13

Tricks of the Trade

As the heavy goods vehicle trundled away from Prestwick Airport’s cargo area in the early hours of a cool April day, there was no hint of what lay ahead. It picked its way away from the yard and onto the open road with only the occasional flicker of lights from passing cars to light up the gloom and shine a spotlight on the Iveco truck as it motored through the Ayrshire countryside.

The unremarkable vehicle, an ageing curtain-sided lorry, gave nothing away from the outside – certainly not to the untrained eye. But inside its seven-tonne load area was a precious cargo that the driver knew all too well he had to take particular care of. It was not cash or gold, not antiquities or art. Instead, the £500,000 consignment was made up entirely of computer disk drives. It was 2002 and Scotland was playing its part in the post-millennium advances in technology. The parts loaded on the truck had been ordered by Seagate, a US technology firm with a manufacturing base in Irvine. That factory was a 10-mile drive from Prestwick – less than 20 minutes even at a conservative pace. It was a route that was familiar to the delivery network feeding Seagate’s operation. During the week in question, the load had arrived on a cargo flight from Singapore and, after being processed by customs officials, had been moved to a storage warehouse ready for collection.

From there, they were to be moved on to the company’s plant at Irvine, where a range of internal and external hard drives were manufactured and marketed. The US enterprise had first landed on Scottish soil in 1985 when it opened a factory in Livingston, which was later followed by the Irvine expansion. By the time of the Prestwick heist, Livingston had been closed due to a downturn in demand and Irvine remained teetering on the brink. The loss of more than £500,000 of equipment must have done nothing to hearten the California-based management team who were considering the future of the facility and those it operated in locations as far afield as the Far East.

In 2002 it was business as normal, and when the truck arrived at 4.45 a.m. on 1 April, a Monday morning, there was nothing untoward. The driver presented the necessary paperwork and signed on the dotted line to enable his consignment to be shifted into the back of the lorry ready to make what should have been an uneventful trip. With the administration taken care of, he was bid a brisk farewell by the airport security team and sent off along the journey. Little did the Prestwick team realise that the high-value boxes would not make it to their destination as a meticulously planned and audaciously executed heist began to take shape. The alarm was not raised immediately; instead it took a few hours before police were called in and the missing computer kit was reported.

From the very first stagecoach robbery to the modern day, the theft of valuables in transit has been an unfortunate part of British life. Violence, threats and intimidation have been the common denominator – drivers terrorised purely on the basis of the contents of their vehicle. But that is where the Seagate raiders differed from those who had gone before them. There were no weapons used, no force and no commotion. The only tool required was cunning.

Police called to start the search had to begin with a clean sheet – who, what, where, when and how. Those were the blanks to be filled in and, quite quickly, they began to become clear. By the time the Iveco had been driven out of the Prestwick gates, one of the largest heists in Scotland in recent times had already taken place. The driver was not a victim in waiting but the prime protagonist in the elaborate and very contemporary crime. On this occasion, it proved the pen can, indeed, be mightier than the sword as a convincing fake paper trail was used to pull off a robbery which brought maximum return for very minimal fuss.

When the driver turned up at the airport’s bonded freight warehouse that morning, he came armed not with a gun or a knife but with a docket entitling him to collect the consignment of computer parts. It was a very good imitation, clearly put together with knowledge of the real McCoy. The plan was aided by the sheer volume of cargo movements handled daily at Prestwick Airport which prides itself on being ‘Scotland’s premier dedicated freight airport’. Chiefs at the air hub point to its location as a major attraction, not least because it serves as the first mainland point in Europe for transatlantic flights. The ability to handle large aircraft ensures it is used for everything from technology shipments to livestock charters, with a significant investment made in guaranteeing freight facilities are attractive to some of the largest operators in the world. Good road links to Glasgow and the north of England are another selling point, whilst fast turnaround of aircraft and processing of cargo are also hailed in marketing brochures. Crucially, the airport’s 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-per-week opening hours make it a constant hive of activity and an obvious freight stop due to the lack of noise restrictions. All of those factors also left it open to the type of crime suffered by Seagate when the humble Iveco drove away with its precious goods.

Dressed in work gear, complete with a high-visibility vest, the driver did nothing to arouse suspicion. He spoke with a Scottish accent, presented his documentation and patiently waited for the all clear to load up his truck. The vehicle itself was not distinctive. A light-coloured cab with blue trim were the only features to make a lasting impression on the gatehouse staff who watched it disappear into the distance that morning. A broken rear light and the number two on one of the doors were other marks noted at the time.

The lorry pulled away from the airport and could have been hundreds of miles away by the time the alarm was eventually raised. The police were only notified after the horrible truth dawned on the cargo team at Prestwick when Seagate, the rightful owners of the shipment, arrived at the gatehouse to collect their equipment. The documentation was checked and double-checked and the truth became clear.

Although the fake driver, his face partially hidden by a cap pulled down over his brow, had acted alone for the early morning pick-up, detectives were quick to make the assessment that the operation was the brainchild of a highly organised criminal gang. The assumption was the driver was part of the conspiracy but the alternative viewpoint was that he could have been merely a pawn in the process – believing he was collecting a genuine load. If that was the case, he certainly didn’t come forward to volunteer information on his part in the theft. Instead, it was left to Seagate to offer a £30,000 reward in the hope of enticing information from those who held the key to solving the case.

As well as reaching out to those who may have had an involvement on the periphery of the scheme or at least knowledge of it through the criminal jungle drums, the company was also hoping to touch a nerve with those providing another link in the chain – potential buyers of the equipment. It was a specialist shipment and a large one at that, so it was not going to be disposed of through the thief’s traditional network of bar-room bartering and backstreet deals. This would need to find a more expert home – someone involved in either manufacturing or large-scale wholesaling of technology products. With the publicity attracted by the raid Scotland would probably be too close to home, but disposing of it overseas would mean a risky export trail. The natural conclusion was that England would be the likely market and that is where police resources were concentrated, as well as scrutinising the scene and methods used.

The Prestwick incident was not the first breach of airport security on British soil that year. Just two months earlier, raiders had escaped with $4.2 million from a British Airways security van at Heathrow. A month before the Scottish robbery, Heathrow had again been a target when $2.24 million had been taken after it landed on a South African Airways flight. The small consolation at Prestwick was that the computer parts had been stolen once they had been taken ‘landside’. From a security perspective, the London thefts had been more concerning since they had occurred on what should have been sacrosanct ‘airside’ land. Still, an immediate security review was ordered by bosses at the Ayrshire airport, as they came to terms with what had happened on their watch.

Stuart Sinclair, airport freight director at the time, faced the music as media interest grew. He told journalists: ‘Some freight was taken erroneously. We are awaiting the result of the investigation. Some very calculating and clever thieves appear to have taken the cargo. Our people acted in a normal manner of distributing the freight once it had cleared customs. The thieves produced documents to overcome our systems. We view an incident like this as very, very serious.

‘This appeared to be a normal transaction when someone turned up with forged documents. We went through the processes of issuing a release note for them to collect the freight from our warehouse, only to discover what had happened when the real documents turned up hours later. We will review security to see where there are perhaps any loopholes, but at this moment in time it would be very hard to see how this could have been avoided.’

It was described by investigating officers as ‘a well-organised, well-executed crime’ and it was made clear that the culprits knew exactly what they had come for and how to get away with it. And, having hit on a winning formula, there was little incentive for them to give up. Three months later, a similar charade was played out on the opposite side of the country. This time, it was at Grangemouth docks and the stock of choice was more high proof than high tech – with Absolut vodka spirited away from the harbour by a smooth-talking conman in an articulated lorry. The cases were worth £200,000 and, once again, were released by staff at the cargo base when the driver produced what appeared to be authentic documents. The trailer was loaded up and the contents driven away without so much as a flicker of concern – it was a confident and well-rehearsed routine.

Just as at Prestwick months earlier, the crew responsible relied upon the busy nature of the port to enable them to blend into the background. Grangemouth, the country’s largest container port and within easy reach of Edinburgh and Glasgow, handles around 9 million tonnes of cargo every year – equating to 150,000 containers annually. That represents 150,000 container loads which require to be hauled away from the area, ensuring the movement of a lorryload of vodka was of little significance. It flew under the radar, particularly given the apparent presence of all necessary documentation.

With 500,000 sq. ft of warehouse accommodation, spread across 365 acres, Grangemouth is a huge complex and the gang were able to motor away with no disruption – and with £200,000 worth of easily saleable alcohol safely tucked away and ready to flood Britain’s booming black market. That underground trade was picking up at the turn of the millennium, as aggressive taxation began to bite. Estimates using official HMRC data provide an eye-watering snapshot of the level of the black market in the UK – making the Grangemouth vodka heist look like a small drop in the ocean of illicit beer and spirits washing around Britain.

In 2012, the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), a group that campaigns for the lowering of taxes and public spending, compiled a comprehensive rundown of the market and came up with the assessment that £28.5 billion of tax revenue had been lost through the illegal sale of spirits, beer, cigarettes, tobacco and diesel between 2005 and 2010 alone. The alliance argued that taxing those goods in a punitive manner would only exacerbate the problem and also warned against the minimum pricing strategy for alcohol which was at that stage looming on the horizon. It prompted the then TPA director Matthew Sinclair to say: ‘High taxes also create fat profits for criminals. With new tax hikes, and proposals for a minimum price on alcohol, the Chancellor runs the risk of making that black market even more profitable. The revenue lost to the illicit trade could fund a small but welcome tax cut for millions of families, but instead it’s lining the pockets of those selling dodgy diesel, tobacco and booze. The Government need to give struggling taxpayers a better deal and squeeze the smugglers.’

It wasn’t just the smugglers who were fuelling the black market – thieves were also at the centre of the trade. By the time the Grangemouth theft was discovered, there was every chance the bottles of vodka were already being distributed as it was not until days after they had been taken that the facts became clear and police were once again called in to investigate what was starting to become a trend north of the Border.

Grangemouth was the latest, Prestwick had been the previous and there had also been two earlier incidents of note. Those occurred early in 2002 – one in Ayrshire when a trailer containing £750,000 of computer equipment was stolen from an industrial estate and the other in Bridgton, Glasgow, when a similar batch, this time worth £250,000, was removed unlawfully. On each occasion, forged paperwork was used to gain easy access and allow the perpetrators to make good their escape without being challenged.

Following the successful vodka heist, Detective Sergeant Pat Scroggie of Central Scotland Police stated, ‘One positive line of inquiry is in England where the stuff appears to be getting sold. It is possible one gang may be responsible as, when they find a fraud that works, they try it again and again.’

In June 2005, there was another attack at Prestwick although it was different in nature. A three-man gang armed with knives threatened a member of staff and exited with £275,000 worth of computer gear. The employee was left badly shaken but uninjured. The somewhat inconvenient factor of the timing of the theft was that it came just weeks before the world’s leaders were due to fly in to Scotland, many through Prestwick, for the G8 summit at Gleneagles. Airport bosses were forced to defend their security procedures and policies. They vowed to improve systems to protect the warehouse complex. The difficulty was that the freight area was a busy part of the airport, with a constant flow of heavy goods vehicles and vans coming and going day and night. It made the task of controlling and monitoring each movement challenging, especially in the face of increasingly determined attempts to get the better of the security staff. In truth, those robberies had no bearing on the G8 preparations – the small matter of 3,000 police officers enlisted to guard Prestwick’s perimeter made sure of that.

In 2004, the investigation into the 2002 Prestwick heist wended its way to court when two notorious figures joined nine fellow-accused in the dock. Martin Bowers and his brother Tony were, up to that point, best known for their role at the heart of British boxing. They managed the renowned Peacock Gym in London and served as promoters. Lennox Lewis, Prince Naseem Hamed and many other household names had used their Canning Town gym as a training base and some gym users were even cast in the gangster film Snatch by Guy Ritchie. Then the siblings became infamous for very different reasons as they faced up to charges that they were part of a gang behind a flurry of robberies and hijackings at airports and ports on both sides of the border. These included the £1.1-million raid of HSBC cash at Gatwick in March 2004 when robbers posed as Brinks Mat guards to get to the bank’s stored money. Bags of cash being deposited from Gibraltar were the target for that airport raid. The other end of the spectrum was the Grangemouth docks robbery.

It transpired police had spent nine months filming the Peacock gym, which served as headquarters for the alleged enterprise. The gym also became the centre of attention for the media, hungry for the celebrity aspect of the court case. A smattering of well-known names peppered the story and this ensured maximum exposure for the trial. Naturally, the scale of the crime also had an influence on the pick-up by newspapers and broadcasters but the personalities involved were the driving force.

When Tony, Martin and the third Bowers brother, Paul, were jailed, it was revealed in court that Gatwick was viewed as ‘the big one’ by the gang. The series of raids had been planned to raise funds to save their struggling gym on the back of a huge rent hike. They had vowed to stick to a no-weapons, no-violence policy. Their reward was not a happily-ever-after scenario – Tony was jailed for twelve and a half years, Martin for seven years and Paul for six. Eight accomplices were also jailed after admitting their role. They had, between the three of them, admitted charges of conspiracy to steal and conspiracy to obtain by deception and handle stolen goods between August 2002 and May 2003. Prosecutor Timothy Barnes QC revealed insiders were recruited to ‘create an array of bogus documents and false identities’ in order to target valuable consignments arriving at the airports and docks. Gary Kibbey, of the Met’s Serious Crime Squad, said the gang had committed ‘organised crime on a massive scale’.

As an aside, it is worth noting that lorry crime did not end with the conclusion of the Bowers court case. In the summer of 2013, a trailer containing £300,000 worth of wine was whipped away from a yard in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, by thieves who arrived with their own lorry cab to haul the valuable freight.

For police those thefts marked a great challenge to investigate but, with the absence of weapons and violence, were far more palatable than some of the vicious and even deadly attacks of the past. With no arms involved, the Prestwick and Grangemouth incidents demonstrated the potential profits on offer for those who carried out such robberies. Computer parts and alcohol were relatively new targets for the underworld but a high-profile case in Perth underlined the fact that more familiar treasures remained in demand. In 2009, a patient and well-organised gang struck in the centre of the city to pull off what was, at the time, Scotland’s biggest-ever jewellery theft. Again, there was no hint of violence or sense of drama – instead, sleight of hand was the order of the day.

The setting for the lightning-quick raid was unusual, given the high value of the goods. In a matter of seconds, thieves had escaped with jewellery worth £1 million on the High Street when they snatched a holdall from a travelling salesman as he took a break from his work to browse in an Oxfam charity store. The shop, on Perth’s South Street, became the centre of attention for one of the country’s biggest criminal investigations as detectives and uniformed officers swarmed around the area in the aftermath of the sneak theft.

The shell-shocked 62-year-old salesman was left to break the news to his employers, a leading jewel merchant based in the trade’s heartland of Hatton Garden in London. It was a family-run firm, making the loss of the haul of precious diamond rings, bracelets and necklaces all the more devastating.

Hatton Garden’s jewellery quarter is a sight to behold, with gem merchants and jewellers at every turn. The success of the area is built upon the experience of the craftsmen and specialists who have been operating for generations, importing precious stones and manufacturing exquisite pieces. Quantity and quality are bywords and competition is fierce. Behind every fine merchant is an active sales force, dedicated to selling the wares to jewellers far and wide. It was during one of those trade missions to Scotland that one Hatton Garden firm came a cropper and their lax security was cruelly exposed.

The salesman had been carrying a range of jewellery in a blue canvas sports bag, desperate not to draw attention to his high-value goods, as he visited a stockist in Perth. He had clearly been carefully watched by the gang, who followed him to the Oxfam outlet and struck when his attention had momentarily switched away from the bag. Unlike cash-carrying security teams, there was no high-tech system in place to make life difficult for the assailants – undoubtedly a factor in their choice of target. The victim was browsing the second-hand book section of the shop and his tome of choice would prove to be the most expensive he is ever likely to read. The wholesale value of the stock was put at £600,000, translating to a seven-figure sum when priced for the retail market. He had placed the bag on the floor as he leafed through the books on the shelves and that proved to be long enough for the gang to set to work.

Police believed the gang may have been a well-travelled group which had struck at various points across Europe, leading the Tayside force to open discussions with counterparts throughout Britain and on the Continent as they stepped up their investigations. Attention focused on three individuals who had been seen in and around the Oxfam shop on the day of the incident. It is believed they were travelling in an ageing dark-coloured BMW which was also seen in the area at the time. It was reported that the car had been tailing the salesman for ‘some time’, its occupants clearly waiting for an opportune moment to strike and deciding that they had found their perfect window.

The description of the first suspect was particularly distinctive – with officers seeking information about ‘an attractive-looking’ woman of ‘European appearance’ who was seen acting suspiciously in the store shortly before the bag vanished. She was said to be aged between 20 and 25, 5ft 2in in height, slim, with brown wavy hair and, crucially, it was thought she had also been in the Perth jewellers that the salesman had visited that day. Two men were witnessed getting into the BMW with the woman, driving off at speed in the direction of Tay Street and presumably leaving Perth by one of the fast links heading north and south provided by the A90 dual carriageway. They had negotiated the busy streets of the bustling city without being apprehended and there were only a few eyewitness statements to help guide the investigation. The first man was described as being of dark complexion with ‘a European appearance’. He was 5ft 9in in height and had thinning grey hair. His sidekick was said to be of Asian appearance, in the region of 6ft with thick dark hair.

A week after the incident, police returned to the scene and desperately attempted to jog memories and spur the Perth public to come forward with information. Mike Pirie, the detective charged with leading the probe, said at the time: ‘We are studying hours of public and private CCTV coverage to try and identify any suspicious activity in the area that could assist in tracing those responsible. Our officers are also working closely with colleagues in other force areas to see if they can assist our enquiries. In addition, we have had a good response from members of the public who have contacted us to offer valuable details.’

Perth’s Sleepy Hollow image was all of a sudden blown out of the water as the thriving city with its rural charm and well-to-do reputation found itself at the centre of a major criminal probe. Residents found themselves being stopped in the street to answer questions from reporters and the business community was also being pushed to give their input. Some were comfortable in the spotlight but most chose to shy away. Whatever approach was taken, there was no escaping the fact that their town was the centre of attention – it was Perth’s 15 minutes of fame.

The unfortunate victim was named by some newspapers. A South African national, his job had taken him to Scotland from his base in London. He did not return to England from his business trip with happy memories. Understandably, he was said to have been left deeply distressed by the incident – the definite low point in career said to have spanned four decades. He had been a regular visitor to Perth, and on his ill-fated trip had kept an appointment at Timothy Hardie, a jewellery store on St Johns Street. Established in 1981, it is an outlet well known for its specialism in antique gems and boasts the largest selection of Victorian and Edwardian pieces in the country. With some very well known clients, including golfer Colin Montgomerie, it was regarded as having great potential for the London merchants with high-end products to sell.

The store’s owner said at the time, ‘I am shocked that this could have happened. You don’t expect something like this to happen in the Fair City of Perth. But it is obvious from what the police are saying that it was planned.’

As well as trawling through hours of CCTV footage, police also took to the streets to conduct door-to-door inquiries in the commercial heart of the city. Businesses and householders were asked to provide any information they felt relevant. The firm which had suffered the loss also offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to the return of the contents of the bag and specialist jewellery publications were used to circulate details of the missing items. Yet, to date, the mystery of the Oxfam heist remains unsolved and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of breathtaking jewellery remains undiscovered, presumably finding its way, piece by piece, into the hands of unsuspecting buyers. Behind every stone is a story and, in the case of that batch, it was a more extraordinary tale than most.