{"id":301535,"date":"2025-07-29T15:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T15:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/301535\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T15:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T15:36:13","slug":"birminghams-most-prolific-shoplifter-stole-30m-worth-of-goods-in-20-year-spree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/301535\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham’s ‘most prolific’ shoplifter ‘stole \u00a330m worth of goods’ in 20-year spree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former crook Keeley Knowles, 42, claims she made a fortune stealing on demand from shops around Birmingham – but has now kicked the habit.\"AKeeley Knowles was funding her habit by stealing high value items from shops around Birmingham. (Image: Birmz Is Grime \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

One of Britain\u2019s most prolific shoplifters has lifted the lid on how she stole<\/a> an estimated \u00a330m worth of goods during a 20 year crime spree.<\/p>\n

Keeley Knowles, 42, funded her drug habit by stealing high value items such as designer clothing and handbags from upmarket stores around Birmingham. She would target shops every morning and raked in up to \u00a38,000 a day selling on the stolen items via a WhatsApp<\/a> group in order to feed her heroin addiction.<\/p>\n

She pinched \u00a33.7 million worth of stock from one shop alone and is thought to have raked in around \u00a330m over the years as \u2018Birmingham\u2019s most prolific shoplifter\u2019. Keeley has now revealed how she would fool shop staff by phoning them up pretending to be a police officer to check when security would be on the doors.<\/p>\n

\"AKeeley would target shops every morning and raked in up to \u00a38,000 a day selling on the stolen items via WhatsApp(Image: West Midlands PCC \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

And she would fill a sleeping bag-style jacket from the \u2018ground to her armpit\u2019 after slicing up the material to make compartments to conceal the goods. But thanks to a pioneering new treatment for addicts, Keeley is now 18 months clean having turned her life around and is now sharing her story as a warning to others.<\/p>\n

Keeley, of Kings Heath, Birmingham, said: \u201cI was known as Birmingham\u2019s most prolific shoplifter for around 20 years. \u201cI was fully involved in the lifestyle. I could easily do seven grams of heroin in a day. When my habit finished I was spending around \u00a31,000 a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of going to supermarkets<\/a> I would go into upmarket stores and take handbags and purses. I had a WhatsApp group that had around 150 people in it, I\u2019d take photos on the train or bus after coming out of a shop and before I even got half way home it would be sold.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoney would either go in my bank or I would go and drop it off and collect the money. I knew when people\u2019s pay days were, what size their kids were, what people\u2019s favourite designer was. People think only gangs are organised crime and that\u2019s not right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d get up in the morning and ring around different stores and I would say: ‘Good morning this is PC2417, I\u2019m calling about the theft on Tuesday.\u2019 Because there was always a theft, it\u2019s a big store.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you would always get some really lovely woman who would answer the phone saying \u2018there\u2019s no security today\u2019. And I would say \u2018oh well, can you tell me when they are back in?\u2019 They would tell me they are not in Monday, Thursday and Friday. And I\u2019d be writing all this down.<\/p>\n

\"AThanks to a pioneering new treatment for addicts, Keeley is now 18 months clean having turned her life around(Image: West Midlands Police \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

\u201cI wore a long Michael Kors sleeping bag coat and sliced it inside. And I\u2019d fill it, right from the floor to up under my armpit. I wouldn\u2019t use a bag to shoplift. I\u2019ve had alarms go off and I\u2019d let them look in my handbag and then just walk outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo make a thousand pounds you\u2019ve got to steal a lot of stuff a day. Some days I\u2019d steal \u00a37,000 to \u00a38,000 worth of stock. The only days I never shoplifted was Christmas<\/a> Day and Good Friday when the shops weren\u2019t open. So those were my only two days off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeley\u2019s life of crime began when she was just 13-years-old when she met a 21-year-old man. She was soon hooked on heroin.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Birmz Is Grime blog, she added: \u201cI got in trouble a lot when I was younger, firearms and drugs. I was chosen to travel to Liverpool to pick up kilos of heroin and crack – the equivalent of today’s county lines but nobody knew of that back then. I was 13.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy nan and grandad bought me up, my dad was in jail and I didn\u2019t see my mum. Because of the generation gap I don\u2019t think they knew what was going on. I got away with murder, I think my nan thought I had flu for years, when I was suffering withdrawals. But they were there through everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got arrested and went to prison around once a year. There\u2019s a store in Selly Oak and their security guard once told an officer I had taken \u00a33.7 million worth of stock.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Loss Prevention magazine have estimated it at around \u00a330 million. But if you\u2019re estimating that from me going into a shop once a day, I promise you it’s more than that. I\u2019d steal so much I\u2019d have to go get a trolley from Sainsbury\u2019s just to move it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no rush to it, it was just what I had to do to feed my addiction. So many security know me, it\u2019s shocking. To the point one stopped me the other week, I haven\u2019t been in trouble for so long either, to say happy birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said \u2018how do you know it’s my birthday?\u2019 and he said \u2018Keeley I\u2019ve had to fill out your date of birth constantly for how many years\u2019. I didn\u2019t live, I just existed. I just got up, scored, went grafting, sold it, scored, slept – and I did it all over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been to jail 28 times here and three times in Amsterdam. There\u2019s only three jails in the country I haven\u2019t been to and its the same faces each time. Women\u2019s jail is like St Trinian\u2019s on crack – that is the best way you can describe it. 90 per cent are there for addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I would die a junkie.\u201d She said her saving grace was West Midlands Police<\/a>\u2019s Offending to Recovery programme, which offers support for addicts.<\/p>\n

Keeley now works alongside the programme, doing outreach work with drug users and gives talks on the drug Buvidal, a slow-release opioid blocker.<\/p>\n

She has also won a National Business crime solutions award and since reconnected with her family. She added: \u201cIt was the security guard at the \u00a33.7 million shop who said \u2018you\u2019re better than this\u2019 and referred me and got me listed for help with the offending to recovery team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to say I had a big epiphany but I just found the number in a drawer one day and I thought I\u2019d try them. They were telling me about this new treatment and I thought it was bulls**t but I agreed to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was having seizures, hallucinations, it was horrific, but then I had this injection and I slept like a normal human, had no cravings. I\u2019ve now tried to make my recovery something for other people as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing somebody who has been even lower than you come out the other end is very different to being told it by somebody who sits in an office and gets paid to do it. I was unfixable, don\u2019t write anyone off. If I can be fixed, anyone can be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former crook Keeley Knowles, 42, claims she made a fortune stealing on demand from shops around Birmingham –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,188,393,4884,23178,16,15,7830],"class_list":{"0":"post-301535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-shoplifting","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-west-midlands-police"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114937265778418747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}