Man Jailed for Two Years After Stealing 7,000 Books from Scottish Universities

Perthshire man Darren Barr, 28, has been sentenced to 25 months in prison for stealing over 7,000 books from three different universities in Edinburgh, Scotland, and selling them online. It is estimated he made more than £30,000 by stealing textbooks and selling them online via sites such as WeBuyBooks, Ziffit and Zapper.

As The Guardian reports, for almost a year, Barr stole books from Napier University as well as Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities. None of the textbooks were particularly rare, but they are well sought-after by those studying nursing, business studies, human resources, criminology and marketing.

Barr’s crimes were discovered when a PhD student at Napier tried to borrow a textbook from the university but discovered that  there were none available. She then went to buy that book and another from WeBuyBooks and found that both had come from Napier’s library.

The books had fake stamps reading ‘withdrawn’ on the inside covers, but the university’s library system showed they were both down as being part of the library’s collection. An audit was carried out and it was discovered that over 4,000 books were missing, with a value of around £72,800.

WeBuyBooks became involved with the investigation and found that it had purchased hundreds of books from the same man with the same bank account. Barr had earned £10,612 for selling WeBuyBooks 1,995 books, £18,600 from Ziffit for 4,488 books, and Zapper had paid the sum of £1,238 for 253 texts.

Barr stood trial earlier this year and pleaded guilty to four charges of theft. He also faces an assets seizure under proceeds of crime legislation that is more commonly used for drugs gangs and fraud cases.

Sheriff Kenneth McGowan passed the sentence, saying: “What I have before me here is a course of conduct continuing over a lengthy period of 11 months during which a very substantial number of books were stolen from Napier University in particular. These were of a high value. There was clearly careful planning on your part.” Around 1,300 of the stolen books have so far been recovered by police.

DS Dougal Begg, from Corstorphine CID, said: “This is one of the most brazen and high-value thefts from our universities that I can ever recall. The amount of money Darren Barr was able to make by reselling stolen books is staggering.

“Had it not been for the staff at Napier University raising their concerns about missing stock, we may never have uncovered what Barr was up to and even larger quantities of books may have ended up being taken from the institutions.”

CCTV footage from Napier showed that Barr would arrive with a rucksack and holdall after having obtained an external reader’s ticket, a technique he used at the other two universities.