// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Prolific shoplifters behind more than 28,000 offences, BBC finds
Prolific shoplifters need to "know that they are going to be punished", the policing minister has said
At the height of his offending, Jeff Ashman estimates he walked out of shops with goods worth £400 to £500 on a daily basis.
"It's mind-boggling," he said, describing how much he had stolen from stores in Hastings to fuel his addiction to heroin and crack cocaine.
"I know the misery and grief and despair that I have caused these people for a long period of time."
Shoplifting is now firmly in the past for Ashman, but prolific shoplifters like him continue to plague communities across England.
We asked police about the 10 suspects their forces had most often linked to shoplifting offences between 2020-21 and 2025-26.
It revealed 28,415 recorded offences had been linked to just 270 suspects by the 27 forces who shared data with us.
It is an average of 105 offences per person - and those are just the occasions where a theft was formally reported to police and officers identified a suspect.
The suspects identified include one in Sussex who had been linked to 247 shoplifting offences, the equivalent of a reported crime every 10 days.
Policing minister Sarah Jones said shoplifting was a "pernicious crime that for too long has gone unpunished".