Moment police arrest Romanian shoplifters who helped steal £200,000 of goods from Tesco – before one tells officers he ‘no speak English’
This is the moment police arrested a prolific Romanian shoplifter at home after his gang stole nearly £200,000 worth of goods, before he told them: ‘No speak English.’
Bodycam footage shows detectives putting Nicolae Boia in handcuffs in Hounslow, West London, after establishing he was part a gang behind 120 crimes across the UK.
One Surrey Police officer tells Boia, 30, that he is being arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal; while another detains Oviliv Firan, 38, for the same offence.
The third gang member, Laura Miron, 27, had already been arrested while trying to flee the UK for Ireland during the earlier stages of the ‘Operation Even’ probe.
Boia was later sentenced to two years and 11 months in prison; while Firan was jailed for three and half years in prison; and Miron received three years and three months.
Video of Boia and Firan being arrested features in the latest episode of Channel 5 documentary series ‘Police Interceptors: Taking Down the Shoplifting Gangs’.
The show follows the police investigation into the three members of the Romanian organised crime group responsible for 120 offences and almost £200,000 of loss.
Surrey Police Constable Zoe Dodd tells producers: ‘I had never taken on a job this big before. The problem with the case files was the vast amount of evidence we had.
Police arrive at the property in Hounslow, West London, to arrest two Romanian shoplifters
One officer quickly finds Nicolae Boia dressed only in shorts in a downstairs room at the house
Boia is placed in handcuffs at the property in Hounslow seconds into the police raid
Boia tells a police officer during the raid: ‘No speak English.’ She replies: ‘No, OK?’
Another officer then also arrests Oviliv Firan, 38, in another room at the Hounslow property
Boia is put in a police van before detectives begin searching the property for stolen goods
‘We had so many jobs up and down the UK with so many bits of CCTV. It was just trying to watch it all and trying to figure out which part each member played on that particular date.’
She then reveals that Miron tried to flee Britain midway through the investigation.
PC Dodd says: ‘Miron was arrested at the border trying to go to Ireland, we believe, before we were ready to go with the case. We sent two officers down that night to go and pick her up because we were worried about losing her.
‘Miron was brought to Guildford custody. We had Firan and Boia still outstanding and we were quite concerned that they were also going to flee, so that sort of forced our hands quicker into getting intel to go to the court and get a warrant.’
The programme then shows bodycam footage from the arrest in Hounslow, with a police van pulling up before officers get out – with at least five outside the property.
One shouts: ‘Police, can you open the door?’, before an officer uses a crowbar to force entry and quickly finds Boia dressed only in shorts in a downstairs room.
Boia then tells an officer: ‘No speak English.’ She replies: ‘No, OK?’ and then tells him that she is ‘arresting you for conspiracy to theft.’
Another officer then also arrests Finan in another room, and they are both put in a police van before detectives begin searching the property for stolen goods.
They find hundreds of goods from beauty products to electrical items such as Sony headphones, Google Home devices, memory sticks, cigarettes, toothbrushes, cables, make-up, wine, spirits and champagne.
Nicolae Boia, 30, of Hounslow, was sentenced to two years and 11 months in prison
Oviliv Firan, 38, of Hounslow, was sentenced to three and half years in prison
Laura Miron, 27, of Feltham was sentenced to three years and three months in prison
Chief Superintendent Juliet Parker says: ‘Often many lines of crime that they follow, retail crime being one of them, and the funds from that are often ploughed into other areas of criminality.’
PC Dodd then interviews the suspects at Staines police station with a Romanian interpreter, as Miron and Firan both give ‘no comment’ responses.
The team then speak to Boia, who does answer some questions through the interpreter.
Asked whether he knows Firan, Boia says: ‘I know him, as I said we have met just having a barbecue.
He is then questioned over whether it was strange that he was unaware Firan was in a shop at the same time as him, but replies: ‘I haven’t seen him, perhaps had I seen him.’
Boia is then asked whether he often carries a backpack, and says: ‘I have been using the backpack. Not very often, but I have.’
He then denies that the backpack is foil lined, and denies ever having worked as a team in order to steal items.
All three suspects were charged with conspiracy to steal and remanded in prison for trial. They pleaded not guilty, but changed their pleas before the trial to guilty at Guildford Crown Court on October 28, 2024.
They were sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on November 8 that year.
The thieves were responsible for crimes targeting large supermarkets including Tesco and focusing on stealing razors, alcohol, fragrances and beauty and electric goods.
CCTV footage shows the trio’s orchestrated theft, as they shield each other’s criminal acts
The crooks targeted high-value items including champagne, razors, alcohol and fragrances
Video of one theft shows them wheeling a trolley in front of another to block the view of staff
Miron is seen swapping baskets with Boia with all three acting like they don’t know each other
Boia scoops items from the shelves into a rucksack before he putting it on and walking away
Surrey Police Constable Zoe Dodd tells the documentary about the ‘vast amount of evidence’
In their highest value theft, they also stole champagne bringing the value of just one spree to more than £4,500. While the total amount of stolen goods was proven at just under £200,000, police estimated its true total to be much higher.
One of the gang would act as a lookout whilst others concealed items. They would then either make no attempt to pay before leaving the store or make a small token purchase at a self-checkout.
The group were even known to change clothes before returning to the same store to commit more offences.
Crimes connected to the group were linked from across the country as far as Poole and Portsmouth in the south, Bristol in the west, Gillingham in the east and Chorley and Wigan in the north.
There were 11 offences committed in Surrey, where the force’s officers worked with Tesco and were able to prove the greater crime of organised conspiracy and convict all three suspects of 120 offences.
The three defendants were key figures in a much larger organised crime gang responsible for around 800 offences across the UK, and police said at the time of their sentencing that they believe the entire gang had stopped operating since the arrests.
The Mail on Sunday reported in November 2024 that a national police unit set up to tackle the scourge of shoplifting across Britain had identified more than 20 gangs and 200 criminals fuelling the epidemic.
The gangs, many believed to be East European, were responsible for millions of pounds of thefts each year, and were also suspected of human trafficking and exploiting vulnerable individuals.
Operation Opal was an intelligence-gathering unit set up in May 2024 to uncover the organised criminal groups behind shop thefts.
‘Police Interceptors: Taking Down the Shoplifting Gangs’ continues on Channel 5 on Monday, March 9 at 9pm. Watch and stream on 5