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£312,000 hijackers made to pay back £1
FIVE men who made off with more than £312,000 worth of mobile phones after hijacking a lorry on a South Yorkshire motorway have been ordered to pay back just £1 each.
Leon Barran, aged 27, Adam Littlewood, 31, Jason Scargill, 21, Richard Rowley, 31 and Stephen Widdowson, 50, were sentenced to a total of 40 years in May 2009 for hijacking an 02 mobile phone lorry and making off with the contents.
The gang were back at Sheffield Crown Court to face a Proceeds of Crime hearing to seize their assets.
The court heard the five men were in a decommissioned police car when they approached the lorry at junction 36 on the M1, at Tankersley.
They ordered the driver to pull over, bundled him into the back of the marked car, handcuffed him and put a cushion over his head.
They drove him to a remote spot and tied him to a fence.
The lorry was torched at a remote site near Doncaster.None of the mobile phones and accessories were recovered.
The men were tracked down after one panicked and threw off his glove after setting himself on fire as they were burning the lorry.
From DNA on the glove the police traced his phone and the five were arrested.
Prosecutor Tina Dempster said the value of goods in the lorry was just over 312,000 but sold illegally it would fetch about 200,000.
It was calculated that each man benefited by 40,000.
Judge Graham Robinson ordered the men to pay back just 1 each as they don't have enough to pay the rest.
He said if they ever came into any money they would have to pay back the rest.
At the trial in May last year, Barran, of no fixed address, and Littlewood, of Old Bank Road, Dewsbury, were sentenced to eight years and six months.
Scargill of Lynwood Crescent, Pontefract and Widdowson, of Hatfield Place, Wakefield, were given seven years and Rowley, of Hyrst Garth, Batley, eight years.
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