Britain's Biggest Heists

On the night of Saturday, 11 September 1971, a gang of thieves tunnelled for 40ft into the vault of Lloyds Bank on Baker Street, central London, cutting through the reinforced concrete floor with a thermic lance. They began digging the tunnel over a period of evenings and weekends from beneath a nearby handbag store they had previously purchased.

Stuart Buckley, the bank’s electrician, acted as part of the gang who raided Mayfair’s Bank of America. The raid took place on 16 November 1976, at the Bank of America in Mayfair, London.

During a two year reign of terror across the UK, a gang of ruthless criminals targeted cash-in-transit vans and high security depots stealing a total of £1.1 million. The gang, comprising of criminals from Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham had a highly elaborate, but effective method of welding battering rams to heavy goods vehicles, and driving them into their targets. It took a nationwide Police operation to finally bring the thieves to justice, but not before the gang had managed to steal a Police vehicle and flee the scene. The investigation ended in one of the largest recoveries of cash ever made in the country, with almost £1 million seized and given back to its rightful owners.

In 2004 a gang in Northern Ireland managed to execute one of the most audacious robberies in the world. A violent group kidnapped staff of the Northern Bank in Belfast and held their families hostage. In an elaborate plot, they ordered the staff to steal over £26 million, walking straight out of the bank with the money.

On 3 July 1995, 4 masked raiders ambushed a Midland Bank van as it pulled up to the Midland Bank District Service Centre, Salford. As one of the guards entered the building, the driver (Graham Huckerby) was threatened with a pistol and forced to drive to street nearby. Huckerby was forced to open the van, blindfolded, and tied to railings. He was told that his colleague had been taken hostage and would be killed if he did not cooperate.

The target was £40m pounds worth of gold bullion and £40m in cash, stored at the Swissport Cargo Warehouse at Heathrow Airport. On 17 May 2004, armed police were lying in wait for the gang as a white Transit van smashed into warehouse doors. Police had been on high alert due to an increase in crime at Heathrow.