U.K. Man Makes off With 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs
Police cracked the case and foiled the crime.
Rachel Laughman/Getty Images
A craving for Cadbury Creme Eggs can make people do wild things. Of course, for most of us, that means eating more of them out of your Easter basket than you originally intended. For a British man named Joby Pool, though, it meant backing up a truck and making off with 200,000 of the colorful foil-wrapped delicacies that are a sweetly addictive staple of the spring candy season.
Pool was arrested in Telford, England, last week when police caught up to him “surrounded by a mountain” of Creme Eggs, the BBC reports. The 32-year-old candy thief had surrendered with his hands up because he recognized that, like the candy he’d stolen, he was “foiled too,” the British news service added.
“West Mercia Police has helped save Easter for Creme Egg fans,” the police triumphantly tweeted after nabbing the egg thief.
After pleading guilty to criminal damage and theft, Pool was subsequently convicted and taken into custody. He is due for sentencing in March and may serve substantial time, the Guardian reports.
While reports of the crime offered plenty of opportunities for egg puns — “crack [the] case,” etc. — and references to an Easter bunny run amok, Pool was no crime dilettante. Prosecutors allege he used a stolen truck with fake license plates to swipe a trailer full of the candy eggs, along with other kinds of chocolate treats, from an industrial storage area on Saturday, February 11.
The heist, in which Pool used a metal grinder to access the sizable stash of seasonal treats, was not a “spur-of-the-moment” crime of opportunity and had clearly required “significant” advance planning, prosecutors say. Pool, who has previous convictions for similar crimes and was described by his lawyer as “self-employed,” was caught by police on a highway as he tried to get away with his massive candy haul.
The candy was estimated to be worth £31,000 (about $37,500 USD) and was recovered in good condition. “There has been no interference with the food products that were taken,” Pool’s lawyer, John McMillan, tells the court. “They will be in a condition that they can go back on the shelves.”
For fans of the candy, that is, of course, eggcellent news.
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