Albanian organised crime gang plead guilty to £1million burglary series

Five Albanian men and a British woman have admitted their roles in a series of high value burglaries across the UK.

Endrit Nikolli, 27, Kristian Gropcaj, 30, George Lleshaj, 31, Krisjian Dedndreaj, 28, and Sidorjan Lleshi, 26, all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary and conspiracy to possess criminal property, during to hearings at Chester Crown Court on Friday 28 November 2025 and Tuesday 6 January 2026.

Nikolli and Lleshi also both admitted one additional count of burglary, in relation to two burglaries in Staffordshire in March 2024 and December 2023.

Jade Tubb, aged 33, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to posses criminal property on Wednesday 7th January.

The investigation against the gang began in October 2024 when detectives at Macclesfield Proactive CID became aware of a series of burglaries across the eastern area of Cheshire, including incidents in Macclesfield, Prestbury, Weston and Willaston.

On each occasion the offenders would typically gain entry by using ladders to access first floor windows and balconies. Once inside they would ransack the properties, stealing jewellery, designer handbags, watches and cash. 

After a number of local enquiries, officers engaged in meetings with other forces across the UK who reported similar incidents in their areas.

Following collaboration between Derbyshire Police, Nottinghamshire Police and Staffordshire Police, detectives from Macclesfield were able to link the incidents in Cheshire to several others across the UK through footwear marks left at the scenes.

After linking the incidents, officers used Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology to identify vehicles which were present at all of these incidents.

Through this work officers discovered that a red Ford Focus which was insured to Gropcaj had been present during many of the incidents. They also found that a hire car booked by Tubb had been used during many of the other burglaries.

Telephone checks were subsequently conducted on Gropcaj which revealed he had been in regular contact with Nikolli, Dedndreaj, and Lleshaj. Further enquiries revealed that the four men had been meeting on a regular basis at a coffee shop in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham.

In addition, officers were also able to establish that Tubb was in a relationship with Nikolli.

Traces of DNA from Nikolli had also been found at the scene of a burglary in Staffordshire.

Following a culmination of months of investigation work, on Wednesday 2nd July, officers from Macclesfield Proactive CID and Cheshire Police Serious and Organised Crime Unit led a series of raids at addresses in Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham, leading to the arrests of Nikolli, Lleshaj, Gropcaj and Tubb.

The raids were supported by officers from Staffordshire Police, Derbyshire Police and Nottinghamshire Police.

Dedndreaj was not present at the time of the warrants, but he was later arrested in Surrey by officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Unit at Cheshire Constabulary.

During the raids officers recovered 13 designer handbags, along with 14 watches worth almost £17,000.

Several mobile phones were also recovered during the warrants, and during analysis officers recovered hundreds of images of the stolen items, along with messages which contained links to Google maps which correlated with the scene of the burglaries.