A CRIMINAL plot to chop up stolen luxury cars was rumbled after police followed a tracking device fitted to a Porsche stolen in Bolton.

Shazad Dhean and Tomazz Gutkowski have been jailed for handling stolen goods after receiving £363,000 worth of stolen cars to dismantle.

The cars were taken to industrial units in Manchester after being stolen in burglaries carried out across the region.

One car taken in Bolton led officers on November 2, 2013, to a unit rented by Dhean in New Mill Park Road in Dukinfield, where police found cars and parts stolen from as far afield as Gateshead.

Dhean, aged 36, of Windgrove Gardens, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gutkowski, aged 35, of Danley Street, Manchester, admitted the charges at an earlier hearing.

On May 28 at Manchester Crown Court, Crown Square, Dhean was jailed for 20 months and Gutkowski for nine months.

The GMP investigation into the racket was coined Operation Gridiron, and related to the thefts of 15 high-value cars, which were dismantled ahead of being sold on.

Police found a unit, also rented by Dhean, in Monsall Road, Manchester on July 25, 2013, and found Gutkowski's fingerprints on three chopped up cars.

A computer found in one unit showed someone had searched on Google for CPS sentencing guidelines for handling stolen goods.

Sgt Wayne Redford said: "Dhean, and to a lesser extent Gutkowski, played their part in an orchestrated criminal conspiracy to steal high-powered cars and chop them up so the parts could be sold on.

"The units were rented to Dhean and the Google search about sentencing guidelines for handling stolen goods shows he was well aware of what was coming into his workshops, but he carried on chopping up the stolen cars regardless."

"This sort of criminality helps perpetuate serious and organised crime. It creates a profitable outlet for organised criminal networks to dispose of the cars they have stolen, not to mention the heartache and misery caused to the car owners who had their vehicles stolen."