Bungling raider knocks down wrong wall, breaks into empty warehouse, then crashes getaway car.
Aiming to be one of Britain’s criminal masterminds, Raymond Betson yesterday sealed his legacy as possibly the most hopeless. The bungling career criminal, jailed for the failed Millennium Dome diamond heist in 2000, was starting another sentence after a raid on a Kent cash depot with a mechanical digger went disastrously wrong.
He and his unknown accomplices dreamed of recreating the record-breaking 2007 Securitas raid in which £53million was spirited away.
- Digger driven into wall
- Finding empty room
-
Fleeing
empty-handed - Police find balaclava
-
Betson
arrested -
Jailed for
13 years
But they smashed through the wrong wall—which led them to an empty room rather than the vault of cash they were expecting. They then broke into a neighbouring warehouse, which was also empty, before crashing the getaway car.
Caught red-handed
Betson, 52, and his accomplices fled on foot, leaving a treasure trove of evidence which would lead police straight to his doorstep. In 2000 he was caught red-handed as he led an audacious heist to steal diamonds worth £350million at the Millennium Dome, making headlines world-wide. He was jailed for 18 years, reduced to 15 because the elderly judge fell asleep during the trial. Before that raid, Betson had 18 convictions.
They smashed through the wrong wall which led them to an empty room
In the latest case, he and his team used a stolen digger to smash through a wall at the Loomis cash depot in Kent, in March 2012. Armed with baseball bats and carrying plastic bags to stash cash in, the men climbed through the hole only to find the room was empty. They fled after a minute, only to get their four-wheel drive getaway car stuck by grounding it on rough farmland.
When police turned up they found a two-way radio a baseball bat, and a stash of large white bags. In a nearby bush, a balaclava, snood head cover, and running stopwatch—which had been started before the robbery. DNA on the balaclava provided a “one in a million” match to Betson. He was convicted at Maidstone Crown court and jailed for 13 years.
