Bungling burglar caught thanks to facial recognition technology

An audacious burglar who returned to his victim’s house to ask for personal belongings he’d left behind has been jailed.

Said Hassan and an accomplice forced entry via the front door to a house in Pontcanna Street, Cardiff, on Friday, February 7.

The occupants disturbed them them as they were loading alcohol from kitchen cupboards and told them to leave.

Hassan left, but after realising he’d forgotten some personal belongings during his rush to get out, he returned to the property to ask for his things back.

The stunned occupants refused and by this time had already contacted South Wales Police.

Officers

The pair had left the scene by the time officers arrived, but officers headed for the nearby Co-op shop to check CCTV.

Lo and behold, Hassan was captured by the cameras just minutes before the burglary – the officer’s job now was to identify who he was.

Retrospective facial recognition was used to identify Hassan from a CCTV still and he was arrested two days later.

Said Hassan, 39, was charged with burglary and went on to plead guilty. On May 15, he was jailed for two years at Cardiff Crown Court.

Retrospective facial recognition is a post-event use of facial recognition technology, which compares still images of faces of unknown subjects against a reference image database in order to identify them.

Last year alone (2024/25) retrospective facial recognition was used with 2715 CCTV, dashcam, ring doorbell and mobile phone images to identify suspects.