A disabled drug user has been jailed for stealing petrol from outlets across the East Midlands to fund his drugs habit. Thirty-three-year-old Steven Argo used false number plates to rob 44 petrol stations across Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, by driving off without paying. He sold jerry cans full of fuel at £10 a time so he could buy drugs, after stealing over £1,800-worth of fuel over two years.

 

Market Harborough magistrates were told how Argo, of Coventry Road, Market Harborough, was caught after police spotted the front passenger side of a Rover 400 scraping along the road without a front passenger wheel.

 

It had false number plates and drugs were also found in the car. Police then discovered that the Rover 400 was suspected of having been used to steal fuel from a string of other outlets.

 

On September 8 Argo was jailed for 14 weeks by Corby magistrates for breaching an earlier suspended sentence connected with fuel theft, but at the end of last month he was ordered to serve an extra 16 weeks by Harborough magistrates.

 

He admitted stealing the fuel and also pleaded guilty to possessing amphetamines and driving dangerously.