Warrant issued after £3m Viking hoard thief fails to appear at Birmingham court

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a metal detectorist convicted of stealing a £3 million Viking hoard of gold after he failed to appear in court.

George Powell was part of a duo who failed to declare they had unearthed invaluable coins and other jewellery dating back 1,100 years.

He and fellow detectorist Layton Davies tried to cash in on their haul by selling the ancient items on the black market following the find in 2015.

Powell failed to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on January 8. He was due to have been sentenced for failing to repay £600,000 - the money a judge decided was his share of the missing coins and jewellery.

The pair unearthed the hoard near farmland in Eye, near Leominster, Herefordshire, around ten years ago. It included a ninth-century gold ring, a dragon's head bracelet, a silver ingot, a fifth crystal rock pendant and up to 300 coins, some from the reign of King Alfred.

By law, the men should have reported the discovery but instead decided to sell the items in small batches to various customers on the black market.

Powell also only handed over three coins he found to the owner of the land which were "not particularly valuable".

Only 31 of the coins - worth between £10,000 and £50,000 - and pieces of jewellery have ever been recovered, with the majority of the hoard still missing.

Powell and Davies, along with coin sellers Paul Wells and Simon Wicks were convicted of conspiring to conceal the treasure in 2019. Powell, from Newport, Wales, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, later reduced to six and a half years on appeal. Davies, from Pontypridd, Wales, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, later reduced to five years on appeal.

Sentencing at the time, Judge Nicholas Cartwright said they had "cheated the public" by concealing the treasure which "belonged to the nation."

He said: “You acted in a way which was greedy and selfish. You clumsily dug out everything you could find and put the soil back and left without speaking to the farmer, the farmer’s mother or anybody else.

“If you had obtained the permissions and agreements responsible metal detectorists are advised to obtain and had gone on to act within the law, you could have expected to have had a half share or third share of £3 million to share between the two of you.

“You could not have done worse than £500,000 each, but you wanted more.”