A SEDGLEY thief is behind bars for his part in a massive two-day raid carried out with military precision.

Paul Hawkins was jailed for four years following his trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court where a jury heard he was a member of a team of crooks who stole metal worth £81,000.

The audacious raid took place in March 2011 at Midland Steel Sections in Kingswinford where the gang got away with a haul of Russian-made steel and two flatbed trucks.

As he passed sentence, Judge Michael Dudley, said: "This was a highly sophisticated and planned burglary carried out with military precision,"

"It is crystal clear that an insider was involved but the only insider prosecuted was cleared by the jury."

Hawkins, aged 41, from Fell Meadow Way, who was part of a seven-man gang jailed for a total of 16 years, had denied conspiracy to commit burglary.

Darron Whitehead, prosecuting, said the gang struck only minutes after the firm closed for the weekend and they then spent 36 hours stealing the metal using the overhead crane on the site.

He said the men ignored less valuable metal on the site as they used two large trucks to make five trips to carry away the steel.

The thieves took around 63 tons of steel valued at £44,000 to the Oldbury Metal Recycling plant in Parsonage Street.

That metal, said Mr Whitehead, was found hidden under a pile of scrap metal by police officers acting on information just two days after the Kingswinford raid.

The stolen wagons were found abandoned on the Stafford Industrial Estate in Telford.

Police used high-tech number plate recognition cameras to track a silver Ford Focus, which had been acting suspiciously around the estate days before the theft, as far as Manchester where more of the stolen metal was recovered.

Pc Simon Andrews, from Brierley Hill police station, said: "The gang carried out a slick burglary operation without causing any damage to the premises; fortunately the disposal of the metal was not as sophisticated as they had planned for.

"I hope these sentences send a clear message to owners of metal yards that we will actively come into your yards, look through your books and arrest anyone who is not trading legally."