Victims of luxury car theft gang 'felt violated'

"You just feel violated." Alison remembers the night when a gang who targeted luxury cars across England and Wales, decided to come for her family's cars.

"They were very quiet, very calculating," she said. She was not at home that night when they struck in May 2024 in Malmesbury, Wiltshire - but her husband was.

The gang carried out many of their thefts, across 11 counties, wearing masks and "stalking around houses while children and adults slept", a court heard.

In Alison and her husband's case, she is just relieved he slept through it and was not confronted by them.

It was only when the cat woke him that he went downstairs and found police already inside their home, as blue lights flashed across the driveway.

"He was confronted by the police actually coming into the house because they had intercepted the cars speeding through the villages and towns to the north of Malmesbury," Alison said,.

"It wasn't until that point that we knew that the house had been broken into.

"I'm alone in the house. My husband is no longer with us and I feel very vulnerable."

Both cars were taken, along with dozens by the gang worth more than £3.4m over three months in 2024 before they were caught and jailed this week.

Many of the thefts unfolded in near silence including for David Adams.

When his home near Loxley in Warwickshire was targeted, he said he woke briefly at about 01:00 BST on 1 August 2024.

Thinking little of it and not hearing anything suspicious, he went back to sleep. By morning his Land Rover Defender had vanished.

"I opened the door, I looked on the driveway and thought, 'what have I done with the car?' And then slowly realised that it had gone and a panic set in," he said.

Intruders had forced open a sash window, entered his kitchen and taken his keys.

Adams, 78, said the experience left him "nervous".

"My wife has dementia and I was worried it was going to affect her, but luckily these things get forgotten," he said.

His car insurance costs also soared.

"The cheapest quote was £5,000," he said. "Most people said no because of course I've got a record of things being stolen and this is one of the consequences of these appalling crimes.

"There's the mental and personal drawbacks but then there's the financial effects."

Jaine Yule and her family were away working at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2024 when they received a call.

"I thought it was a joke," she said. "They were like, 'it's not a joke, they've broken into the house'."

The gang got in by reaching through a cat flap to unlock a door and, once inside, they found a set of keys and took her 25-year-old son Finlay's BMW.

Two mountain bikes, an off-road motorbike and other valuables worth about £12,000 were also stolen.

Jaine Yule said her neighbours in the rural village of Fownhope in Herefordshire were "gobsmacked".

"One can be lulled into a false sense of security and thinking that's not going to happen to you," she said. "Clearly nowhere is crime free."

The family had since installed cameras and an alarm, measures they previously avoided.

"It feels like surveillance on yourself," Jaine Yule said. "I don't want a camera recording myself every time I go out into the back garden."

Police said the gang's success relied on speed, opportunism and entering homes while victims slept.

Det Con Simon Lloyd, of West Mercia Police, described the group as "relentless".

"Every night it feels like they were out and about breaking into people's homes," he said.

Their investigation, called Operation Flare, ran for two years as officers pieced together evidence from phones, CCTV footage and a series of pursuits, identifying their suspects.

"It was putting together that jigsaw," Lloyd said.

Police said the gang often targeted affluent or semi-rural areas where they were likely to find high-value cars and the risk of being seen was lower.

Once inside a property they would quickly locate the keys and leave within minutes.

Despite the scale of the operation, officers said such crimes remained relatively rare but the damage caused could be profound.

"Some victims, well into their 90s, when you talk to them about it, they get upset," Lloyd said.

Alison said she was trying not to let fear take over.

"You try to do what you can to avoid things like that happening," she said. "I've got home CCTV in operation, I'm vigilant about keeping the doors locked."

She hoped the sentences handed down this week would act as a deterrent.

"I hope they'll learn a lesson," she said. "It's not nice to have this happen to you."

For some victims the sense of intrusion remained.

As one told the court: "The lasting effect is still ongoing to this day. It still makes me sad. Our house has the underlying feeling of being violated."

Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.