Sent down for 15 months
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Ex-Man United player jailed over stolen car parts
An ex-Manchester United player has been jailed for 15 months for selling on parts from stolen high-performance cars.
Police stumbled upon the illegal vehicle-breaking operation of Ronnie Wallwork, 34, while investigating a string of unconnected armed robberies across Lancashire.
Wallwork, from Failsworth, Manchester, was working out of a rented scrapyard unit in Newton Heath when he was arrested last November.
It emerged he had sold a Volkswagen Touran engine and parts from a BMW 318i on eBay, while he was observed driving a Mazda Furano into the scrapyard three days after it was stolen from a car dealer.
The three stolen vehicles he was linked to were worth more than £43,000 in total, Preston Crown Court heard.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of handling stolen goods at an earlier hearing.
Sentencing him, Judge Simon Newell said he could not agree with the defence barrister's request to impose a suspended jail term.
He said: "These were high-value items that were stolen.
"It seems to me they were taken in a professional and sophisticated way. It also seems clear to me that they were taken to go into the black market either to be sold on or broken down and sold on.
"You provided the facility for that to happen. There was an element of organisation and sophistication in what went on."
Wearing a grey suit, Wallwork stared ahead blankly before he was led to the cells from the dock.
Wallwork, who represented England at under-20 level, joined United as a trainee in 1993 but struggled to command a first team place and was loaned to a number of clubs before he joined West Bromwich Albion in 2002.
Loan periods at Bradford City, Barnsley and Huddersfield Town followed before he moved to Sheffield Wednesday in 2008 where he made just seven appearances.
The main targets of the surveillance by the North West Regional Crime Squad between September and October 2010 were career criminals Craig Bulger and Mark Cain - who shot a security guard several times at a Tesco branch in Preston.
Bulger, 51, had been tracked to the same scrapyard where Wallwork was based.
In June, Cain, 48, of Ashfield Rise, Catterall, and Bulger, of Scotland Hall Road, Newton Heath, were both given indeterminate sentences with minimum terms of more than seven years after admitting armed robbery and possessing firearms.
Today, Sarah Johnston, prosecuting, said the VW Touran worth £12,340 had been stolen from an address in Worsley in March 2010, the BMW worth £15,000 in a burglary in Wigan in September 2010, and the Mazda worth £16,000 was stolen from a compound at Nidd Vale garage in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, later the same month.
The driving licence of the BMW driver was later found at Wallwork's home address, along with a disabled badge belonging to the motorist's mother.
Wallwork made no comment when interviewed on the matters by detectives.
Judge Newell said he had received a number of references on the defendant's behalf and accepted his footballing career regretfully came to an end with a criminal act in which he played no part.
But he added: "You are a man who had employment, who had a stable upbringing and knew well how to behave yourself in public and you let yourself down at the end of 2010.
"I am afraid I am not able to accede to the request to suspend sentence."
Wallwork received 15 months concurrently on each of the three counts.
An ex-Manchester United player has been jailed for 15 months for selling on parts from stolen high-performance cars.
Police stumbled upon the illegal vehicle-breaking operation of Ronnie Wallwork, 34, while investigating a string of unconnected armed robberies across Lancashire.
Wallwork, from Failsworth, Manchester, was working out of a rented scrapyard unit in Newton Heath when he was arrested last November.
It emerged he had sold a Volkswagen Touran engine and parts from a BMW 318i on eBay, while he was observed driving a Mazda Furano into the scrapyard three days after it was stolen from a car dealer.
The three stolen vehicles he was linked to were worth more than £43,000 in total, Preston Crown Court heard.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of handling stolen goods at an earlier hearing.
Sentencing him, Judge Simon Newell said he could not agree with the defence barrister's request to impose a suspended jail term.
He said: "These were high-value items that were stolen.
"It seems to me they were taken in a professional and sophisticated way. It also seems clear to me that they were taken to go into the black market either to be sold on or broken down and sold on.
"You provided the facility for that to happen. There was an element of organisation and sophistication in what went on."
Wearing a grey suit, Wallwork stared ahead blankly before he was led to the cells from the dock.
Wallwork, who represented England at under-20 level, joined United as a trainee in 1993 but struggled to command a first team place and was loaned to a number of clubs before he joined West Bromwich Albion in 2002.
Loan periods at Bradford City, Barnsley and Huddersfield Town followed before he moved to Sheffield Wednesday in 2008 where he made just seven appearances.
The main targets of the surveillance by the North West Regional Crime Squad between September and October 2010 were career criminals Craig Bulger and Mark Cain - who shot a security guard several times at a Tesco branch in Preston.
Bulger, 51, had been tracked to the same scrapyard where Wallwork was based.
In June, Cain, 48, of Ashfield Rise, Catterall, and Bulger, of Scotland Hall Road, Newton Heath, were both given indeterminate sentences with minimum terms of more than seven years after admitting armed robbery and possessing firearms.
Today, Sarah Johnston, prosecuting, said the VW Touran worth £12,340 had been stolen from an address in Worsley in March 2010, the BMW worth £15,000 in a burglary in Wigan in September 2010, and the Mazda worth £16,000 was stolen from a compound at Nidd Vale garage in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, later the same month.
The driving licence of the BMW driver was later found at Wallwork's home address, along with a disabled badge belonging to the motorist's mother.
Wallwork made no comment when interviewed on the matters by detectives.
Judge Newell said he had received a number of references on the defendant's behalf and accepted his footballing career regretfully came to an end with a criminal act in which he played no part.
But he added: "You are a man who had employment, who had a stable upbringing and knew well how to behave yourself in public and you let yourself down at the end of 2010.
"I am afraid I am not able to accede to the request to suspend sentence."
Wallwork received 15 months concurrently on each of the three counts.
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