Cashpoint raiders who stole £250k sent to jail for 31 years
FIVE members of a gang who netted more than £250,000 during a professionally planned cash machine theft spree across the Midlands have been jailed.
During the raids they tied a heavy duty strap on to the machines and used vehicles to drag them out of the premises.
In one, a truck was driven at two security guards while in others terrified staff were forced to hide from the masked raiders.
Craig Matthews, 42, of Benmore Avenue, Edgbaston, was jailed for eight years and seven months, Shane Stojsavljevic, 36, of Hermes Crescent, Coventry, for seven years and two months, Kenneth Bourne, 38, of no fixed address, for six years, and Charlie Ward, 27, of Pepys Corner, Tile Hill, Coventry, for five years and David Bradley, 28, of Violet Close, Coventry, also for five years. They had all previously admitted conspiracy to burgle.
Matthews, who had also pleaded guilty to possessing criminal property, was handed a two-year concurrent sentence.
The gang have been jailed for a combined total of 31 years and nine months.
Peter McCartney, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said the gang carried out the attacks over 10 months between March 2018 and February this year.
He said: “They were high level commercial burglaries in which free standing ATM cash machines were stolen, from hospitals, a post office, a railway station and from shops. Significant planning went into these offences. They used high powered vehicles, some fitted with cloned registration plates.
“The offences were committed later in the evening or into the small hours. The defendants wore balaclavas or face masks.
“On occasions shops were attacked during open hours. Staff were terrified and ran from the area and hid themselves. On another occasion at the Sir Robert Peel in Tamworth two porters were frightened away.”
He said that the gang used a unit at Trossachs Farm, near Coventry, as their base and that when Matthews home was later searched police found a balaclava and more than £63,000 in cash.
They first struck on March 15 last year at a Spar shop in Tamworth and cut through metal shutters before ripping out a cash machine.
The next target was the Midlands Arts Centre in Edgbaston taking an ATM containing £43,450 before they moved on to the Trent Valley post office in Tamworth on September 29 where they caused “significant” damage while dragging the ATM out.
They were pursued by the police following this raid but after abandoning a van which contained the machine they escaped in a car.
Mr McCartney said the defendants also stole an ATM containing more than £58,000 from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston, putting it on a pallet truck before wheeling it along a corridor.
They also carried out a number of trips before attempting to snatch an
ATM from Rugby station but the strap they had attached to it snapped and they fled.
After the gang stole the ATM from Sir Robert Peel Hospital police later discovered that machine and another dumped in a canal.
A frightened shop assistant who had been working at a Costcutters in Coventry hid in a toilet when four of the raiders, one armed with a crow bar, came into the store.
However the gang’s attempt to take the machine there was foiled when the strap they used again snapped. They were successful though on December 6 when they grabbed a cash machine from Warwick Hospital. On January 27 they broke into Bookers cash and carry in Stirchley after using a blow torch on some metal barriers.
Two security guards were alerted to the break in but then had to move quickly to avoid being hit by a flat bed lorry being driven at them.
The manager, who had also arrived at the scene, also had to move his car out of the way to avoid being struck and when one of the guards tried to follow the gang he abandoned the chase after fearing he was going to be rammed.
Mr McCartney said the final raid was on a Spar shop in Chelmsley Wood where a shop assistant, the manager and a customer fled before an ATM, containing over £38,000 was dragged through a window.