A Romanian man who came to this country to join a team of thieves who burgled a Malvern home and attempted to break in to a Worcester property has been jailed.

Daniel-Constantin Tudor took part in raids on five houses, including a house in Gloucester Road, Malvern where jewellery, collectable coins and £600 in cash was taken, and attempted to break into a house in Malvern Road, Worcester.

Warwick Crown Court was told that the gang responsible had previously carried out about a dozen raids on homes in Clevedon.

In February they turned their attention to Worcestershire, said Ben Williams, prosecuting.

They later also burgled a house in Stratford-on-Avon.

Tudor, aged 21, of no fixed address but who was staying in Handsworth, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to four charges of burglary and asked for another to be considered.

Mr Williams said Tudor’s blood or fingerprints had been left at the scene of each break-in.

His details were on record because he had been caught shoplifting very soon after arriving in this country in January.

International enquiries revealed that Tudor had been jailed for three-and-a-half years as a teenager in Romania, and then had a conviction in Italy for conspiring to steal before coming to the UK, said Mr Williams.

Nick Devine, defending, said Tudor arrived on Saturday, January 28, and found himself in league with a man he named as ‘Bandaras’, who was involved in a campaign of burglary which had been going on since before he came to this country.

Jailing Tudor, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him through a Romanian interpreter: “You came to this country to join a group of people in a campaign of burglary.

“You are not to be punished for what they did before you arrived, but only for what you have done; that is you committed five burglaries of people’s homes.”

He said his “starting point” for sentencing Tudor was five years, but was giving him a discount of one third for his early guilty pleas.