derelict pub. But he received just a slap on the wrist in the form of a suspended prison sentence. It failed as a deterrent.

'There's a real danger that if we don't act we will become a target for so-called theft tourism'

‘I walked from court,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I would have got involved in steeling scrap metal again if I had had a jail term.’



Beer, a decorator who has been on the dole since his release from Swansea Prison, said: ‘It’s all over now. Jail hit me for six. It put me off going out stealing again. I have a teenage daughter and I just want to start all over again.’



But Neil Palmer, the Pontardulais Town Band treasurer, and the musicians are not in a forgiving mood.



‘I was in court to see justice be done, or so I thought,’ he says. ‘I was absolutely disgusted that the metal dealer Egan got a suspended sentence. That’s no punishment. How can that sentence discourage him from doing it again?’



In the scrapyard that Egan still runs, the businessman lists the measures now in place to prevent a similar ‘misunderstanding’: the car registrations and identities of sellers of scrap metal are taken, logs made and signatures stored. But, as with scrapyards up and down the country, he continues to pay cash for scrap, a system which is seen by many as fuelling the thefts because there is so little accountability.



‘I think if we paid by cheque, companies like mine would shut down. The travellers would take over and scrap would become a black market,’ he says.



Stolen: The four men can be seen unloading the brass instruments stolen from Pontardulais Town Band

Rarely a week goes by without another theft of electrical cabling, copper piping, railway track, lead lining from church roofs and even the war memorial plaques.



Graham Jones, the Labour MP trying to introduce a bill to ban scrap dealers trading in cash and secure tougher sentences for those caught, fears that while Beer and his cronies are the petty side of the criminal industry, organised international gangs are being lured to Britain because our laws are so lax.



‘There’s a real danger that if we don’t act we will become a target for so-called theft tourism. We are fast becoming a soft touch as other countries insist that scrapyards improve their procedures to stop fuelling this crime.



‘These thieves targeting electrical cabling need specific skills, a high degree of teamwork and knowledge of the trade. They also require specialist equipment like cutting and lifting gear. It all leads to the conclusion that this is organised crime.’



Silenced: When the instruments were found, they had been completely destroyed by heavy-duty machinery

In the past year, six people have been electrocuted and killed while stealing cabling from Britain’s power network, and a further 50 have been seriously injured.



As in any gang, the weakest members are ordered to take the most risks. Some die scaling pylons past the 400,000-volt live cables to cut down the top earthed wire.



Others use diggers to smash through concrete to get at cabling which they douse in petrol to burn off the insulation and reach the copper inside. It falls on the most junior member of most criminal gangs to check that the cables aren’t live.



This month, an Eastern European suspected of stealing metal from a sub-station in the West Midlands was struck by 33,000 volts and suffered 60 per cent burns. The 21-year-old man was found dumped outside a hospital.



There have been more than 1,600 metal thefts from Network Rail over the past seven months, causing nearly 2,000 cancelled trains and costing £8 million in lost revenue

And in the summer, five Romanian men admitted to being ‘foot soldiers’ in a raid on Draka, a Derbyshire copper cabling company that has been repeatedly targeted by thieves. The ringleaders, who have never been traced, paid the men £100 to try to lock staff inside the plant while they escaped with cabling.



Despite being caught red-handed and the judge noting they had probably burgled the plant before, they all walked free with suspended sentences.



Steve Rimmington, who runs Repton Security which protects engineering and aerospace firms in Derbyshire, has seen the thefts of valuable metals shift from petty criminals to more organised gangs.



‘There is no doubt there are mastermind figures who send out foot soldiers on raids. They are wreaking havoc across the country,’ said the 50-year-old former policeman.



‘They know the risks are relatively low and the punishment is almost non-existent. The criminal justice system seems to think that such thefts are little more than a lark.’ Tim Field, a spokesman from Energy Networks Association — the trade body for power wires and pipes — said the death toll could be far higher and the most ruthless gangs could even be disposing of the bodies of men who have been fatally electrocuted.



Rising value: The price of scrap metal is increasing, with the industry currently worth £5 billion a year

He says: ‘Electricity jumps from a cable to a human body. It would be a flash and a bang and then vaporisation. The cartoon image of a pair of smoking boots isn’t that far from the truth. Our engineers are becoming accustomed to discovering bits of human material in sub-stations.Our fear now is that an innocent passer-by will die — perhaps a child retrieving a ball from a sub-station that has been broken into.’



There have been more than 1,600 metal thefts from Network Rail over the past seven months, causing nearly 2,000 cancelled trains and costing £8 million in lost revenue — not to mention commuter misery.



According to British Transport Police figures, the number of arrests for railway metal thefts is set to outstrip last year. Since April, more than 600 people have been arrested following 1,643 recorded incidents.



These thefts are so pernicious because they can cause so much disruption, distress and anger — for little financial gain.



While those cancelled trains eventually ran again, Pontardulais Town Band took longer to recover. Given that it grew out of the workforce that drove the metal industries, treasurer Neil Palmer admits it is a sad irony that the group fell victim to metal thieves.



Ask him about the culprits getting suspended sentences and he is visibly angry. ‘It stinks,’ he says.

