Sheffield robber involved in £140,000 armed raid finally jailed after four year international manhunt
A four-year long international manhunt for the mastermind of a violent robbery of rare Porsche parts has finally paid off - with the criminal set to spend the next eight years behind bars.
Wahseem Fazal, from Sheffield, tried to cheat justice by fleeing the country after he was charged over the armed robbery at a specialist car repair business in Water Lane, Holbeck, West Yorkshire, in September 2015.
At the time of the robbery, the business owner - a specialist in high-value sports cars - had been repairing a red Porsche Carrera GT, then valued between £600,000 and £800,000.
Fazal masterminded a plan to steal valuable parts with a team of five others.
Two of those, Mark Davies and Kai Kennedy, infiltrated the business on September 26, 2015, with a revolver and demanded ‘the red parts’.
A victim at the garage was pistol-whipped, gagged, blindfolded with duct tape and taped to a chair during the incident.
They made off with £140,000 worth of Porsche Carrera GT parts.
The victim managed to free himself from the chair and raise the alarm with a member of staff at a neighbouring business who contacted the police and ambulance.
He needed stitches to the wound to his side and other treatment for the injuries to his head.
Detective work based on CCTV footage of the incident managed to link the crime back to the pair as well as Owen Walcott, his brother Harry Mahoney and Fazal.
All six were charged to appear at Leeds Magistrates in November 2018 but Walcott and Fazal failed to attend court and went on the run.
Protracted enquiries located Walcott in Bulgaria and he was detained by the Bulgarian authorities in March 2019 and extradited back to the UK.
Painstaking work to locate Fazal showed he had left the UK by Eurostar in November 2016 and had been with Walcott in Bulgaria in 2017 before moving around between Tunisia, Greece and Tenerife.
The manhunt faced delays during the Covid pandemic but was reinvigorated in summer 2022 with information suggesting Fazal was in Athens.
DS Ailis Coates, of West Yorkshire Police, liaised with the Greek authorities through Interpol and identified an address for him.
He was arrested in Athens and brought back to the UK in October 2022 under a Trade and Co-operation Agreement warrant.
Fazal entered a guilty plea to the offence of conspiracy to commit robbery and today at Leeds Crown Court the 40-year-old was sentenced to eight years and ten months in prison.
His co-conspirators had previously been sentenced at the same court in 2019.
Det Ch Insp Phil Jackson, who led the investigation, said: “Fazal’s imprisonment today finally brings to a successful conclusion an investigation that originally began eight years ago.
“This was a very serious offence during which the victim was put through a terrifying ordeal as part of a carefully planned and orchestrated robbery which was motivated purely by greed.
“This has been a lengthy and challenging investigation where Detective Sergeant Coates, as officer in the case, has continued to demonstrate a commendable amount of tenacity in her relentless pursuit of those involved, most notably Fazal as the main person behind it.
“He tried to evade justice by leaving the country and relocating around Europe and Africa in the hope that he could avoid having to answer for his actions.
“The extensive efforts that eventually paid off and saw him brought back to the UK to face justice should clearly illustrate to wanted offenders that their debt never goes away.”
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