Cash machines ram raids gang is jailed

Nov 10 2007 by Neil Mckay, The Journal

A GANG of ram-raiders who stole an ATM containing £26,460 from a branch of Somerfield in Langley Moor, County Durham, has been jailed for more than 22 years.

The gang waited until the dead of night to use stolen heavy machinery to smash the brick wall around cash machines before loading them on to a truck and making off.

They also struck twice in North Yorkshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Cumbria, and once in Lancashire, County Durham and in the Lothian and Borders police area.

In the highly organised and professional raids – carried out between January 2005 and November 2006 – they escaped with a total of £278,000 in cash. The gang also got away with £90,000 of cash machines and stole cars, HGVs and farm machinery to carry out the attacks.

Teesside Crown Court heard they caused more than £120,000 of damage to the buildings the ATMs were housed in.

Yesterday Brian Thexton and brothers Ronald and Carl, their cousins Joseph Thexton and Michael Smith, and associates Stuart Henderson, Carl Fitzgerald and Malcolm Readman were jailed for more than 22 years.

Brian Thexton, 31, of Park Road, Witton Park, Bishop Auckland, received six years; Joseph Thexton, 42, of Pheonix Row, Witton Park, received four years; Ronald Thexton, 24, of Park Road, Witton Park, received four years, nine months; Fitzgerald, 23, of Sun Street, Bishop Auckland, received 15 months; Henderson, 43, of Musgrave Gardens, Gilesgate, Durham, received 18 months; Smith, 27, of Park Road, Witton Park, received 12 months; Carl Thexton, 29, of Park Road, Witton Park, received 15 months; Brett Simpson, 24, of Ashcroft Gardens, Bishop Auckland, received 12 months; and Readman, 26, of South Bank, Middlesbrough, received nine months. Prosecutor Peter Johnson told the court: “The group showed a brazen disregard to those who were affected by their actions. Vehicles specifically required for the raids, often of high value, were stolen to order, often shortly before the raid and then abandoned and, in many cases, set on fire. These acts of associated theft and criminal damage are aggravating features of the thefts of the ATMs.”

The gang was arrested during a series of dawn raids across the North-East on December 12 last year. Police had been on to them after analysing mobile phone calls.

Co-ordinated and led by Durham Constabulary with close assistance from North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Lothian and Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Lancashire police forces, Operation Ichor was “one of the largest and most complex investigations of its kind carried out in the region”, said police last night.