Shropshire chewing gum ‘stolen for foreign currency’
Thursday 27th October 2011, 1:30PM BST.
Gangs of eastern Europeans are stealing chewing gum from big Shropshire supermarkets to use back home as currency, police said today.
Stores in Shrewsbury, Telford, Market Drayton and Bridgnorth have all become victims since early summer.
Constable David Walton, a police officer in Shrewsbury, today urged county supermarkets to be on their guard.
Mr Walton said it was believed gangs of eastern Europeans were coming into the country to steal chewing gum in bulk before taking it home where it is used as currency, particularly in Romania.
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Why steal it just walk down Bridgnorth High Street theres plenty on the floor.
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They’ve obviously got sticky fingers!
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Are you Sure They Aren’t getting it for Alex Ferguson, after Sundays Match 6-1(6 Packets For The Price Of 1)
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You did your best but you don’t have the wit to pull this off “John”
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So coins aren’t the only currency to be minted?
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get them to come and clean the streets of shrewsbury town then its all over the high street pavements = disgusting
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im off to romania! ill be a millionaire
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Thats good if we see less of it on our pavements.
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Can someone please tell me the purpose of this ridiculous product? It appears to have no purpose at all apart from making money for the manufacturers, and keeping the clean-up teams in business, scraping the disgusting stuff off pavements and picking up the associated litter.
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While there are some clever replies above (My award goes to The Original Jake) why has it taken until now for the police to warn stores about chewing gum theft when it was first noted back in the early summer? (Perhaps they were chewing it over! Ha)
But theft is theft regardless of the commoditity (perhaps they were waiting for Detective Dick Gumshoe to be available to investigate (I’m on a roll)) and such ‘trends’ should be escalated and such escalation should be measured in terms of days, not months.
I have no doubt should the police catch the criminals they’ll deny and Wriggle(Wrigleys – not my best I know, but it has legs!) their way out of it.
Anyway, the weekends almost here & I hope the weather stays good as I am off to the coast. I love the coast, indeed I ‘m mad for it. (saving the best until last) because I am a BEECHNUT ! Thank you.
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Thank you, I’ve never won an award before :)
(Actually, that’s not strictly true. I won ‘Stroh Rum Drinker of the Week’ on a school skiing trip to Austria when I was 15)
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I used to regularly travel round Europe in my hippy days and chewing gum used to be excellent trading currency 25 years ago , even better was Levi jeans, you could practicly get a house for a pair of them..
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When I was at school my friends used to trade Levis for vodka on language trips to Moscow. I would have hated to have been a teacher!
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In Warsaw we used to get Vodka for Chewing Gum , Levi’s would get you a top of the range Lada or a small house.
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Heavens above. Something has just struck me. I’ve recently entered the employment of a major car retailer and discovered that the majority of garages in Shropshire employ valeting staff from east europe. I have often wondered why I find so many empty chewing gum wrappers in the valet bay of my dealership.
Is this just a coincidence ???? Further more I think the bosses of some local garages even supplement the wages of valeters by offering
chewing gum instead of cash. So perhaps it is not always east europeans doing the petty shoplifting. Look out for men in business suits.
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