Two former employees have been spared jail after thousands of pounds’ worth of stock was stolen from a York warehouse.
Jason Archer, 53, was a senior manager at the Gear4Music’s distribution warehouse in Clifton Moor Gate.
He and his colleague and protege Peter Greenwood, 32, appeared for sentence at York Crown Court yesterday (16 May) after being rumbled by an internal investigation which showed glaring discrepancies in stock levels.
Archer, of Rowan Avenue, New Earswick, ultimately pleaded guilty to four counts of theft including the pilfering of two Yamaha PA systems and a Roland drum kit in April 2021 and the theft of PA speakers in July 2022.
Greenwood, of Green Acres, Huntington, admitted stealing a Yamaha PA system and possessing about £5,800 criminal cash from the sale of stolen items between January 2019 and July 2021.
Their modus operandi was to write off musical items from the warehouse, pack and label them manually rather than through the company’s operating and computer systems and then send them on for delivery and sale to customers in York and North Yorkshire.
Prosecutor Laura Addy said both men were employed by the e-commerce business which supplied music equipment online and had distribution centres in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain.
Archer, who was responsible for stock levels and writing off stock at the warehouse and had worked at the company for many years, was effectively Greenwood’s boss and mentor.
Greenwood was a picker and packer who was promoted to shift manager. His remit also included responsibility for writing off stock.
The pair were rumbled after the company’s inventory control manager discovered an anomaly in stock levels.
The investigator discovered that, in April 2021, items including a Stage Pass PA system had been dispatched from the warehouse without “corresponding order numbers”.
The thousand-watt sound system, worth £820, was related to a customer account which had expired in 2010.
A trawl through CCTV at the warehouse showed that Archer was carrying the parcel outside his office on the day it was sent out. He then placed a label on the package and lifted it onto a forklift lift truck driven by Greenwood for onward distribution and sale.
In another CCTV clip, Greenwood was seen lifting a pallet from a shelf with his forklift truck. Archer then appeared and put two labels on the box.
The investigator found that over £5,700 had been paid into a PayPal account belonging to Greenwood between 2019 and 2021 following the sale of 12 musical items including from the specialist Teenage Engineering brand.
Ms Addy said that about £1,045 from those sales was transferred to Archer.
“Those items were written off by either Mr Greenwood or Mr Archer,” she added.
“The company suffered numerous losses on these items.”
Heroin dealer
Archer had previous convictions for affray, vehicle theft, obtaining property by deception, theft from a dwelling, supplying heroin and crack cocaine, and violence including assault occasioning actual bodily harm and assaulting police officers.
Defence barrister Jordan Millican said that Greenwood, who had no previous convictions, had family responsibilities and had acted “out of character”.
Judge Simon Hickey told the defendants: “Both of you took advantage of (the company’s) trust. You must have realised what a miserable thing it was to have done to this company.”
He described the offences as “very sophisticated albeit quite a simple, underlying system to steal”.
Mr Hickey said the distinction between Archer and Greenwood was the latter’s lack of previous convictions.
However, he said there was a “realistic prospect of rehabilitation” in Archer’s case despite his spending “some considerable time in prison” in the past.
He also noted that Archer’s previous offending was “of some age” and “it’s some 11 years since you were sent to prison”.
He told Greenwood: “You have lost a very good job and caused a very severe breach of trust.”
Archer was given a 14-month suspended jail sentence with 100 hours of unpaid work.
Greenwood received an eight-month prison sentence which was also suspended for 18 months. He was ordered to carry out 80 hours’ unpaid work.