A MAN who allowed a brand new £15,000 Hyundai car stolen from outside a petrol station in Brierley Hill to be stripped down at his Black Country home has avoided jail.
Hugh O'Brien-Quinn, prosecuting, said when police swooped on the house two weeks after the car had been taken they found parts of the vehicle under a covering in the back garden.
He told Wolverhampton Crown Court that 26-year-old Craig Smith informed police officers a man called George had brought the car round and he maintained initially he had not known it was stolen.
Smith, of Ivy Road, Tipton, admitted handling stolen property and he was ordered to carry out 200 hours unpaid work in the community and ordered to pay £2,400 compensation.
Judge Mark Eades told him: "You have not told anybody what was really going on and you have simply raised more questions than have been answered about a relatively sophisticated operation."
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