Jail for drug dealing gang who struck gold

FOUR members of a gang who bought gold bars with the proceeds of their drug dealing have been jailed for a total of more than 11 years.
Police had kept the six-strong gang under surveillance for 18 months after learning some of them were dealing Class A and B drugs throughout Crewe.
Officers then followed members to Birmingham's jewellery quarter where they bought gold bars for cash earned through dealing illegal drugs.
The gang was laundering between £7,000 and £14,000 a time by buying fine gold ingots with their drugs cash.
Police arrested three of the gang members, Bobby Palin, Andrew Arrowsmith and Shane Arrowsmith, on the M6 in April last year on their way back from Birmingham. And the next day police caught another gang member, Carl Arrowsmith, back in the jewellery quarter with four gold bars valued at £27,650.

Read More - http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Jail-drug-dealing-gang-struck-gold/story-14995354-detail/story.html

Concerns over rise in Asian gold jewellery thefts after Oldbury woman robbed

A JUDGE has expressed his concern at the growing number of robberies on Asian women for their gold jewellery after an Oldbury victim had her £2,000 necklace snatched as she waited for a bus.

The woman had been worshipping at a temple and was in Dudley Road East when 18-year-old Theo Josephs pounced and grabbed the necklace which broke as he pulled it from around her neck.

The teenager then drove away but he was arrested after Candice Morton, also aged 18, sold the necklace for just £280 to a shop in Birmingham's Jewellery quarter.

Judge John Wait said it was clear robberies on Asian women for their gold were becoming "prevalent" since the price of the precious metal had rocketed in recent months.

Article source - http://www.halesowennews.co.uk/news/9477712.Concerns_over_rise_in_Asian_gold_jewellery_thefts_after_Oldbury_woman_robbed/

Medals: from collecting them to making them

Former collector Phil McDermott has beaten the Royal Mint to the contract for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Many nine-year-old boys dream of being a train driver or an astronaut – and end up with a career in accountancy or health and safety management instead.

Phil McDermott, a 51-year-old from Birmingham, has stayed rather truer to the dreams of his youth. When he was nine, he started collecting medals. Forty-two years later, he has landed a £7 million contract to make 450,000 medals for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next year.

Worcestershire Medal Services, the small firm McDermott set up with his former wife in 1988 with a lump sum of £120, beat off competition from a stunned Royal Mint, which was founded more than 1,100 years ago. “This has caused one hell of a shock,” an insider recently told the Telegraph’s Mandrake column.

McDermott looks a little shocked himself. “It’s amazing,” he says in a soft Brummie accent, showing us round his factory in the city’s jewellery quarter. “I can’t believe I’m sat here making the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.”

Article source = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/8978346/Medals-from-collecting-them-to-making-them.html