A gang of burglars caught red-handed by plain clothes officers have been jailed and are facing deportation.

Two men and a woman were sentenced at Kingston Crown Court on Friday, January 6, after they were caught dragging a suitcase from a house in Tolworth Rise North.

Police discovered a wig, a change of clothes and a tool for breaking toughened windows when they swooped on the gang on October 20 last year.

The haul included an Apple Mac computer, a Nintendo DS games console, a ring, a camera, toothpaste and pillows worth a total of £3,700.

Prosecuting, Anthony Lenaghan said plain clothes officers were in the area, following an increase in burglaries between New Malden and Tolworth, when a police sergeant on a bicycle noticed the woman look-out standing at a bus stop.

He said: “PC Northway saw two South American males emerge from a nearby address in Tolworth Rise North. "The men were dragging a large silver suitcase and walked across to the defendant.”

Defending, Nicholas Bleaney said the three had met at a Latino disco only a month before the burglary and were not an organised criminal gang.

Colombian Leidy Lopez Vera, 20, who had entered the UK illegally two months before, admitted she was a look-out for the pair, but insisted she had been driven by them from Camberwell hoping to find a job. She was jailed for 12 months in a separate hearing to her co-defendants after she said she was in fear of them.

Systems engineer Jherson Rodrigues-Escobar, 21, known to police as Sergio de Robley de la Vega, asked to be sent back to Colombia at the end of his 57-week sentence.

Mexican Jair Flores Cervantes, 25, who also received a 57-week sentence, cracked and undertook the burglary because of a lack of money, his defence counsel said.

All three will be deported by the UK Border Agency when they have served their sentences.