Highway robbers Alberto Chivea and Constantin Tanase

by Paul Hooper

A gang of Romanian thieves – dubbed ‘modern-day highwaymen' were jailed for a total of 19 years today.

The four posed as police officers and cruised the M20 and A20 in Kent looking for cars with foreign visitors before forcing them to stop.

A court heard how they used fake badges, police “stop” signs and flashing blue lights to convince drivers and passengers to hand over thousands of pounds.

The thieves –who all admitted a conspiracy to steal – received jail terms from three and a half years to five years four months.

Highway robbers Ninel Besleaga and Ionui-Stefanita Iorga

Judge James O’Mahony told them: “This was organised professional crime where you carried out serious thefts of victims in cars on the highway.”

Prosecutor Janet Weeks had told Canterbury Crown Court how the gang of four struck between August and November last year.

She said they were “modern-day highwaymen” who had carried out a “particularly unpleasant enterprise, targeting foreign nationals and directly undermining confidence in the police”.

Ms Weeks told how waiter Constantin Tanase, 24, car-washers Ionut Iorga, 27, and Ninel Besleaga, 30 and dad-of-three Alberto Chivea, 25, had travelled in convoy in two cars along the M20 and A20.

They struck first on September 8 stopping a Portuguese national Manuel Feteira-Mendes near Capel-Le-Ferne on the A20 when two of the gang flashed a fake police warrant card and conned him into handing over £2500 in cash.

Canterbury Crown Court, where the case was heard

Six days later they struck again at Junction 11 on the M20 stopping a minibus with Police nationals telling them the police needed to check their cash – gang members then ran to a waiting BMW and vanished.

On October 6 they attacked again at the Maidstone Services, again stopping a minibus and claiming they were police conducting a drugs search.

The victim discovered a bag containing cash had been taken before the gang again drove away in the BMW.

Four days later a Ford Transit van driver was parked at the Stop24 services on the M20 when he was awoken by someone kicking the door.

The thieves then showed a fake police badge before taking Euro3750 from a jacket.

But the fake coppers came a cropper when they tried to steal from the same man three days later.

Ms Weeks said the victim recognised one of the gang – and grabbed a spanner and hit the bogus policeman, forcing him to run away.

She said there were two more similar incidents in Capel-Le Ferne and Dover when the gang claimed they were police looking for hidden guns, drugs and money.

The highwaymen were eventually stopped on October 31 when their cars – carrying fake identification numbers – were spotted travelling towards Folkestone.

Three of the men lived at addresses in London and Essex and the fourth claimed he had come to the UK to collect a car.

Iorga was jailed for five years and four months; Tanase and Besleaga for five years and Chivea – who had joined the conspiracy only at the end, to three and a half years in prison.

All four, who admitted some of the robberies, are expected to be deported to Romania when they finish their sentences.