JLR employee steals £2 million in car parts - The Leamington Observer

JLR employee steals £2 million in car parts

Leamington Editorial 28th Jan, 2017   0

A ‘STAGGERINGLY dishonest’ Jaguar Land Rover employee who stole car parts worth up to £2 million from the company’s Gaydon site has been ordered to pay more than £260,000 in compensation.

Disgraced former logistics co-ordinator Simon Wensley, who had used his own automotive business as a cover to sell the stolen parts, is currently serving a five-year jail term.

The 56 year-old of Kingsbury Road, Coundon, Coventry, had denied the theft and two fraud charges, but was convicted after a four-week trial at Warwick Crown Court in May last year.

On that occasion a hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act was adjourned for a police financial investigation into his assets to be carried out.




Prosecutor Rupert Jones said Wensley’s benefit from the thefts had been nearly £847,000 – and, taking into account a share in the value of the marital home, his assets totalled just over £260,261. So Judge Stephen Eyre QC made a confiscation order in that amount under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

He ordered it to be paid in full within three months, with Wensley facing an additional three years in jail in default, and to be used to pay compensation to JLR Gaydon.


During the trial prosecutor Laura Hobson said the thefts took place between 2010 and early 2013 when Wensley worked in the JLR vehicle safety department at its Gaydon site.

He had worked there since 2006 through a company called Wenztec Ltd, of which he was sole director, first as a project engineer and then returning in 2010 as a logistics co-ordinator for the vehicle safety department.

Miss Hobson said the thefts came to light when JLR’s investigation department noticed large numbers of parts were being ordered for no apparent reason.

Almost 4,500 parts, with a retail value of more than £2million, were ordered by Wensley for vehicles which were no longer being produced, but which could be sold on to owners of such vehicles.

Miss Hobson added in 2011 and 2012 Wensley had also defrauded HMRC by claiming motor expenses for using his own vehicle for work when he was actually using the JLR van.

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