Student jailed for 'cheap phone trick' street robberies

A student who used an online advertisement to lure robbery victims to quiet places with the promise of a cheap mobile phone wept as he was jailed for almost three years.

Roland Alabi, 21, was tempted into a "sophisticated" ruse by friends when he returned home from his engineering studies at Kent University last summer, Croydon crown court was told.

He placed advertisements offering a BlackBerry for £100 on Gumtree and arranged to meet an interested buyer at Bermondsey Tube station on
September 20. When the victim arrived, Alabi called to say he was just around the corner and, when they met, he pretended to have left the phone's memory card in his car even farther from the station.

When the victim noticed a second man approaching, Alabi locked his arms around the buyer's neck and slammed him to the ground, before threatening to kill him.

He then took the victim's mobile phone and the £100 he had brought to purchase the BlackBerry.
The court was told that the other man had a sharp object in his pocket that the victim believed was a knife.

Alabi repeated the trick the next day, meeting a second victim in New Cross who complained about the condition of the phone being sold. The student said he had another phone around the corner, and led the man to the entrance of an underground car park from which a second attacker emerged.

Alabi then picked up a metal bar and told the buyer he would kill him, before taking his mobile, the £100 he had brought to buy the BlackBerry and his bicycle.

Police traced Alabi using email and phone details used to place the online advertisement and discovered the metal bar, BlackBerry and the clothes he had been wearing during the attacks at his home in Boddington House, New Cross.

Alabi's defence solicitor argued his client should be spared jail to allow him to continue his studies, rather than be sent to a "finishing school for petty criminals".

Judge Stephen Waller ignored pleas for leniency, however, saying that he had to send a message to others considering becoming involved in violent street robbery. He sentenced Alabi to two 32-month jail terms, to run concurrently.

He told the sobbing student: "You have intelligence and a good family background [but] chose to commit these offences. You don't come from a broken family or are of poor education, which might be some excuse."