Securitas depot robbery
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Coordinates | 51°11′28″N 0°16′38″E / 51.1912°N 0.2773°E |
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Outcome | Largest cash robbery in British history (£52,996,760)[1] |
Suspects | 36 arrests |
Charges |
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Convictions |
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The 2006 Securitas depot robbery in Tonbridge, England, was the UK's largest cash heist. It began with a kidnapping on the evening of 21 February 2006 and ended in the early hours of 22 February, when seven criminals stole almost £53 million. The gang left behind another £154 million because they did not have the means to transport it.
After doing surveillance and placing an
At trial at the Old Bailey in London in 2007, five people were convicted, and received long sentences, including the inside man, Emir Hysenaj. A woman who had made prosthetic disguises for the gang gave evidence in return for the charges against her being dropped. Lee Murray, the alleged mastermind, had fled to Morocco with his friend and accomplice Paul Allen. He successfully fought extradition to the UK and was imprisoned there for the robbery. Allen was extradited and after a second trial in 2008 was jailed in the UK; upon his release he was shot and injured in 2019. By 2016, £32 million remained unrecovered, and several suspects were still at large.
Depot
The
Barclays outsourced the distribution of money to Securitas Cash Management (a subsidiary of Securitas) in 2001, and by 2006 Securitas was running the Tonbridge depot. It operated non-stop with 80 full-time staff split across three shifts; most of the work was sorting and counting banknotes which arrived by armoured transport and were sent out again to restock
The manager of the depot was Colin Dixon. He lived in Herne Bay with his wife and their young child. Owing to the nature of his job, he had been trained not to tell his colleagues where he lived and to drive to work every day using a different route. The family owned two cars, and he would alternate which car he used. He had been told that if he was ever stopped by the police when driving that he should stay in his car and give the officers a piece of paper describing his job, then follow them to the nearest station, where he would co-operate with their enquiries.[2]: 79–80
Conspiracy
A criminal gang began to study the depot with the intention of robbing it. Men later convicted of conspiracy included Paul Allen, Jetmir Buçpapa, Roger Coutts, Emir Hysenaj,
Hysenaj signed up with a
Several days before the robbery, Murray went clubbing in London and crashed his yellow
Robbery
In the early evening of Tuesday, 21 February 2006, Dixon was driving home along the
: 127–130The two men impersonating police officers next drove to Dixon's home in Herne Bay and spoke to Lynn Dixon, telling her that her husband had crashed his car and that she and her son should accompany them to the hospital as quickly as possible. When she got into the car Lynn Dixon realised it was not a real police car and the men told her she was being abducted; they took her to the farm as well. Colin Dixon was then interrogated about the layout of the depot and warned at gunpoint that the lives of his family members depended upon his actions.[5][2]: 134–137
Around 01:00 on Wednesday, 22 February 2006, three vehicles headed to the depot. Lynn Dixon and her son were held in the back of a 7.5 tonne white
The rest of the gang now entered the building. One man was later nicknamed "Stopwatch", because he was wearing a stopwatch to time the robbery in an echo of the film
The staff workers were left locked up inside empty cages, as were Lynn Dixon and her son. No alarm had been set off and the gang ordered the staff to stay still when they left at 02:44.[2]: 159 At 03:15, when they were sure the robbers had gone, the staff triggered an alarm which called the police.[5] The police arrived and began the investigation by interviewing the staff and taking their clothes and their DNA profiles.[2]: 170
Investigation and arrests
The following day (Thursday, 23 February 2006) Securitas and their insurers offered a reward of £2 million for any information about the heist, which
The same day, police discovered some of the vehicles implicated in the robbery: a former Parcelforce van had been left at the Hook and Hatchet pub in Hucking, near Maidstone; a Volvo and a Vauxhall Vectra had been abandoned near Leeds Castle; Dixon's Nissan Almera was located at the Cock Horse pub in Detling.[3] The next day, Friday 24 February, discarded metal cages and other paraphernalia from the crime scene were found at Friningham Farm near Detling, on land rented by a friend of the owner of Elderden Farm.[2]: 172, 205–206
A white Ford Transit van owned by a friend of Buçpapa and Rusha was reported to be in the car park of the Ashford International Hotel. When the police checked the van, they found a balaclava, a bulletproof vest and the Škorpion submachine gun. Two bags were opened which contained over £1.3 million in stolen banknotes.[2]: 203–204 [4][13] On Saturday, 25 February 2006, armed police officers raided the homes of Buçpapa and Rusha, encountering Buçpapa's wife at their house on Hadlow Road in Tonbridge. At Rusha's house in Lambersart Close in Southborough, police found surveillance footage of Dixon's home, weapons and plans of the depot.[2]: 209–211 [14] In the shed they discovered balaclavas, Royal Mail clothing and a radio scanner tuned to a frequency used by the emergency services.[2]: 211 On Sunday afternoon, Kent Police arrested Stuart Royle and another man in Tankerton, between Whitstable and Herne Bay, after shooting out a tyre of the BMW car he was driving.[2]: 212 [15][4] On Monday, police arrested Buçpapa and Rusha in Deptford, London, after shooting out the tyres of their car.[2]: 222 The following day, the white 7.5 tonne lorry which had transported the loot was located at a hire centre and Elderden Farm was searched.[2]: 192 [4] At the farm £30,000 in stolen notes was found in the boot of a car and £105,600 hidden under a dead tree in the orchard.[2]: 226–227
Four days after the heist, Murray and Allen fled the UK.: 81
Buçpapa and Rusha appeared in court on 3 March, each facing the same charge of conspiracy to commit robbery. They were remanded in custody until a preliminary hearing at
In June a businessman named Ian Bowrem was arrested as he drove around the
Trials
The trial of eight people, including Jetmir Buçpapa, Roger Coutts, Emir Hysenaj, Stuart Royle and Lea Rusha, began on 26 June 2007 at the Old Bailey in London.[26] These five men were all charged with conspiracy to rob, conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to possess firearms. The prosecution was led by Sir John Nutting and the High Court judge was Mr Justice David Penry-Davey.[2]: 308–310
The role of manager Colin Dixon was examined, the defence barristers highlighting "co-incidences" in his conduct which might be interpreted as suggesting he was the
During the trial, a woman who had made prosthetic disguises for the gang decided to turn
At the beginning of the second trial in October 2008, presided over again by Penry-Davey, prosecutors dropped charges against the girlfriends of Buçpapa, Royle and Rusha. Paul Allen (who had been extradited from Morocco) and another man were charged with conspiracy to rob, conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to possess firearms.[2]: 405 Allen was held on remand in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh and driven to court escorted by a police helicopter which cost £30,000 a day.[2]: 406 A court order made during the first trial to preserve Lee Murray's anonymity was lifted and he was named as the leader of the gang.[2]: 407 In January 2009 the jury were unable to reach agreement on whether Allen was guilty or not and found the other man not guilty. A retrial was ordered for Allen in September and he was held on remand until then.[2]: 432–433 At the ensuing trial, Allen pleaded guilty to the three charges of conspiracy which he had previously denied, admitting his involvement but denying both that he had handled firearms and that he had been one of the seven men who went inside the depot.[2]: 432–433 He received a sentence of eighteen years' imprisonment and served six.[3][29] The 1,063 days spent on remand were taken off the sentence.[2]: 435
In June 2009 Murray was confirmed to have Moroccan nationality and therefore he won his fight against extradition from Morocco to the UK. He remained in prison in Salé and one year later stood trial for the robbery. He was convicted and jailed for ten years; when he appealed the length of this sentence, it was raised to 25 years.[2]: 433, 437 [16] Kent Police Detective Superintendent Mick Judge said "I'm pleased Murray will now begin serving a significant prison sentence for his part in the Tonbridge robbery."[17] Murray was claimed by other gang members to have been the leader. The police believed he had worn a disguise when taking Dixon hostage, and that he was the person dubbed "Stopwatch" caught on CCTV directing the robbers to move as quickly as possible at the depot.[16] The other man who had abducted Dixon was believed to be Rusha wearing a fake ginger beard.[14]
Later events
Securitas stopped the handling of cash and sold the Tonbridge depot to Vaultex, a company run by Barclays and HSBC.[8] Howard Sounes published a book about the crime in 2009, entitled Heist: The True Story of the World's Biggest Cash Robbery.[2] A decade after the robbery, in 2016, £32 million had still not been recovered.[30] In the opinion of a former detective superintendent, the cash would have quickly been absorbed into organised crime networks.[8] Farmers who lived near the robbed depot reported harassment from criminals convinced that some of the money was buried on their land.[7] Several people escaped capture and were suspected by police to be living off the proceeds of the crime in the West Indies and Northern Cyprus.[2]: 296, 436 [7][8]
In February 2013 Malcolm Constable, who was believed by his brother Derek to be associated with the robbery, was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in Canterbury. Kent Police stated they had no record of any incidents involving Constable.[31] Paul Allen was severely injured on 11 July 2019 when he was shot at his home in north London; he was taken to hospital in a critical condition.[32] He survived and by February 2021, eight men had been arrested in connection with the attack.[33]
In 2016 an appeal by Jetmir Buçpapa to serve the rest of his sentence in Albania was rejected by the
Similar incidents
Other Securitas depots had been previously targeted in the mid-1990s, when ram-raiders in Liverpool and Manchester had stolen more than £2 million.[2]: 34 The Northern Bank robbery in Belfast was previously the biggest cash theft in UK history, when £26.5 million was stolen in 2004. This record was broken by the Tonbridge heist.[37][38][1] The largest cash heist in global history took place in March 2003, when approximately US$1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq, shortly after the United States began the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[39]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7637-3001-7. Archivedfrom the original on 22 September 2022. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84739-055-4.
- ^ Kent Live. Archivedfrom the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
- ^ a b c d e "Securitas robbery: The Investigation". BBC News. 6 March 2006. Archived from the original on 13 February 2007. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
- ^ a b c d "Securitas Robbery: How It Happened". BBC News. 27 February 2006. Archived from the original on 1 February 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
- ^ Bank of England cages held £2.5M in £50 notes, £3.5M in £20 notes, £2M in £10 notes or £1M in £5 notes. Each full cage weighed a quarter of a ton. In total, the depot was holding approximately 20 tons of cash.
- ^ a b c d Knight, Sam (11 February 2011). "The Search for the Securitas Millions". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ Kent Online. Archivedfrom the original on 6 July 2019. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
- ^ a b "£2m Reward for Raid Information". BBC News. 23 February 2006. Archived from the original on 3 March 2006. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ Sapsted, David (23 February 2006). "£40m Stolen in Britain's Biggest Robbery". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 21 March 2009. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
A Bank of England spokesman said last night: 'We have already been reimbursed by Securitas for the initial estimate of £25 million ...'
- ^ a b "Third Person Held Over £50m Raid". BBC News. 24 February 2006. Archived from the original on 2 September 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
- ^ Doward, Jamie; Rock, Lucy; Thompson, Tony (26 February 2006). "Was This the Perfect Heist?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ "Depot Robbers Left Behind £1.3m". BBC News. 26 February 2006. Archived from the original on 25 May 2006. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ Kent Live. Archivedfrom the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ "Police Open Fire in Hunt for £50m Gang". The Daily Telegraph. 27 February 2006. Archived from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 14 April 2022.
- ^ a b c d "Cage-fighter Jailed Over £53m Kent Securitas Raid". BBC News. 1 June 2010. Archived from the original on 9 December 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
- ^ a b Taylor, Matthew (2 June 2010). "Securitas Robbery Mastermind Lee Murray Jailed in Morocco". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 May 2014. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
- ^ a b c "What Happened to the Securitas Cash?". BBC News. 28 January 2008. Archived from the original on 31 January 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
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- ^ "Fourth Person Charged After Heist". BBC News. 2 March 2006. Archived from the original on 17 February 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ a b "Millions Found After Depot Raid". BBC News. 3 March 2006. Archived from the original on 18 February 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
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- ^ "Arrest in Morocco over £53m raid". BBC News. 26 June 2006. Archived from the original on 19 February 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
- ^ a b Weaver, Matthew (29 January 2008). "Securitas: The Missing Men and Their Millions". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
- ^ "Police "Need £6m for Heist Costs"". BBC News. 1 December 2006. Archived from the original on 16 February 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
- ^ "Trial Over £53m Cash Robbery Starts". BBC News. 26 June 2007. Archived from the original on 3 July 2007. Retrieved 26 June 2007.
- ^ a b "Five Found Guilty of £53m Robbery". BBC News. 28 January 2008. Archived from the original on 29 January 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2008.
- ^ "Five Jailed for £53m Cash Robbery". BBC News. 28 January 2008. Archived from the original on 1 February 2008. Retrieved 29 January 2008.
- East London and West Essex Guardian. Archivedfrom the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ^ "Millions Still Missing 10 Years After Tonbridge Heist". ITV News. 9 February 2016. Archived from the original on 23 March 2017.
- ^ "Man with Links to £53M Securitas Heist Found Shot Dead in Canterbury Garden". Kent Messenger. 22 February 2013. Archived from the original on 23 May 2014. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
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- Kent Online. Archivedfrom the original on 14 April 2022. Retrieved 14 April 2022.
- ^ Kaplan, Olivia (26 July 2017). "Philip Havers QC and Adam Wagner successful in High Court Securitas Raid repatriation Judicial Review". 1 Crown Office Row. 1 Crown Office Row, London. Archived from the original on 30 November 2021. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
- ^ "Angli/ Martohet Jetmir Buçpapaj, shqiptari që u përfshi në grabitjen spektakolare të 53 milion paund. Mediat britanike zbulojnë detajet [England/ Jetmir Buçpapa, the Albanian who was involved in the spectacular robbery of £53 million, is getting married. British media reveal details]". Top Albania Radio. 31 October 2021. Archived from the original on 29 August 2022. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
- ^ Vognar, Chris (9 April 2023). "The MMA Fighter Who Pulled Off the Largest Money Heist in U.K. History". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
- ^ Glendinning, Lee (9 October 2008). "Northern Bank Robbery: The Crime That Nearly Ended the Northern Ireland Peace Process". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
- ^ "High-Profile Heists". BBC News. 11 August 2009. Archived from the original on 28 February 2009. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
- ^ "Rare £1,000,000 Bank of England Treasury Note Is in Sale". Coin World. Archived from the original on 19 September 2020. Retrieved 9 December 2020.