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Metal detectors jailed for

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thx1138
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PostPosted: 13:13 - 26 Nov 2019    Post subject: Metal detectors jailed for Reply with quote
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-50516329

Quote:
Two metal detectorists have been jailed for stealing a £3m Viking hoard.

George Powell and Layton Davies uncovered about 300 coins in a field in Eye, near Leominster, Herefordshire, in 2015, but did not declare the treasure, instead selling it to dealers.

They were convicted of theft and concealing their find, with Powell, 38, jailed for 10 years and Layton, 51, for eight-and-a-half.

Sentencing, Judge Nicholas Cartwright said they had "cheated" the public.



Yeah. Good lock em up, cos as a member of the public I feel cheated. Rolling Eyes

10 years, really? Wtf? Yet knife wielding dindus get off almost scot free.
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 14:01 - 26 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
That's utterly ridiculous. OK, stupid boys but 10 and 8.5 years, Jesus wept.

Sorry but that is a 'The law is an ass' moment.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 14:38 - 26 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
If I did a £3,000,000 tax fraud or stole £3m off a government department, I'd go to jail for a long time.

It's effectively what they did.

As metal dectectorists, they KNOW the rules on treasure so I have very little sympathy.

They would have been paid out for the find anyway (not full value) and would now have been enjoying a comfortable retirement instead of sitting in Jail.
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Ribenapigeon
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PostPosted: 20:10 - 26 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
I agree with stinkwheel. They knew the rules.
Mind you it is ironic when you consider something like the Elgin Marbles. I wonder if the artifacts will be named after the thieves. Laughing
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Sister Sledge
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PostPosted: 09:23 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Although finds are reported up this way, I'm also aware of detectorists who have found things and not reported them. Not big finds - bronze axe heads for example - but it does make me wonder what else has been found.

But!
Two massive projects up this way boil my urine. One is a massive opencast coal mine. Sure they sent archaeologists in to check the land and dig but not fully. They know of an ancient Stone Age village that once stood there and knew they made and traded beads. The archaeologists discovered a massive and important bead making site of national significance but their reportings were ignored. A few notes written up and the rest simply churned in the hunt for coal - sheer vandalism.
Another project on the A19 near the Tyne Tunnel at Testos Roundabout. It was known for being literally lifting with medieval silver coins. Very little was done to remove all of the artifacts and work began almost immediately.

Testos silver coin:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49130933263_e8f41fc6e6_b.jpgSilver Coin by Craig David, on Flickr

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49131612797_8889435516_b.jpgSilver coin 2 by Craig David, on Flickr

The coin? I was shown how 'bountiful' the land was by someone..
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 09:56 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Polarbear wrote:
That's utterly ridiculous. OK, stupid boys but 10 and 8.5 years, Jesus wept.

Sorry but that is a 'The law is an ass' moment.


Honest question, not snarky, just a "make you think",

If You let me have a poke around your property and I stole a million pound worth of stuff from you, how long would you want my sentence to be?
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The Artist
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PostPosted: 10:23 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Monkeywrencher wrote:
Polarbear wrote:
That's utterly ridiculous. OK, stupid boys but 10 and 8.5 years, Jesus wept.

Sorry but that is a 'The law is an ass' moment.


Honest question, not snarky, just a "make you think",

If You let me have a poke around your property and I stole a million pound worth of stuff from you, how long would you want my sentence to be?


Personally I think prison should be mostly for violent offenders. People that need to be removed from society for the protection of others.

Criminals of other nature should perhaps get short prison sentences, maybe maximum 12 months as a kind of punishment but then unpaid work/community service type thing to make up the rest of their punishment.

Locking people away is barbaric and doesn't help anyone unless the purpose is to keep them away from the public.
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 11:58 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:


That's the sticking point. So anything on public land belongs to the state does it? These remained hidden for thousands of years, it's not like the state even knew about them, or thought they "owned" them.

What if I found them in my garden? Oh, yeah, still state property.


But it wan't found on public land, there was a landowner who was robbed of his half of the compensation for or value of the find. the actual punishment for not reporting a treasure find correctly is only 3 months in prison or an unlimited fine. so the rest of the time must be for the theft of £1 million+ from the land owner.

When he said they had robbed the public he didn't mean finacially he meant culturally.

Quote:
"cheated the farmer, his mother, the landowner and also the public".

"That is because the treasure belongs to the nation," he said.

"The benefit to the nation is these items can be seen and admired by others."


The state would have paid them for the treasure, just maybe not the maximum amount. they wouldn't then sell them at a profit though. their sole reason for not reporting it was to steal it from the landowner.
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Ribenapigeon
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PostPosted: 12:35 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Even on private property the state has rights. Mineral rights for instance.

If those guys had broken into a museum and a few million squids worth of stuff ut would amount to the same thing and nobody would be defending them.
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 14:31 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Your misrepreasenting the states position, If you find some ancient culturally relevant "treasure" the state has a comitee value it and if a museum etc wants the stuff thats what they have to pay you, if no one wants it it's yours.

You're also skating over the fact that they stole it from a private citizen, who owned it because it was in land he rightfully owned, it's more than fair to give half to the person who has the land and half to the person who chances upon it.

A million pounds is a lot to steal from a person.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 14:35 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:


Would it feck. Finding something buried for thousands of years in a field is hardly the same as breaking entry into a museum to steal artefacts.
That's like saying filling your water bottle from a lake in a private field is like breaking into a supermarket and stealing a bottle of mineral water.


Well I'm afraid there you're dead wrong. The Treasure Act 2016, as enacted by your duly elected parliament says so.

Depending on who holds the riparian rights to the water, the bottle of water thing could also be held to be the case. Both would still legally be theft. What if you drove a tanker in and took 1,000 litres of water? Still ok? So we're arguing about the size of the theft, not the act.

In this case, the size of the theft was £3m. That is a pretty big theft by anyones bet. The Hatton Garden burglars got 6 or 7 years each.

The only real difference between theft of a bottle of water from a supermarket and a landowner would be the public interest test which the latter would probably fail. However, I put it to you that the horde of viking treasure holds considerable public interest.

Or is it only laws that you like that should apply?
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Last edited by stinkwheel on 14:37 - 27 Nov 2019; edited 1 time in total
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Ste
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PostPosted: 15:37 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:
Say I find a Spitfire shell when out walking, I'd get prison time for not handing it in would I? At what age or value does it become a crime?

https://i.imgur.com/Hy1138m.jpg
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bhinso
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PostPosted: 16:03 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Prison for ye then laddie. Even had the nerve to custard it...

What about stealing £1M, sounds pretty serious to me.
Yet the bloke proven to be cheating on who wants to be a millionaire was simply given a suspended sentence and asked to give his winnings back. Plus legal fees so one less ivory back scratcher for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ingram
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 16:53 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:


Not at all. It just seems daft that nobody had found them or laid claim to them for thousands of years, yet the moment someone does, someone else declares ownership of objects previously unknown to exist.
At what point did the original owner or offspring lose the rights to them?
When does the state decide they are theirs and the finder and landowner just get a small cut?


you're making arguments from a position based on the incorrect supposition that the treasure would have been seized by the government, this is not the case.

https://www.gov.uk/treasure

Read that it's not long and you'll realise the only person stolen from financially was the land owner, the judge even laid out in plain english, as previously quoted, what he meant by them having stolen from the nation, not state nor government.
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 17:48 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:


I suppose so. It just sits a bit odd when nobody would have knew they were there had it not been for the detector users finding them in the first place.

It's stealing something which nobody knew about the existence of, nor would notice them missing, yet is punishable to a level normally reserved for rape and manslaughter charges.


If you take a million pounds worth of stuff from someone who has a legal right to it you'll do real time especially as in this case where the stuff and any money from it's sale is still missing and there'sno real chance of him ever seeing the money now.
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 18:17 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
How do they (gov, museums or whoever) know how much it's worth if they never got to see and value it?
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 09:45 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Apparently they had pictures on a phone of what they found (deleted but recovered) and they are estimating from those.
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Monkeywrenche...
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PostPosted: 09:54 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
mpd72 wrote:
Monkeywrencher wrote:

If you take a million pounds worth of stuff from someone who has a legal right to it you'll do real time especially as in this case where the stuff and any money from it's sale is still missing and there'sno real chance of him ever seeing the money now.


Stuff that nobody even knew existed, let alone missed until the detectorists got caught...


Schrodingers Treasure though isn't it, it was both valuable and worthless at the same time until it was observed at which point it was valuable and all laws applied to it.
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