£1m stolen vehicle ring busted as gang jailed for stripping cars including a Ferrari

Three members of a notorious car theft gang, responsible for handling up to £1m worth of stolen vehicles, have been sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison combined. The criminal outfit, led by Michael Kozub and Filip Zablocki, was busted after an extensive police investigation revealed their 'chop shops' where they would dismantle stolen cars.

Detectives disclosed that Kozub, 46, Zablocki, 31, and their accomplices were the primary contacts for thieves across South East England, who would deliver stolen cars to them. The gang would then break down the vehicles - even once slicing a Ferrari in half - before relocating and later exporting the separate parts.

A 17-month investigation involving three police forces led to the downfall of the key players in this criminal operation, resulting in the conviction and imprisonment of three members, with another narrowly escaping jail time. This meticulous probe into the four-man gang was launched following a previous case which saw other criminals convicted for stealing over 125 cars.

Officers dedicated countless hours to analysing phone messages during the investigation, which spanned 2022 and 2023, and discovered that the criminal enterprise operated on a massive scale, with car thieves doing the dirty work for a central team who handled the stolen goods. Stolen cars from Kent, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and London would be delivered to the four organisers, who used two locations as their chop shops.

The gang dismantled the stolen cars, including a pricey Ferrari that was later found sliced in half by officers. After one of their sites in Horley, West Sussex, was discovered by police last autumn, they quickly moved to another location in Crawley, also in West Sussex.

However, detectives were hot on their trail and located the operation at its new base. Kozub, from Wandsworth in south London, and Zablocki, from Mitcham in south London, were identified as the key players in this illicit operation.

They were known as the 'go-to' contacts for car thieves across Southeast England, arranging for stolen vehicles to be delivered to their chop shops and maintaining close ties with a wide network of convicted car thieves. Kozub was sentenced to six years and three months behind bars after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to receive stolen goods, with Brighton Magistrates' Court also imposing a serious crime prevention order.

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Zablocki received a two-year and eight-month sentence for the same offences, plus an additional charge for possession of cocaine. Their accomplice, Dominik Mrzyglod, ran a transportation business and was tasked with moving the stolen cars, either whole or in parts, out of the UK.

The 46 year old, from Walton-on-Thames in northwest Surrey, pleaded guilty as his trial approached and was handed a three-year and one-month prison sentence.

The gang's mechanic, 49 year old Mariusz Parafiniuk from Lewisham in southeast London, was found guilty of conspiracy to receive stolen goods in April after a trial at Guildford Crown Court. He was handed a 15-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £2000 in costs.

Detective Inspector Dan Voller, from Surrey Police 's Serious and Organised Crime Unit, revealed that the total value of cars handled by the gang was nearly a million pounds. "These sentences are a result of excellent teamwork between several teams in Surrey Police and joint working with colleagues in the Metropolitan Police and Hampshire Constabulary," he said.

He added: "This included hours of meticulous searching through mobile phone evidence to prove there was a case to answer for conspiracy. We recovered cars worth over half a million pounds and believe that the total value of the cars that passed through this gang's operation is close to a million pounds."

"We traced a network of messages involving numerous people, across multiple phones and social media channels as deals were done for stolen high-value vehicles. Alongside that was a detailed analysis of ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) technology as we tracked the cars on their journeys, and of the gang's bank accounts. Kozub claimed the storage unit was simply where he innocently kept his jet ski, but this was proven to be a lie."

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Natalie Parker, from the Met Police's South Area Proactive Investigations Team, said: "It was great to work with our policing partners to tackle crime important to our communities. Through joint working it was established that both Surrey Police and the Metropolitan Police had identified members of the same group through separate investigations."

"Both organisations were then able to pool their resources to ensure a successful outcome for the victims in the case as well as the wider public. In South London alone we saw a reduction in burglaries of over 30 per cent in the aftermath of this operation. I look forward to continue working collaboratively to achieve brilliant outcomes in the pursuit of justice."