A gentleman who stole up to $300,000 truly worth of jewelry from store in North Vancouver then experimented with to pawn it back to the guy who owned the jewelry retailer has received a suspended sentence for his crime and will provide 18 months probation.
Mike Taj, 38, of West Vancouver, was handed the penalty March 9 right after pleading guilty in North Vancouver provincial court to 3 expenses linked to a smash-and-get at Romance Jewellers in Lynn Valley Centre mall on Sept. 22, 2020. The expenses involved crack-and-enter, possession of stolen property and trafficking in stolen assets.
An alarm was induced when a set of exterior glass doors at the east entrance to the shopping mall were smashed close to 1:20 in the morning.
When within, the thief broke into the gate all around the keep and smashed jewellery display screen conditions to get valuables inside of.
“Quite a selection of merchandise have been taken,” Crown counsel Farah Malik advised the decide, like a selection of white and yellow gold earrings, with semi-precious stones.
Locked circumstances beneath the display screen conditions containing jewellery were being also broken into and their contents stolen.
The described worth of goods taken ranged from $250,000 and $300,000, Malik explained to the decide.
Police identified a male suspect on protection digicam online video footage of the split-in.
In a unusual twist of fate, the male who owned the jewelry store also owned a pawn store, Vancouver Dollars for Gold.
Taj afterwards went to the pawn store and tried to pawn a number of products stolen in the split-in, like a white gold bracelet, and a yellow gold bracelet, valued at $500 each individual, which the store proprietor identified, claimed Malik.
It was later uncovered Taj had been to the pawn shop with goods stolen from the jewellery store a number of occasions just before he was acknowledged, pawning off $2,500 worth of jewellery.
Both equally Crown and defence lawyer Danny Markovitz explained Taj dedicated the theft even though in the throes of a drug addiction.
“He was in a drug craze,” reported Markovitz.
Choose Joanne Challenger famous the smash-and-grab took place at the exact time as a “spree of offences” for which Taj currently acquired conditional discharges.
Those incorporated breaking into a car great deal in Vancouver and thieving a automobile battery, breaking in to a development web-site in West Vancouver and threatening a pedestrian who was going for walks his doggy ahead of speeding away in a vehicle.
Markovitz said Taj has considering the fact that turned his lifetime all around. “He swears up and down he’ll under no circumstances be in another courtroom dealing with related expenses again,” he mentioned.
Challenger requested Taj to consider counselling for drug addiction as directed although on probation and to fork out $5,000 in restitution.