Big Brother IS watching you… burglars caught on camera hidden behind Orwell classic 1984

A tech entrepreneur has told how he caught a gang of burglars on CCTV with a camera hidden behind a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

James Morton-Haworth used George Orwell’s novel — about life in Britain under a leader called Big Brother who rules through constant surveillance — to conceal the camera in his Shoreditch office.

He installed the camera only days after a burglary at start-up firm Bezzie Limited Technology on February 2, in which £150,000 of laptops, mobile phones and cameras were stolen.

At 1am on February 14, three men forced their way into the office with a crowbar and made off with £50,000 of equipment. Mr Morton-Haworth, 36, said they spotted the cameras and destroyed them, but the images had been uploaded to an online database.

“We installed a couple of cameras in the office — an obvious one that was the decoy, then one uploading to the cloud, that we hid behind George Orwell’s 1984. They spotted them, but by that point it was too late.”

The first burglary happened two days after another company in the building left, taking its CCTV cameras from the entrance and Mr Morton-Haworth installed the camera before new security measures were put in place at the building.

Mr Morton-Haworth, whose company has made a notifications app for mobile phones and makes videos for companies such as Google, Samsung and Microsoft, said: “It seems to us it was pretty targeted on both dates — we had just had a large number of mobile phones delivered before each burglary. The only other company in the building went bust and all the CCTV was taken out. Then we were burgled.”

Mr Morton-Haworth said he was considering offering a £10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and a charge. He said: “They’ve stolen around £200,000 worth of equipment. The burglars destroyed a lot of property, including many doors.

“We feel violated that these men have been in our personal space and rummaged through our individual effects. The stuff that is really important to us is backed up on servers.”

The burglars caught on CCTV are white men, in their mid-forties and wearing orange hi-vis jackets.

Detective Inspector Paul Ridley, from Hackney CID, who is leading the investigation, said: “This was an organised raid which was clinically executed. Fortunately, the burglars didn’t count on the foresight of the business that had installed covert cameras.

“Despite their efforts to destroy the footage and conceal their identities, we have clear images and moving footage. I am confident that someone will know these men. One of the men is particularly distinctive. He walks with a pronounced gait and a curious swinging of his right arm. You will also notice on the image that the same man has a large gap between his mouth and nose.”

Anyone with information should call Hackney CID on 101, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555.@benm_b