“A-Team” Locked Behind Bars for 32 Years for Theft and Burglary

The man behind the scenes is William Castle.  He was living a wealthy life filled with expensive family cruises, sporting designer clothes and luxury items bought for his home all while still satisfying his gambling habit.  He enjoyed the lavish life apparently living off just benefits.

It was a very deceiving lifestyle, as the 50-year-old man was paying for all his extravagance through stealing from businesses across Hampshire and southern England. However, William Castle didn’t do it alone, as he was assisted by a group of trusted “lieutenants,” Castle managed to steal more than £250,000, which is equivalent to about $409,250.00 in U.S. currency in cash, plus goods by breaking into warehouses, shops, restaurants and a garden centre.

The team even managed to steal a safe from Winchester’s InTech science centre – a charity-run museum that works with schools across Hampshire.  The team was no ordinary and inexperienced group.  They raided the areas wearing dark hooded tops and balaclavas where they would cut phone lines, destroyed CCTV cameras, removed alarms off walls and cover smoke detectors to avoid being disturbed and detected.

They would often operate during the dark and after hours, they used angle grinders to cut their way into safes and steal whatever they found from tons of copper piping, iPods and electrical goods to Argos jewelry. Apparently they were compared to the “A-Team,” a popular television show during the 1980s where the members of the team would perform outlandish stunts.

However, the police caught up to the group of criminals after watching Castle, and through phone records, DNA evidence and CCTV footage, they were able to prove that all six group members were involved in the crimes. Today, Castle and his team are behind bars after being jailed for a total of 32 years.

After being caught with stealing the safe from InTech, Castle was pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary and money laundering. He was only receiving £200 a night from his Jobseekers’ allowance, yet he was able to pay for a family trip to the Canary Islands as well as another cruise later in the year that totaled to £6,000.   Not only did he manage to pay for those expensive cruises, but even managed to throw away £85,000 in gambling in just seven months. The estimated total of stolen goods was £300,000 plus the ten of thousands of pounds of damage done to the properties they destroyed.

Judge Gary Burrell described Castle as the “career criminal” who was the “ringleader” of the gang, responsible for organizing and initiating the burglaries. He said that Castle was even going to commit even more burglaries as they were “daring risk taking” that he found “breathtaking.” The judge also described one of the crime scenes at the Argos Store as an “extremely audacious attack” where access to the building was “like something from the A-Team through skylight.”