'Brazen' book thief who made £40,000 selling stolen university texts jailed
Three universities in Edinburgh were targeted by Darren Barr
A 28-year-old who stole tens of thousands of pounds worth of books from three Edinburgh universities has been jailed for over two years.
Today at Edinburgh Sheriff Court Darren Barr, who is also known as Alexander Van De Kamp, was given 25-months in prison for stealing and resetting literature from Edinburgh Napier University, Heriot Watt University and the University of Edinburgh.
Barr managed to sell around 7,000 books online, making an almost £40,000 profit in the process, before he was caught.
Police were initially contacted after staff at Edinburgh Napier University conducted an inventory check of their books and found several thousand books to be missing.
Corstorphine CID officers began an investigation which identified Barr and managed to recover almost 1,300 stolen books from across the UK.
260 of them had been taken from Edinburgh University and Heriot Watt University, with the others belonging to Edinburgh Napier.
The crimes took place over an 11 month period between October 2017 and August 2018.
On 2nd September 2018, Darren Barr was arrested and charged in connection with the theft and illegal resale of the books.
Detective Sergeant Dougal Begg from Corstorphine CID said: "This is one of the most brazen and high-value thefts from our universities that I can ever recall and the amount of money Darren Barr was able to make by resetting stolen books is staggering.
"Had it not been for the staff at Edinburgh Napier University raising their concerns about missing stock, we may never have uncovered what Barr was up to and even larger quantities of books may have ended up being taken from the institutions.
"We conducted a thorough investigation that identified the scale of Darren Barr's offending and ensured he was brought to justice.
"All reports of acquisitive crime are treated with the utmost seriousness and a professional and robust inquiry will always be carried out to identify those responsible."
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