Five due in court after police discover £600k haul of stolen cars near Worksop

Nottinghamshire Police officers found a silver Land Rover Defender and a black Land Rover Sport HSE – reported stolen from addresses in the West Midlands – when they raided a shipping container at a farm in Ollerton Road, Carburton, on October 15, 2023.

Outbuildings at the farm were subsequently searched and a further five vehicles – also reported stolen – were discovered. They included two BMWs, two Mercedes and a red Jaguar F-Pace V6. Checks found the cars had been reported stolen from London, Warwickshire, Birmingham, Derbyshire and Newcastle.

The warrant was executed as part of a wider investigation into the seizure of five shipping containers – each containing stolen vehicles – that were intercepted at ports in London, Felixstowe and Southampton, also in October 2023.

Thirteen stolen vehicles were recovered across the five containers, including two Lexuses, two Toyotas, a Jaguar, three BMWs, an Audi, Mercedes and three Land Rovers. They were destined to be shipped to United Arab Emirates.

The overall value of the 20 vehicles seized from the ports and the Nottinghamshire farm is approximately £600k.

Following a lengthy investigation by Nottinghamshire Police, the following defendants have been charged with conspiring to receive stolen goods, Janine Fowles-Smith, 69, of Ollerton Road, Carburton, Worksop; Michael Fowles-Smith, 64, of Ollerton Road, Carburton, Worksop; Mohsen Ahmadi, 40, of Cherwell Road, Bedford; Ahmed Mohammed, 46, of Nelson Place, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent and Mustafa Noorahmad, 43, of Hetley, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough.

All five defendants are due to appear at Mansfield Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, January 14.

Detective Inspector James Oakton, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: “This has been a complex and lengthy investigation spanning many months and we are pleased to have now charged five individuals.

“We know the impact vehicle theft has on victims and that is why we are doing everything we can to make this a hostile county for car thieves to operate in.

“As demonstrated by this investigation, our work stretches beyond recovering individual stolen cars and encompasses the wider network of criminality behind each theft.”