The hunt is now on for the Leominster stash, hidden away by dishonest knowledge thieves, George Powell, of Kirby Lane, Newport; Layton Davies, of Cardiff Road, Pontypridd; Paul Wells, of Newport Road, Cardiff; and Simon Wicks, of Hawks Road, Hailsham, East Sussex (Jon Sharman Metal detectorists convicted of trying to sell £3m Viking treasure hoard on black market 21 Nov 2019).
Prosecuting barrister Kevin Hegarty QC told jurors the remainder of the hoard had not been located. “They must be concealed in one or more places or, by now, having been concealed, have been dispersed, never to be reassembled as a hoard of such coinage again.” [...] Adjourning the case for a hearing on Friday, Judge Nicholas Cartwright said: “I am not going to admit George Powell bail, he’s going to be sentenced for theft of items worth millions of pounds and is facing a very long sentence of imprisonment and in addition to that there will inevitably be a confiscation process. “There are hidden assets by way of unrecovered treasure worth a very large sum, probably millions of pounds, so there’s the prospect of a very long default period of imprisonment should the assets remain hidden.” [...] Speaking afterwards, Detective Constable Nigel Cleeton, who led the West Mercia Police investigation, welcomed the verdicts and appealed to the public for information to “help us find the rest of this hoard and put it back together”.Interestingly, there is no reward (as yet) offered for this information, and one might reflect that while artefact hunters need the prospect of a Treasure award in order to get them to speak up about what they've found, ordinary non-metal-detecting members of the public are not thought to need one. That is surely discrimination.
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