Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
‘The entire crew was in on the robbery’
This is an extract from ANNELIESE BURGESS’s ‘Heist!’ a unique insight into a crime analysts fear could bring SA to its knees
IN THE criminal underworld, the security company insiders who work with robbers are known as “Fingers” or “tsharos”. “Finderfinder” is the term for when robbers find information themselves, but this is relatively rare as it relies far more on luck, takes longer, is more difficult and carries a higher risk.
A Finger is by far the better bet and an invaluable asset to any heist team. Fingers provide information on the money being carried, on routes, on security measures, and in many cases are also instrumental in persuading the crew to submit when an attack takes place. “You don’t just challenge a truck without any inside information,” says one cash-in-transit (CIT) robber interviewed in prison.
Another explained how critical insider help was: “You’ll have a guy driving a cash van saying come and rob me and I will not pull my gun, when you come just secure my partner and I will co-operate.”
A respondent in the same study said: “Snipers are heavily armed security guards who are supposed to guard the CIT crew. So, if he is working with us, when we come, he will easily surrender. The driver of the vehicle might also be involved by giving us information on how much money is in the van and also (chooses) a safe and suitable spot for him to be hit. Their job is to make (our job) easier and quicker.”
Mark Austen experienced this first-hand. He was a crewman on a cash van for 10 years, and in that time was involved in six CIT attacks. “In every single one of those, my crew was involved,” he says. “Robbers need to access route information, and they need help to get to the van.”
His last big heist happened in Johannesburg on a sunny summer’s day in 2008. It was a Thursday morning.
“By that point I had been in several other incidents where we were hit while delivering cash. I was always the one who wasn’t in the loop. I was always the one who tried to fight back and who reported my suspicions about crew complicity. That group saw me as a problem, as someone who didn’t play along,” says Mark.
“I knew there was an X on my back. I felt like that frog in the pot of boiling water. I just had this overwhelming feeling that something bad was going to happen when I reported for duty that morning.
“It was 6am. I got my run list. I signed for the rolling vault. We had been issued with R5 million – the maximum allowable amount of cash for a run. I checked the schedule – 40 ATMs on Run 16 – the Golden Highway route. The schedule showed the van number. I moved from the control room through the big security roller doors to the parking area, where the crews were waiting. When I saw my crew, my anxiety spiked.
“Jackson Nkosi was the driver. Legwadi Mulaudzi was our Long Gun and, worst of all, Willem de Vos was the Key Man. All three of them, I knew, had been involved in two of my previous heists, but Willem was the one with whom I had real bad blood. I had told management that I suspected them, and I knew he was gunning for me.
“The crew was surprised to see me. It was clear that they had tried to organise a different Audit Officer for the run. There was a really strange vibe in the air, but the run was in motion. The ATM Custodian, Jack Marape, locked the vault into its braces in the reinforced safe area at the back of the van. I opened the sliding door and took the seat assigned to the Audit Officer: facing forward, back against the reinforced, bullet-resistant wall that separates the vault from the rest of the van. I had no reason to distrust Jack, and it gave me a bit of comfort there was one person on the van that I did not suspect of being crooked.
“CIT crews have different roles aimed at enhancing security and reducing the chances of collusion. There are various layers of control.
“The Key Man carries one set of keys for the safe area and the vault. The Custodian, who is responsible for packing the cash into the ATMs, has the other. The Audit Officer does the physical checks of money – what comes onto the van and what goes into the ATM. The Long Gun is armed with the semi-automatic rifle and is supposed to be the first line of defence in an attack. He sits in the front next to the driver. Radio control was going through the pre-run check: run number and crew details.
“We also confirmed that this run was ‘balancing’, which meant we would be checking that the past week’s cash drops balanced with the money in the ATMs. On a balancing run, the Audit Officer calls in the figures on the radio after each drop. It’s to minimise the risk of crew stealing money.
“There were five of us in the van: Legwadi, armed with an R5 up front with Jackson, the driver, Willem in the back with Jack and me. The Custodian and I weren’t armed. All the others, the protection officers, were armed. Our job was to deal with the cash. Their job was to protect us. The van took the long curve of the M1 out of downtown Johannesburg towards Soweto.
“Willem was doing something strange,” says
Mark. “He wasn’t sitting in a relaxed, normal way. He kept bracing himself with his leg. Later I would realise he was preparing for the impact of the ramming vehicle, but at the time I just found it odd. I couldn’t understand what he was doing. The driver was also driving weird. Slow, fast, slow.
“We had just off-ramped onto the Golden Highway when the driver suddenly slowed down dramatically, and then we were hit.”
In the moments of mayhem after the impact, Mark lunged for the LM5 mounted on the inside of the van, but Willem was faster and got to it first.
“He pointed the weapon at me and said only six words: ‘Not today. I will shoot you.’
“Through the windscreen, I could see about 10 people armed with assault rifles approaching. As Willem got up to open the bullet-resistant sliding door for the robbers, I was able to put a call through to the control room. I had just enough time to use the heist code, and almost whispered, ‘Opskud, Golden Highway’ (Heist, Golden Highway).
“Then the guys with the AKs were at the door. I dropped my phone on the floor, because I knew if they saw me talking on the phone it would be tickets. They made me lie on the ground and put an AK in my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Willem and Jack talking to the robbers. It dawned on me that I was the only one who wasn’t involved, that Jack was also in on it. I saw the ramming vehicle – a blue BMW 5 Series. The driver was either hurt or dead. I saw them carry him to another car.
“While I was lying there, I kept thinking about the driver who was executed a few weeks earlier on the Spruitview run.
“All these images went through my head. It was the worst feeling. You are dead, but you are not dead, but you expect to be dead. I know it sounds strange when people say it, but I did see my life flash in front of my eyes. I don’t know why they didn’t kill me.”
Mark’s phone call had alerted head office to the heist. Within 20 minutes an ambulance and the police were on the scene. The robbers were long gone.
“The whole crew was in on it. It was my word against theirs. The driver was still trapped in the van. He was hurt, but not badly. Willem had a broken toe. They all pretended to be in shock, as if this had been a real heist.”
Mark’s is the story of many thousands of guards who work for South Africa’s cashhandling companies.
“It’s a massively stressful job. Sometimes you work long shifts. Some days I was working from four in the morning till eleven at night. You go out every day. You never know if you’ll come back.
“Once you have been in one of these attacks, you operate in this constant state of hypervigilance. Nothing is ever green – it’s always orange and red. You become twitchy, jumpy and trigger-happy.”
After the last heist, Mark was booked off with posttraumatic stress disorder. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t relax. My relationships started suffering. It takes a long time to get over that kind of physical and mental shock. I kept thinking, ‘If you relax, you die.’ To this day, when I see a blue BMW 5 Series, this old rage surfaces. I avoid blue cars. I avoid BMWs.”
In the world of security, many guards have no option but to keep going. They need the work. It’s a hugely stressful environment, and there’s not much space for acknowledging that the constantly elevated levels of fear get to everyone at some point.
“Getting pissed at a braai is the closest most people come to counselling. We used to joke that our psychological support consisted of getting a burger at KFC, or a round at Benders pub,” Mark says. “What saved me was becoming a police reservist with the West Rand Flying Squad. It took away the helplessness and the anger I felt after having been exposed to so many heist situations. It gave me a way to take back control. To fight crime, not to be at the receiving end of it.”
Mark did not return to crewing after this. He is a cash service investigator. Shortly after the heist, the four other members were transferred to the cash centre as bay operators. A few resigned, and some went to work for other cash-handling companies.
This is an extract from Heist, South Africa’s CashIn-Transit Crime Epidemic Unconvered, by Anneliese Burgess, published by Penguin at a recommended retail price of R230.