A criminal gang of thieves and a murderer who stole nearly £20,000 from “elderly and vulnerable” people have been jailed.

Romanians, Marius Mereson, 40, of no fixed address, Razvan Dorosin, 33, of Longbridge Road, Dagenham and Carmen Feraru, 47, of no fixed address, operated in Watford, St Albans and Harpenden and stole thousands of pounds from 16 victims across Hertfordshire and Essex.

Mereson served eight years for murder in 1998.

Borehamwood Times:

Left to right: Mereson, Dorosin and Feraru

All three pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal bank cards, cash and other items between July 31 and November 7 last year.

At St Albans Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Nigel Lithman QC jailed Mereson for 32 months and Dorosin and Feraru for 27 months each.

The criminal trio also targeted people in Waltham Cross, Buntingford, Bishop’s Stortford, Hoddesdon, Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead. In total, they stole £19,790.

Detective Constable Simon Smith said: “These three individuals came to the UK from Romania with the sole intention of committing crime.

“They worked together to prey on the elderly and vulnerable who they saw as easy targets. Their eldest victim was a 98-year-old man. His bank card was stolen, and they attempted to use it to pay for thousands of pounds worth of goods.

“They also targeted a partially sighted woman and several people aged in their 80s.

“This trio clearly have no conscience and did not give a second thought to the impact on their victims.

“We were able to identify them through CCTV enquiries and the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology. All three had previous convictions in this country and their home country.

“The most serious of which is Mereson’s conviction in Romania for murder where he was jailed for eight years in 1998.”