A Harrogate man has been jailed for an audacious scam in which he stole at least £50,000 of goods from his employer before selling them on.

Aaren Gasson, 38, was working as a warehouse picker-and-packer at Abacus Direct Ltd in Copgrove, a manufacturer and supplier of bathroom products, where he plundered items from the stock area on no fewer than 200 occasions over a period of nearly three years and took a particular liking to shower mixers, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Kelly Clarke said Gasson’s “simple method” was “picking and packing (the items) in the warehouse without scanning them”, boxing them up with a label, then sending the packages on for sale using the company’s own DPD delivery service.

He began stealing in January 2021 and it wasn’t until November 2023 that he was rumbled after hidden security cameras were installed in the warehouse to catch him out.

She said the most frequently stolen item was a shower mixer with a retail value of more than £537.

Gasson, who had worked at the firm for 15 years, began selling the items ebay but then started receiving repeat orders from a man in Essex who asked him if he had “anything else like that”.

He then delivered the stolen goods to that individual in Romford – using the company’s own delivery service.

Hidden cameras

Realising “something was wrong”, the company director checked CCTV footage in the warehouse and noticed that Gasson had been “keeping out of the way” of the cameras.

The director, whose “suspicions were raised”, then set up hidden cameras to catch Gasson “effectively red-handed”.

Throughout the stealing spree, Gasson had sent out some 200 parcels he had stolen from the company between January 2021 and the end of October 2023.

The father-of-one was arrested after the director called police to say that his employee had been stealing from the company.

When asked by the director how long he had been stealing the shower mixers, Gasson simply replied: “Probably a while.”

Gasson, of Euclid Avenue, Harrogate, was brought in for questioning and told police: “I didn’t want to do it, but I had to do it to survive.”

He was charged with theft by employee, admitted the offence and appeared for sentence today when prosecuting barrister Ms Clarke said the Crown now accepted the £50,000 estimated value of the stolen items.

The prosecution’s estimate was originally “much higher” but they now accepted the value put forward by the defence.

The court heard that the “male recipient” in Essex was never charged with any offence after insisting he thought he was buying legitimate items.

The company boss said that Gasson’s systematic thieving had “come at such a cost” to the business which had to take “further safeguarding measures” to ensure it didn’t happen again.

Early release

Kevin Blount, Gasson’s solicitor advocate, said his client was in debt at the time because he was caring for his father who had been diagnosed with a serious illness which meant that he had to take time off work.

Gasson, who had separated from his partner, ended up in a “financial mess and didn’t know how to get out of it”.

It was then that he began stealing products from his employer and advertised them for sale on ebay.

Judge Simon Hickey said that Gasson had targeted “quite expensive” items on 200 separate occasions when, instead of scanning the goods, he simply boxed them up, labelled them and then “very cheekily used the company’s very own delivery service” to send them to the individual in Essex who was “obviously selling the items on”.

He said Gasson had effectively been stealing from his former employer for about two-and-a-half years, given the time he had taken off work for a broken shoulder.

Gasson was given a 10-month jail sentence yesterday (February 7) but under new early-release legislation, he will serve less than half of that behind bars. He now faces financial-confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act.