Armed robber helped gang to snatch over £90,000 in raid spree
ANDREW BARDSLEY AND IAN HUGHES
AN Accrington man has been jailed for his role as part of a armed heist gang responsible for staling more than £90,000.
And a court heard how after every robbery Abubakir Iqbal visited a massage parlour as ‘kind of a reward’.
The 30-year-old - along with partners-in-crime Sajjad Hussain, 28, Anas Khan, 26, and Shazad Mahmood, 26 - carried out 10 raids on cash-intransit vans.
Together, they stole more than £90,000 before they were caught trying to flee their 11th robbery at a branch of Natwest bank in Halifax.
One of the crooks, Hussain led a double life while working full-time at a bank call centre - and told bosses his grandmother had died to get the day off to help complete another heist.
He also visited the Bury massage parlour with Iqbal, of Countess Street, Accrington.
Now all four have been jailed for a total of almost 80 years.
Khan and Iqbal were locked up for 21 years, Hussain for 18 years and Mahmood for 17 years.
When Khan learned of his fate, he launched a foul-mouthed tirade towards sentencing Judge Michael Leeming, who he repeatedly called a ‘f****** muppet’.
“Stick 21 years up your f****** a***,” Khan told the judge.
Judge Leeming warned Khan that if he doesn’t apologise for the outburst he could face further punishment and be held in contempt of court.
Manchester Crown Court heard that the gang struck in broad daylight targeting guards picking up cash takings from restaurants and shops from November 26, 2018, until January 31 last year.
The crimes happened across the region in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Stockport and Manchester before the final plot in Halifax.
Guards were threatened with weapons including hammers and sometimes attacked before they made off with a cash box, while one man remained in a getaway car ready to whisk them away from the scene of the crime.
No guards were seriously hurt but they told of being ‘badly shocked’ and ‘wary’ following their ordeals, with one saying he was thankful that ‘things didn’t go horribly wrong’.
In one robbery, at The Rock shopping centre in Bury, prosecutor Phil Barnes told how there were ‘hundreds’ of members of the public nearby on a busy shopping day in the run up to Christmas.
On December 10, 2018, the gang struck three times in the same day, netting about £12,000.
Judge Leeming said the gang showed a ‘complete disregard for the impact this sort of criminality has on the public’.
“You were prepared to resort to violence to achieve your ends, regardless of the presence of the public, for very large rewards.”
A feature of the case which later helped police piece together the gang’s crimes was the distinct way in which they got to the cash within the secure box.
If opened the boxes emit dye as a security measure, so the gang used a Stihl saw to prise open the box and remove the cash, taking away the money but discarding the box.
After the robberies they would then launder the cash using fixed odds betting terminals at bookmakers.
Anas Khan ran a salvage yard where cars used in the robberies would soon be destroyed or stripped down for parts and never seen again by the police.
The Halifax robbery proved to be the downfall of the gang.
A guard was robbed on the morning of January 31 last year while carrying a cash box containing £25,000 at a branch of Natwest in Halifax.
As the gang fled the area in a getaway car, the driver lost control and crashed into a bridge.
Police arrived at the crash scene shortly after and found Hussain still in the back of the car, dazed, with the £25,000 around him. The other three men fled but were caught shortly after.
Prosecutor Mr Barnes said he commended the man’s actions on behalf of Greater Manchester
Police, West Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, a commendation the judge also endorsed.
Iqbal and Hussain, of St James Road, Higher Broughton, Salford, were both found guilty of conspiracy to rob after a trial. Khan and Mahmood, of Edward Street, Oldham pleaded guilty to the same offence.
Khan, of Landseer Street, Glodwick, Oldham, also admitted conspiracy to convert criminal property and conspiracy to handle stolen goods.
Stella Massey, defending Khan, said he has been prescribed medication for stress as he owes a £40,000 cannabis debt to an Albanian gang, which is still outstanding.
Mahmood, an electrician, told the author of a pre-sentence report he ‘enjoyed the adrenaline surge’ he felt while committing the offences.
For him it was a ‘form of escapism’ from the ‘pressure within the family setup’, his barrister Zarif Khan.
Jeremy Hill-Baker, for Hussain, said there is ‘plainly another side’ to the married father-of-two, who has another child on the way.