Birmingham's 'most prolific' shoplifter 'stole £30m worth of goods' in 20-year spree

One of Britain’s most prolific shoplifters has lifted the lid on how she stole an estimated £30m worth of goods during a 20 year crime spree.

Keeley Knowles, 42, funded her drug habit by stealing high value items such as designer clothing and handbags from upmarket stores around Birmingham. She would target shops every morning and raked in up to £8,000 a day selling on the stolen items via a WhatsApp group in order to feed her heroin addiction.

She pinched £3.7 million worth of stock from one shop alone and is thought to have raked in around £30m over the years as ‘Birmingham’s most prolific shoplifter’. Keeley has now revealed how she would fool shop staff by phoning them up pretending to be a police officer to check when security would be on the doors.

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And she would fill a sleeping bag-style jacket from the ‘ground to her armpit’ after slicing up the material to make compartments to conceal the goods. But thanks to a pioneering new treatment for addicts, Keeley is now 18 months clean having turned her life around and is now sharing her story as a warning to others.

Keeley, of Kings Heath, Birmingham, said: “I was known as Birmingham’s most prolific shoplifter for around 20 years. “I was fully involved in the lifestyle. I could easily do seven grams of heroin in a day. When my habit finished I was spending around £1,000 a day.

“Instead of going to supermarkets I would go into upmarket stores and take handbags and purses. I had a WhatsApp group that had around 150 people in it, I’d take photos on the train or bus after coming out of a shop and before I even got half way home it would be sold.

“Money would either go in my bank or I would go and drop it off and collect the money. I knew when people’s pay days were, what size their kids were, what people’s favourite designer was. People think only gangs are organised crime and that’s not right.

“I’d get up in the morning and ring around different stores and I would say: 'Good morning this is PC2417, I’m calling about the theft on Tuesday.’ Because there was always a theft, it’s a big store.

“And then you would always get some really lovely woman who would answer the phone saying ‘there’s no security today’. And I would say ‘oh well, can you tell me when they are back in?’ They would tell me they are not in Monday, Thursday and Friday. And I’d be writing all this down.

“I wore a long Michael Kors sleeping bag coat and sliced it inside. And I’d fill it, right from the floor to up under my armpit. I wouldn’t use a bag to shoplift. I’ve had alarms go off and I’d let them look in my handbag and then just walk outside.

“To make a thousand pounds you’ve got to steal a lot of stuff a day. Some days I’d steal £7,000 to £8,000 worth of stock. The only days I never shoplifted was Christmas Day and Good Friday when the shops weren’t open. So those were my only two days off.”

Keeley’s life of crime began when she was just 13-years-old when she met a 21-year-old man. She was soon hooked on heroin.

Speaking to the Birmz Is Grime blog, she added: “I got in trouble a lot when I was younger, firearms and drugs. I was chosen to travel to Liverpool to pick up kilos of heroin and crack - the equivalent of today's county lines but nobody knew of that back then. I was 13.

“My nan and grandad bought me up, my dad was in jail and I didn’t see my mum. Because of the generation gap I don’t think they knew what was going on. I got away with murder, I think my nan thought I had flu for years, when I was suffering withdrawals. But they were there through everything.

“I got arrested and went to prison around once a year. There’s a store in Selly Oak and their security guard once told an officer I had taken £3.7 million worth of stock.

“And Loss Prevention magazine have estimated it at around £30 million. But if you’re estimating that from me going into a shop once a day, I promise you it's more than that. I’d steal so much I’d have to go get a trolley from Sainsbury’s just to move it.

“There’s no rush to it, it was just what I had to do to feed my addiction. So many security know me, it’s shocking. To the point one stopped me the other week, I haven’t been in trouble for so long either, to say happy birthday.

“I said ‘how do you know it's my birthday?’ and he said ‘Keeley I’ve had to fill out your date of birth constantly for how many years’. I didn’t live, I just existed. I just got up, scored, went grafting, sold it, scored, slept - and I did it all over again.

“I’ve been to jail 28 times here and three times in Amsterdam. There’s only three jails in the country I haven’t been to and its the same faces each time. Women’s jail is like St Trinian’s on crack - that is the best way you can describe it. 90 per cent are there for addiction.

“I thought I would die a junkie.” She said her saving grace was West Midlands Police’s Offending to Recovery programme, which offers support for addicts.

Keeley now works alongside the programme, doing outreach work with drug users and gives talks on the drug Buvidal, a slow-release opioid blocker.

She has also won a National Business crime solutions award and since reconnected with her family. She added: “It was the security guard at the £3.7 million shop who said ‘you’re better than this’ and referred me and got me listed for help with the offending to recovery team.

“I’d love to say I had a big epiphany but I just found the number in a drawer one day and I thought I’d try them. They were telling me about this new treatment and I thought it was bulls**t but I agreed to do it.

“I was having seizures, hallucinations, it was horrific, but then I had this injection and I slept like a normal human, had no cravings. I’ve now tried to make my recovery something for other people as well.

“Seeing somebody who has been even lower than you come out the other end is very different to being told it by somebody who sits in an office and gets paid to do it. I was unfixable, don’t write anyone off. If I can be fixed, anyone can be fixed.”