Fake police officer jailed after failed attempt to rob bank

A ROBBER who posed as a police officer to kidnap three bank workers in a failed plot to steal £500,000 from the branch they worked at has been jailed for 23 years.

Michael Dunphy, 45, first bundled a woman – who had just dropped off her older daughter at school – and her younger daughter into the back of a stolen Audi and drove them to a Rotherham bank, South Yorkshire Police said.

Dunphy, disguised in a wig and beard and wearing a high-vis jacket with a police logo, claimed the woman had committed a driving offence to lure her and her daughter into the car, after watching them for several days.

Upon arriving at the Barclays branch in Rotherham on November 21 last year, Dunphy, and several other men who remain at large, kidnapped two other women at the bank.

But his plan was thwarted because the woman’s older daughter spotted what had happened and alerted police.

As the gang opened the safe, officers contacted one of the victims, alerting Dunphy that police were on their way.

He was later caught in an investigation by the South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester Police forces.

Dunphy, from Manchester, was jailed for 23 years at Sheffield Crown Court yesterday, after being convicted of four counts of kidnap and two of attempted robbery