allegedly

lorry during robbery on security camera
The biggest ever cash robbery in UK history took place a couple of days ago near Tonbridge, in Kent, which is south east of London. The ruthless armed robbers stole circa £50m ($80m) and had held family members hostage at gunpoint and tied up members of the Tonbridge depot.

Now we hear that two days later a woman has been detained by police at a building society in south east London, when trying to pay in rather large sums of used banknotes, some of which allegedly had bands around them bearing the word 'Tonbridge'.

These hardened criminals have not watched enough movies and certainly not any Ealing Comedies to fall for that ol' trick. Another interesting element is the alleged recent lifestyle change of one of the members of the depot who has apparently recently placed a deposit on a rather expensive Spanish villa.

And £50m is a pile of banknotes 38 stories high, weighing between one and two tons.

I shall watch this unfold (unravel?) with interest.

Update 1

Photofit of one of the robbers pretending to be a policeman and image of Michael Caine as underworld crook Carter, from Get Carter

Update 2

Now the police have found a white transit van with some reasonable quantities of money in it parked at Ashford International Hotel, which is adjacent to the fast Eurostar rail link to France and Belgium.

The hotel is a good, oh, 20 miles from the robbery scene and is the big well-appointed hotel by the side of the rail link which has one station in the whole of England apart from London.

Here is my simplified map (distances in miles and all major twists and turns shown):

London-50->Tonbridge Robbery-20->Ashford-20->Dover->France

See the news video report

Tag: robbery, heist, Tonbridge, banknotes