AN ASDA manager was jailed and two others were given suspended sentences for stealing more than £15,000 of stock from a Basildon store.

Michael Gridley, 26, of Brennan Road, Tilbury, was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment at Southend Crown Court yesterday for his leading part in a conspiracy to steal £15,852.46 of goods from Asda, at the Eastgate Centre, in Basildon, between November 2013 and April 2014.

Section leader Jay Reed, 23, of Hempstalls, Basildon, and James Munyard, 21, of Witchards, Basildon, were given suspended sentences of eight and four months, respectively.

All had pleaded guilty.

Gridley, the former home shopping manager of the store, orchestrated a system under which items such as alcohol, cigarettes, DVDs, computer games and consoles were taken from the store and, via the home delivery service, taken to Reed’s address and were presumed to have been sold on.

Prosecuting, Thomas Daniel, explained how the conspiracy was uncovered, after a period during which Gridley and Reed were under suspicion.

He said: “Two anonymous reports were received by Asda, one of which suggested Gridley was involved in selling items believed to have been stolen. When Gridley was ill, those deliveries stopped, and when he recovered they started again.

Another email suggested stolen goods being delivered to the address of Gridley’s cousin.” The court heard numerous times from Reed and Munyard’s barrister that Gridley, as their superior, had exercised degrees of pressure on the other two.

Mitchell Cohen, the barrister representing Munyard, told the court his client, whose role was confined to taking items off shelves and putting them in a crate, had attempted to be transferred in order to escape Gridley’s control.

Reed was deemed to have been in a position of trust and responsibility in the enterprise, but Recorder Gerard Pounder said he had a lesser role than Gridley and Munyard even less so.

Despite hearing Gridley was now employed as a manager at Lidl, in Romford, and financially supported not only his former partner and their two-year-old child, but also his father and grandparents, Recorder Pounder said he had no choice but to send him to prison.

He said: “You were in a position of supreme trust and say you started this because of threats made regarding a drug debt of your cousin’s. You continued even as those threats faded, and brought other people in.”

Sentencing Reed to eight months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, and 200 hours’ unpaid work, he said: “You were in a lesser role than Gridley, but you were a section leader and had responsibilities. It was to your premises these items were taken – without that and your part in the enterprise, it would not have worked.”

Munyard, whom Mr Cohen said “didn’t have the spine to stand up to what he was being asked to do,” was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and 100 hours’ unpaid work.