A MAN who rented a £70,000 campervan that disappeared into Europe within hours has been jailed for 16 months.

David Sheridan, 57, booked out a campervan from Abacus van hire for three days.

But just five hours later it was being shipped out of Dover, Bournemouth Crown Court heard.

Sheridan told police he had been burgled, but later pleaded guilty to the theft. Automatic number plate recognition cameras picked up the van driving in the freight lane at Dover on April 26, prosecutor Stuart Ella-cott told the court on Friday.

“Cameras on the continent were not on,” Mr Ellacott said. “The van has disappeared, as it were.”

A warrant is out for the defendant’s son John Sheridan, who collected the vehicle with his father after paying a deposit. James McCrim-dell, mitigating, said Sheridan senior had poor health, had cancer and was on a ventilator.

Sentencing, Judge John Harrow said Sheridan, from Cambridgeshire, had cost the van owners the van plus rental income.

Judge Harrow said: “It seems to me this was a dishonest activity from the outset.

“I say that because within hours of being collected this vehicle was on its way to France.”

The crime was so serious that a prison sentence could not be avoided, he added.