A senior sales consultant, who fled to France with £115,000 worth of stolen fifth generation iPhones he looted from his store just hours before their much-anticipated launch, was jailed for three years yesterday.
Usman Sethi, 24, of Audley Gardens, Ilford sneaked back into the O2 Wimbledon branch late at night and loaded up his car with approximately 250 handsets - wrecking his boss's publicised iPhone 5 sale scheduled to start the next morning.
The first-time offender raced to Dover and caught a ferry to France, where he sold the iPhones for £78,000 and blew all the cash during a drink-fuelled gambling spree.
He pleaded guilty at Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court to stealing a quantity of iPhones, worth £115,790, from the Tandem Centre store on September 20, last year and stealing a quantity of jewellery from his brother Ali and his sister-in-law on September 12.
"You were placed in a position of very significant trust by your employer and you abused that trust in a very cynical manner," Recorder Aiden Christie QC told Sethi.
"Maybe it was a mark of your desperation that you used your own access card to go into the room where there was all these valuable phones and electrical equipment."
Prosecutor Mr. Philip Jones told the court Sethi's brother was pressurising the defendant to return his valuable wedding jewellery, which included necklaces, rings, bangles and pendants, which he believed was being held in a locker at the O2 store.
In reality Sethi had pawned the valuables for £6,530 while his brother and sister-in-law were on holiday in Turkey to pay off gambling debts.
"He never returned home, but returned to the store after making it secure at 8pm and sending the staff home and locking up.
"He deactivated the alarm, went to the store room and began loading a large quantity of stock, including iPhones, into boxes for about an hour," explained Mr. Jones.
"He left, but returned later and dragged out the boxes he had filled up with very valuable stock, reset the alarm and loaded up his car at the back of the store."
Everything was captured on CCTV and when police were alerted on September 21 a search of Sethi's car registration revealed he had already left for France on a Dover ferry.
Sethi's lawyer Mr. Gary Rutter said: "He has always worked in mobile phone shops since leaving school and has always progressed swiftly. He is a hard worker.
"He started to drink a large amount of alcohol, morning and evening, and tried to keep out of the family home, where his parents were having problems, as much as he could.
"The more he drank the more heavily he became involved in gambling and he says it became an addiction.
"He hoped to re-purchase the jewellery and give it back to his brother and sister-in-law, but he was not able to buy it back and became desperate.
"He saw a way of obtaining money and this is what he did.
"All the money was spent gambling, he lost the lot. He was in France, he knew the writing was on the wall and knew that he was wanted."
Sethi returned and gave himself up at Wimbledon Police Station on December 13.
The jewellery the defendant took from his brother's safe at the family home has been returned and Sethi has been forgiven.
"The family are not happy, but they will take him back and his brother and sister-in-law have visited him in prison," added Mr. Rutter. "The only reason they are not here today is that he told them not to attend."
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