Watch: ‘World’s longest convoy of stolen goods’ driven near Shipston

The amazing find happened last Thursday (May 12) when officers at the Warwickshire Rural Crime Team (RCT) went to the outskirts of Shipston on Stour, to make enquiries about an unrelated matter. While conducting their enquires, officers spotted a Toyota Hilux parked up next to a pair of Ifor Williams horse boxes. The Toyota had recently been reported to police as acting suspiciously near horse trailers at a Gloucestershire farm.

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Excellent work by Warwickshire Police officers led to a huge discovery of stolen vehicles – in fact they joked that the recovery of the goods led to the ‘world’s longest convey of stolen goods’. Warwickshire Rural Crime Team

“With this information we looked a little closer and discovered that the Hilux itself was displaying a false VRM plate and that the true vehicle VRM was recorded as stolen from Gloucestershire,” said the Warwickshire Rural Crime Team.

Officers then made multiple enquiries with different agencies and registers to confirm that both horse boxes were also recorded as stolen. A third Ifor William’s tipper trailer, in company with an Avondale Dart Caravan, were next to be confirmed as stolen from Gloucestershire. The officers added: “As you can imagine with three trailers, one caravan and a 4×4 truck to recover it took a little while to arrange collection.

Excellent work by Warwickshire Police officers led to a huge discovery of stolen vehicles – in fact they joked that the recovery of the goods led to the ‘world’s longest convey of stolen goods’.

“Rather than standing around with our hands in our pockets (something we’d never do), we used the time to make some local enquiries with nearby residents to establish how the plethora of stolen items came to be abandoned at the location.

“It was during these enquiries that RCT officers located a further stolen Ford Transit van, three stolen caravans and two cars displaying false registration plates.” So far they had now recovered the following: Four caravans, two stolen cars, two cloned cars and three stolen trailers.

Click here to watch the video of the convey (you will need access to Facebook to view it).

The officers said: “After organising the world’s longest convoy of stolen items back to the recovery yard the nice task of informing all the true owners began, that and the mountain of paperwork….but we really don’t mind any of that.

“None of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for the member of the public reporting a suspect vehicle to Gloucestershire Constabulary a few weeks before.

“Thursday also happened to be our new Sergeant’s first day out with his new team.

So as first days go, this was quite a good one.”