Gang who stole heavy machinery to tear cashpoints out of walls in string of burglaries jailed
Some shops targeted never reopened due to damage, says ATM operator
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A gang who used diggers to steal more than £500,000 from cash machines in a ram-raid spree across three counties has been jailed.
The group also caused some £900,000-worth of damage to shops and homes where they ripped the machines from walls, police said.
Jimmy Shea, Jason Mobey and Les Keet targeted ATMs at night between July and November 2018 using stolen heavy machinery, some of which they burned afterward to destroy evidence.
The burglaries also cost some workers their jobs due to shop closures and loaded down ATM supplier Cardtronics with “sizable losses”, according to a Surrey Police statement.
Mobey and Keet further conspired to rob a Surrey resident at home alongside two other men, Eric Summerfield and Melvyn Beech, officers said.
All five men were arrested in dawn raids on 20 December last year and pleaded guilty to various offences at Hove Crown Court on 17 April. They were all handed prison sentences at the same court on Wednesday.
Their crimes and punishment
• Jason Mobey, 40, of Macdonald Road, Farnham, admitted conspiracy to commit burglary and conspiracy to commit robbery. He was jailed for 10 years and eight months
• Jimmy Shea, 24, of Nursery Road in Alton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary and was jailed for six years
• Les Keet, 29, of Cobbetts Close, Normandy, pleaded guilty conspiracy to commit burglary and conspiracy to rob. He was jailed for eight years
• Melvyn Beech, 47, of Kingston Road in Leatherhead, who admitted conspiracy to commit robbery, was jailed for three years and four months
• Eric Summerfield, 63, of Walnut Tree Close in Guildford, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery. He was jailed for three years and four months
Mobey, Shea and Keet were also made subject to five-year serious crime prevention orders.
The burglary trio targeted a string of convenience shops and banks, plus two service stations, across Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire.
Libby Clark, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The impact of these robberies cannot be underestimated. It’s not just about the money they escaped with. In some cases, there were flats above the cash machines and large scale structural damage was caused to a number of the buildings.”
And a Cardtronics spokesperson added: “Criminals think this is a victimless crime and they can’t be more wrong as when they steal monies this means, as a business that is self-insured, the people in the company could lose their jobs as the attacks, losses and monies stolen comes from the company’s bottom line.
“I can state with confidence that when our ATMs are stolen not only do the public lose a measure of freedom but 99 per cent of the time the shop that housed the machine would have been destroyed due to the collateral damage caused by the plant machinery, some of which never reopened again.”
Inspector Gary Smith, Surrey Police’s Waverley borough commander, said the thefts had “caused misery” for business owners and residents.
“The actions of the five men not only caused hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage but also cost people their jobs and greatly inconvenienced local residents who had to travel further to withdraw their money,” he said in a statement.
The Surrey and Sussex serious organised crime unit was behind the investigation, while Sussex Police and Hampshire Constabulary participated in the dawn raids.
Surrey Police added in its statement: “Owners of plant machinery should also consider other safeguarding measures to property their property such as not leaving the equipment visible from the main road, concealing it at night and blocking access to it.
“Those renting equipment should keep any immobiliser code away from the machinery in a secure location”