Viking hoard thief gets five years in jail after failing to pay back £670,000

A metal detectorist convicted for stealing a £3 million Viking treasure hoard has been handed an extended jail sentence after he failed to pay back more than £600,000.

Layton Davies, 56, and an accomplice were jailed in 2019 for failing to declare the collection of buried treasure dating back 1,100 years to the reign of King Alfred the Great and instead selling a large number of items for significant gain.

The treasure, much of which was Anglo Saxon but was typical of a Viking burial hoard, was dug up on Herefordshire farmland on June 2 2015.

Davies, formerly of Pontypridd, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for the crime in November 2019 but was handed a further five years and three months after failing to pay back £670,381 made from selling the treasure plus interest.

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Alliances

Experts believe the treasure would have provided fresh information on previously unknown alliances between the ancient kings of Mercia and Wessex.

Debbie Price, deputy chief crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Proceeds of Crime Division, said: “Greed led Layton Davies to ignore his duty to report the found treasure and instead sell it for his own benefit.

“An experienced detectorist, Davies would have known he was entitled to half of the proceeds of legal sale of the treasure, instead choosing to deprive the landowner and public by stealing this exceptional and significant treasure.

“This case shows that the CPS takes our duty to ensure crime doesn’t pay seriously, Davies has failed to pay so we have taken him back to court and his additional default sentence means he now faces a further five years in prison.”

In the last five years, 2018 to 2023, more than £480 million has been recovered from CPS-obtained confiscation orders, ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending.

Some £105 million of that amount has been returned to victims of crime, by way of compensation.