A BMW salesman who helped to steal cars worth more than £200,000 broke down in tears as he was jailed for more than five years.
A BMW salesman who helped to steal cars worth more than £200,000 broke down in tears as he was jailed for more than five years.
Michael Daniels, 40, gave accomplice Alex Tingle, 28, the spare keys to the new luxury cars his dealership had just sold. He then used his role as head of sales at BMW Berry, in Chiswick, to access customer addresses on a database and passed them on to Tingle.
Tingle, from Ealing, and a third man then stole the cars, getting away with vehicles worth £210,000 between December 2015 and February last year.
Isleworth crown court heard one victim, Robert Mitchell, missed the birth of his daughter because his car had been stolen and he could not get to the hospital on Christmas Eve. Another victim, Nouman Hashmi, said the sale of his house fell through after the buyers found out about the car theft on a crime database.
Jailing a tearful Daniels for five years and three months on Friday, Judge Simon Davis said he was guilty of a “horrendous breach of trust”.
Daniels, from Ashford, Surrey, was found guilty earlier this month of conspiracy to steal motor vehicles