A prolific former shoplifter has described turning her life around after stealing £30million worth of luxury goods in a 20-year crime spree.
Keeley Knowles, 42, targeted upmarket stores in Birmingham every morning, raking in up to £8,000 a day as she sold the stolen items on WhatsApp.
Funding her heroin addiction, Knowles fooled shop staff and was allowed her to ‘get away with murder’, ending up in jail ’28 times here and three times in Amsterdam’.
But the former addict – who has even won an award since reconnecting with her family – says she has now turned her life around and is 18 months clean thanks to pioneering technology.
Knowles, of Kings Heath, Birmingham, said: ‘I 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 £1,000 a day.
‘I had a WhatsApp group that had around 150 people in it, I’d 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.
‘Money would either go in my bank or I would go and drop it off and collect the money.
‘I knew when people’s pay days were, what size their kids were, what people’s favourite designer was.
Keeley Knowles (pictured), 42, targeted upmarket stores in Birmingham every morning, raking in up to £8,000 a day as she sold the stolen items on WhatsApp
Funding her heroin addiction, Knowles fooled shop staff and was allowed her to ‘get away with murder’, ending up in jail ’28 times here and three times in Amsterdam’
The former addict has even won a National Business crime solutions award since reconnecting with her family
‘People think only gangs are organised crime and that’s not right.’
Knowles went on to describe her daily routine, saying she would get up in the morning and ring around different stores to determine when security was in.
She said: ‘To make a thousand pounds you’ve got to steal a lot of stuff a day. Some days I’d steal £7,000 to £8,000 worth of stock.
‘The only days I never shoplifted was Christmas Day and Good Friday when the shops weren’t open. So those were my only two days off.’
Keeley Knowles’s life of crime began when she was just 13-years-old and she met a 21-year-old man. She was soon hooked on heroin.
Speaking to the Birmz Is Grime blog, she added: ‘I 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 todays county lines but nobody knew of that back then. I was 13.
‘My nan and grandad bought me up, my dad was in jail and I didn’t see my mum. Because of the generation gap I don’t think they knew what was going on.’
Keeley explained her ‘nan and grandad’ brought her up as her father was in jail and she did see her mother.
She said: ‘Because of the generation gap I don’t think they knew what was going on.
Keeley Knowles’s life of crime began when she was just 13-years-old and she met a 21-year-old man. She was soon hooked on heroin
‘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.
‘I got arrested and went to prison around once a year.’
At a store in Selly Oak, the security guard once told an officer Knowles had taken £3.7million worth of stock, she said, with Loss Prevention magazine estimating it at around £30million.
But Knowles said anyone estimating the figure from her going into a shop once a day should do it much higher.
She said: ‘I’d steal so much I’d have to go get a trolley from Sainsbury’s just to move it.
‘There’s no rush to it, it was just what I had to do to feed my addiction.
‘So many security know me, it’s shocking. To the point one stopped me the other week, I haven’t been in trouble for so long either, to say happy birthday.
‘I said “how do you know its my birthday?” and he said ‘Keeley I’ve had to fill out your date of birth constantly for how many years’.
Knowles said of her recovery: ‘I’d love to say I had a big epiphany but I just found the number in a drawer one day and I thought I’d try them’
‘I didn’t live, I just existed. I just got up, scored, went grafting, sold it, scored, slept – and I did it all over again.
‘I’ve been to jail 28 times here and three times in Amsterdam. There’s only three jails in the country I haven’t been to and its the same faces each time.
‘Women’s jail is like St Trinian’s on crack – that is the best way you can describe it. 90 per cent are there for addiction.
‘I thought I would die a junkie.’
Knowles said her saving grace was West Midlands Police’s Offending to Recovery programme, which offers support for addicts.
She now works alongside the programme, doing outreach work with drug users and gives talks on the drug Buvidal, a slow-release opioid blocker.
The 42-year-old has also won a National Business crime solutions award and since reconnected with her family.
She said: ‘It was the security guard at the £3.7 million shop who said ‘you’re better than this’ and referred me and got me listed for help with the offending to recovery team.
‘I’d love to say I had a big epiphany but I just found the number in a drawer one day and I thought I’d try them.
‘They were telling me about this new treatment and I though it was bulls**t but I agreed to do it.
‘I was having seizures, hallucinations, it was horrific, but then I had this injection and I slept like a normal human, had no cravings.
‘I’ve now tried to make my recovery something for other people as well.
‘Seeing 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’t write anyone off. If I can be fixed, anyone can be fixed.’
