Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
‘Despicable’ gang who stole £100,000s facing 20 years each in prison
Andrew White, 27 (pictured below), Michael Galea, 41, Nanu Miah, 28, Anthony White, 26, and Gary Carey, 40, were convicted at Liverpool Crown Court of their involvement in the raids at Carnoustie, Perth and at 11 other locations after a fourmonth trial.
Carl Cavanagh, 33, and Anthony Conroy, 29, pleaded guilty before the trial, while an eighth man — Scott Pearson, 35 — was found not guilty of conspiracy to burgle. The gang stole hundreds of thousands of pounds by blowing up or dragging out cash machines across the UK, including at Co-op stores in Carnoustie and Perth. Their yearlong spree finally came to an end when some of them were caught at McDonald’s in Arbroath, where officers shot their car’s tyres out as they tried to get away. Maria Corr, senior crown prosecutor in the Complex Case Unit at the Crown Prosecution Service in Liverpool, told the Tele today that the case involved 1,986 statements and 12,766 exhibits of evidence. She said the gang took more than half-a-million pounds in cash and caused nearly £200,000 of damage. Officers had more than 115 “dirty” phones that the gang had used to try to evade detection, with some of their calls traced to locations in Scotland. With little DNA or other means of identifying them left at the scene, the investigation was “painstaking”.
She said: “They were a danger to the public. Anyone within 100 yards could have been hit by flying debris.
“Sometimes cash machines are filled early in the morning. There may have been cleaners on the presmies or there may have been residents living above, so the danger to the public from flying debris was serious.
“After the gang left the scene of a crime, there were at least three motorway car chases at 150mph, and when you’ve got cans of oxy acetylene gas in the vehicle it’s all very dangerous.”
Ms Corr said the gang would have
A LEADING prosecutor today revealed how members of a gang convicted of a series of ATM raids Tayside and across the UK are facing at least 20 years each in jail.
cars “stolen to order”. A group of them travelled to Aberdeen to steal an Audi in a one-off theft, which they used with a cloned plate to carry out a raid in Swindon.
They even used a Scania lorry to store a car in the back and transport it around to avoid being seen.
Ms Corr added: “One of the gang wanted to throw his daughter a party. He wanted to hire a pony and thought that would cost £2,500.
“So that’s why he said in his evidence he went up to Carnoustie and stole the ATM. It’s pretty despicable.
“They are not very nice people and they just spent the money rather than going out and getting a real job like the rest of us.
“Here in England there are much harsher sentences than in Scotland for this type of offending. Our starting point is 20 years because of the danger to the public.”