Three men jailed for theft of £600k of BMW car parts

Vitalijus Belovas, Vitalijus Bakutis, and Ramunas Radzevicius (l-r) were sentenced at Northampton Crown Court

A trio of "sophisticated" thieves stole high-tech BMW car parts worth more than £600,000.

Vitalijus Belovas, 41, Vitalijus Bakutis, 39, and Ramunas Radzevicius, 26, were jailed at Northampton Crown Court after being convicted of conspiracy to steal.

The three men committed a total of 49 offences in Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire and Kent, police said.

The thefts included steering wheels, dashboards and in-car control systems.

CCTV pictures captured the men taking parts from a BMW

Belovas, of no fixed address, was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to steal and admitted two counts of possessing false identity documents. He was sentenced to four years and two months.

Bakutis, of Scholars Court, Northampton, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to steal and admitted two counts of possessing false identity documents. He was jailed for three years and six months.

Radzevicius, formerly of St Andrew's Street, Northampton, admitted two counts of conspiracy and was sent to prison for three years and four months.

The trial heard how in April 2018, Northamptonshire Police was alerted to a suspicious vehicle linked to a series of thefts.

The following month, officers stopped it on the A43 in Northampton, with Belovas, Bakutis and Radzevicius inside.

The men taped over headlights and silenced alarms to prevent detection

Officers found steering wheels, dashboards and iDrive in-car control systems from two BMWs in the vehicle.

Further investigations led police to a string of offences dating back to November 2017.

In some cases the trio took up to 90 minutes to steal the parts from cars

Det Insp James Larkin, from Northamptonshire Police said: "These were sophisticated thefts by a gang which used a mixture of technology and brute force to break into cars and steal high-value parts, leaving vehicles written off or requiring thousands of pounds' worth of repairs."