‘I stole £3k-a-day in high street shoplifting sprees – it became an addiction'
The night before, Cullan Mais would load up Google Maps on his mobile phone and mark out a 'fishing rod-like' route through several towns to finish back in his home city of Cardiff.
He'd call his driver and the next morning he would embark on a lucrative shoplifting spree, making off with up to £3,000 worth of goods; from food to sunglasses and even Yankee candles.
'I wouldn't leave a shop empty-handed, sometimes I'd go in two or three times,' said the 34-year-old, who highlighted Co-op supermarkets, Specsavers and garden centres as among his top targets.
Wearing a trench coat, he could fit more than a dozen bottles of spirits in his clothing before walking up to the till to buy a pack of chewing gum to avoid detection. And it worked.
'I had a lavish lifestyle because anything I ever needed, whether it was food, clothes, alcohol or something for the missus, I just stole it,' he said.
Over 10 years, Mais estimates he stole more than £3m worth of items from shops, almost all of it offloaded to a network of 'buyers' for cash to buy heroin.
He rarely got caught.
In total, he was sentenced to prison on 10 occasions, six of them for shoplifting. But nothing could stop him at the height of his criminality, and to Mais, the thrill of shoplifting became as big an addiction as the drugs he was taking.
He said: 'I was hitting multiple shops a day, so to get caught once every two years, it's pretty good going, you know, and even if I had £2,000 in my pocket, I'd still go shoplifting the next day.
'It became an addiction I got a buzz out of, like I've accomplished something.'
Mais finally got help after being rushed to hospital with sepsis and pneumonia in 2020.
'I was at rock bottom and knew then I just had to get clean,' he said.
He received rehabilitation to help him recover from his heroin and shoplifting addiction. Now, he runs a podcast on which he hopes to help others trapped in the offending cycle.
It comes as the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales climbed to another record high in 2024/25, up 20 per cent from 2023/24.
Last month, home secretary Yvette Cooper announced a new crime 'blitz' to crack down on crime, featuring more visible policing and stronger enforcement in a bid to restore confidence in policing.
But as The Independent revealed recently, shopkeepers are struggling against the wave of shoplifting offences.
Mais puts the increase in offences down to the cost-of-living crisis and an inability to deal with offenders. He even suggests there should be a specific rehabilitation programme for shoplifters.
'Our justice system is broken,' he said. 'I think more people need to be supported in the community, some shouldn't be going to jail because jail isn't working. They come out of jail, and they've reoffended again.'
Police forces are taking an innovative approach to dealing with shoplifters.
West Midlands Police's Offending 2 Recovery team, set up in 2018, tackles thefts fuelled by drug addiction. Measures include placing offenders into residential rehabs and good-quality abstinence-based recovery communities.
On his work today, Mais said: 'I'm now owning up for what I've done, educating people, preventing shopkeepers from losing more money and helping those who are stuck in the same cycle as I was, giving them the hope that they can change.'
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