Four men have appeared in court accused of stealing more than £200,000 worth of electrical goods from a John Lewis warehouse.
The quartet appeared before Northampton Magistrates’ Court accused of orchestrating an alleged inside job.
Magistrates were told they allegedly stole iPads, Apple MacBook Pros and Sony computers worth an estimated £220,000 from the warehouse in Brackmills.
After the incident detectives found tape had been placed over security sensors outside the warehouse, while the burglars had cut through a door to avoid triggering alarms.
A makeshift “warren” had also been constructed from unused shelving inside the warehouse to allow burglars to crawl the length of the building and escape with the kitty piled in laundry trollies without triggering internal alarms.
Prosecuting, Stella Moses, said: “It is the Crown’s case that somebody working at the premises would have done this to facilitate the entry for the burglars and we say that this was a pre-planned operation with the help of somebody who worked within the warehouse.”
Raiders managed to flee with around £140,000 worth of goods, but left devices worth £82,000 in a number of laundry trolleys close to the entrance of the warehouse.
Police later found the stolen loot had been sold via a shop in Coventry, on the online classified website Gumtree and elsewhere.
The court heard the four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit a commercial burglary during the night of October 29, last year.
A fifth man, aged 25, has been charged with handling offences and will appear at Northampton Magistrates’ Court later this month.
The four defendants are Kryzstof Bogszewski, aged 32, of Northampton House, in Wellington Street, Northampton town centrwe, who was working at the warehouse on the night of the break-in, as well as former John Lewis employees, Marcin Bakowski, aged 29, of North Holme Court, Thorplands, and Piotr Kozlowski, aged 31, of Park Corner, in St James, Northampton.
The fourth man was Lukasz Sprodecki, aged 28, of Larkin Gardens, Higham Ferrers.
All four were remanded in custody due and are now due to appear at Northampton Crown Court for another hearing in August.