IT WASN’T quite like the famous scene from the movie Ocean’s Twelve, but Wagga thief and drug pedlar Leslie Lloyd had the same idea as the popular movie’s Night Fox character when he tried to avoid security laser beams after breaking into two shops.
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In the dead of night on January 6 last year, 28-year-old Lloyd and an unidentified accomplice broke into the Baylis Centre arcade.
They crawled along the floor of Yogies Yoghurt Bar and the adjacent Baylis Grind coffee shop at the front of the arcade to try to avoid laser beams that would set off the security alarm if broken.
The shops were among seven arcade premises broken into by the pair.
They made off with a total of $1365 in cash and other loot, including two cans of Coke, cheque books, car keys and receipt books.
Lloyd, of Ashmont, came unstuck when he was dobbed in through an anonymous tip off to Crime Stoppers and clothing found at his house matched that worn by one of the hooded bandits.
But robbing shops was not Lloyd’s only criminal behaviour. He sold the drug ice to undercover police working with Strike Force Calyx six times between March 24 and April 2 last year.
When arrested on June 16, Lloyd told police he was drug dealing to the undercover police “out of the goodness of my heart”. And he complained of entrapment.
Lloyd pleaded guilty to several break and enter charges as well as ongoing supply of a prohibited drug.
In Wagga District Court this week, Lloyd was given an aggregate non-parole sentence of 18 months backdated to when he went into custody on June 16 last year.
He was also ordered to pay back the $1520 Calyx police paid him for the ice.
Another drug dealer caught by the Calyx operatives – Troy Weyland – was also jailed by Judge Phillip Mahony in Wagga this week.
Weyland sold ice to undercover police once in the Sturt Mall carpark and once in the Wagga railway station carpark in April last year.
At the railway station, 28-year-old Weyland arranged for another man called Dylan to hand over the drug, but was seen in a car nearby and Dylan told the undercover police that Weyland “does everything” and he was just assisting him.
Two other times, Weyland, of Estella ripped off the operatives by selling them a crystalline substance that turned out not be to a prohibited drug.
He was handed a 12-month non-parole jail sentence backdated to when he went into custody on June 16 last year.
