A FORMER Team GB boxer has escaped jail after he helped mastermind a nationwide black market racket of stolen telecoms equipment which cost BT almost £400,000.
Former lightweight professional Antonio Counihan, 33, broke into an Openreach van to steal fibre optic installation kits after becoming a cable fitter when his career in the ring ended and he ran up £25,000 in gambling debts.
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Counihan and an accomplice dressed in high-vis jackets and hardhats posed as workers at secure BT exchange sites, then climbed on top of the vans and used cutting tools to hack through the roofs.
They also used their expertise in telecommunications to identify the most expensive items present in the vehicles before robbing them.
The stolen devices were sold by a fraudulent businessman who used his fibre optics business to sell them.
Counihan, from Solihull, near Birmingham, won 66 of his 80 amateur bouts before boxing more than 20 times for England. He was arrested after police said the gang carried out 34 burglaries across eight counties in a nine-month period from May 2019 to January 2020.
In total £113,192 worth of equipment was stolen, while the van suffered £149,561 worth of damage. BT estimated it had lost £390,627 to the racket, including damage caused by the theft.
In two cases three Openreach vans were targeted in the same night.
At Warwick Crown Court, father-of-one Counihan faced up to six years in prison under sentencing guidelines but was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, as the judge was told his promising boxing career had come to a “heartbreaking” end after he underwent tests for brain cancer.
Details of the case emerged this week in the Court of Appeal, where three judges rejected the solicitor general’s argument that the suspended sentence imposed on Counihan was “unduly lenient”.
The appeal of three other people involved in this racket against suspended sentence was also rejected.
Counihan joined the Team GB boxing squad in 2009 and was at one point captain, but turned professional after missing out on a place at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
He was signed by boxing manager Kelly Maloney (then known as Frank), but his career went into decline after he was found to have a ‘shadow’ on his brain.
He was unable to box competitively for three years and after undergoing numerous scans doctors discovered the shadow was in fact a scar from birth.
The theft racket began in 2019 when Counihan got a job as a cable fitter for a fibre optic installation sub-contracting business run by Michael George, 35, and which was used by BT in outsourced jobs.
court The gang “had exclusive knowledge of BT’s operational practices and were aware of the high demand for specialist fibre optic installation equipment on the black market”, it heard.
they will Target BT Openreach vans were parked overnight and holes were cut in the roofs with metal cutters. Initially a small hole was made in the roof so the contents of the van could be viewed and if high-value fibre optic kit was visible inside, a larger hole was made by cutting and peeling away a section of the roof.
The gang began their criminal operations in the West Midlands but their activities spread to Warwickshire, West Mercia, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Gloucestershire, Avon and Somerset and Essex.
In one raid the gang stole a splicing machine worth £2225, an optical time-domain reflectometer worth £2400, a red light generator worth £135, a light source worth £564, a fibre cleaver worth £225, hand tools worth £450 and a labelling machine worth £23. A fibre blowing head worth £1480 was damaged in the raid.
Just a day after one of the raids, Counihan received £2100 in her bank account and spent it lavishly buying designer clothes.
Police launched an investigation after an off-duty BT employee captured photographs of the gang driving their escape vehicle.
They examined text messages he shared with one of his accomplices which discussed “doing a peel”, which meant going in for a burglary, wearing high-visibility jackets and hard hats so they could “blend in” during the raid.
They also discussed that they needed “new cutters”, as the metal cutters they had used had been destroyed during the previous raid.
There were also messages asking for items, and planning to steal on order. Counihan sent a message to an associate asking if he needed a splicer, and discussed fibre optic equipment that was available to buy. He then sent screenshots saying he was “feeling wanted”.
At the time of his arrest in June 2020, Counham initially denied wrongdoing. He later said he had participated as a driver and lookout during some of the raids and that he had only been involved in the sale of stolen property in one of the raids. He admitted he had received “an average of a few hundred pounds”.
Counihan later wrote a letter to the court describing how lottery funding had helped him become part of the Great Britain team as a boxer, and that he visited schools to inspire other children to take up boxing.
He decided to turn professional after narrowly missing out on the 2012 Olympics and won his first eight fights as a professional before he identified a shadow on his mind.
He said he was no longer able to continue boxing and his life was “totally messed up”. He said he was in a “bad state” when he joined the gang.
Sentencing, Judge Anthony Potter said the racket was a “ruthless and highly effective nationwide conspiracy” but cited the two-and-a-half year delay in the case which had given Counihan the chance to “turn his life around”.
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The judge acknowledged that at the time of the racket Counihan was “going through the loss of his childhood and the career he pursued in adulthood”, but said he had “changed significantly” since becoming the father of a son.
George, from Birmingham He was given a 21-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work;
