It was 4.15am and two men arrived in a black BMW outside the Co-op in Ellenbrook, Worsley. They were joined by another in a Transit van stolen hours earlier from Burtonwood, Cheshire.
They then attempted to steal money from a cash machine inside the Co-op on Morston Close. The attempt failed - but that incident on March 16th 2022 was their second strike. Two days earlier, they had escaped with £21,420 in an identical attack at a Co-op in LIncolnshire.
It was the start of a five-month crime spree from March to July 2022 which saw them strike 19 times across England and Wales. Using a lockup garage in Greater Manchester as a 'stable' where they would keep their stolen cars, the raids saw the crew steal £580,000 in total.
The four-man gang - who also hit two stores in one night in their spree - employed meticulous planning and when required ruthless violence. In one, in Warrington, they rammed into a police patrol car being driven by two female officers before hurling bricks at them.
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For all of their raids, the method was the same. They started by stealing a Transit van on the night near the target location, before attaching to a tow bar of the vehicle a builder's strap which was wrapped around standing cash machines in the stores. The machines were then dragged out of the shops and as they broke with the force cassettes of cash rifled.
The gang would then flee the scene in one of three stolen cars - two BMWs and a Golf R-type, which had been taken via a house burglary in Worsley. The van would be abandoned in situ.
They used a whizzer cutting tool to slice through shutters at the stores. In the days before, they carried out a recce by buying something from the store so they knew precisely where the cash machine was. On the night of each attack they would all wear balaclavas and also be equipped with crow bars.
But a terrifying raid in Warrington, Cheshire, was the beginning of their downfall. Detective Inspector Nick Henderson, of Cheshire Cosntabulary's Serious and Organised Crime Unit, said: "A pattern was recognised by us after the 15th April 2022 when in the early hours we were struck by this team at the Nisa store in on Longshaw Street in Warrington. It was a nasty offence.
"Our response was almost immediate. Two female officers attended in their patrol car just as the offenders had dragged out the ATM. The offenders then turned their attention towards our cops and rammed into them - they had a real good go moving their Ford Transit van back and forwards into the patrol car. They then used bricks to throw at the officers as they drove by to shatter the windscreen of their car.
"In that attack they got away with £34,800. This began our involvement and led to some amazing detective work by our local policing unit. This was a large amount of money to be stolen - a really violent offence.
"Our investigations led to one of the cloned number plates used by the bandit car (a white Golf R type) they had used to getaway fast from the event
"Detectives found the cloned plate in a local lane - potentially it came off the car - but we don't know. It then gave us an idea around the travel pattern because we were able to put it into our automatic number plate recognition cameras, and trace where they have come from. Even though we know it is a fake cloned plate. It was a matter of perseverence, checking hours of local footage including CCTV on local shops, ANPR cameras and houses, for CCTV."
Footage of the Warrington raid shows the gang ram the two officers with the Transit van and then pull alongside in the Golf and hurl bricks at the patrol car. Footage shows how, moments earlier, they had pulled the cash machine from the store. But the painstaking retracing of where the Golf had come from, over several weeks, paid off. It led to Oakland Road, Lowton, Wigan.
This was the gang's "stable" - what the criminals thought was their safe location to keep their stolen cars - a lockup garage - one in a row - next to housing. It was local authority owned, but there had not been an owner of that garage for five years.
Police then did analysis and worked out the team that had struck in Warrington had already hit shops and supermarkets elsewhere. A black BMW they had used was on CCTV in other offences.
Detective Inspector Henderson said: "The MO was very particular - using Transit vans stolen on the day. Police then set up a covert operation to watch the garage where they stashed either the Golf or the BMWs. Our intention was to absolutely dismantle this organised cirme group."
Moving in when a member of the gang arrived at the lockup would not have given police the result they wanted - to catch the gang red-handed commtting a cash machine raid. But they had a breakthrough when one of the gang, Lee Leatherbarrow, turned up at the garage in a legitimate works van.
The gang would check the getaway cars in the garage to make sure they had sufficient fuel as their crime spree took them into 12 different counties. In the cars, the gang carried jerry cans full of extra fuel and false number plates.
"Leatherbarrow was doing some kind of legitmate business as well involved in construction - he could also make his own number plates." Two other members of the gang, Crimea Price and John Price, were filmed returning a stolen BMW to the garage and removing equipment from the boot.
The undercover police operation and analysis of Leathbarrow's phone data came to a head in the early hours of July 7th 2022. "On that night another of the gang, Crimea Price, turned up at the garage in a tow truck and removed a BMW from the garage and placed it on the low loader.
"He took it over to Doncaster where Athur Gaskin resides at a travellers' site called Pony Paddocks and thus began a night of offending. Then we saw John Price, another of the offenders, move up from the Nottingham area," said DI Henderson.
The gang were then followed as they moved south to the former mining village of Moira in Derbyshire in a stolen BMW. Once in the vicinity they tried to steal a Transit van but it broke down, and they stole a second.
But as they carried out the raid the strap attached to the machine snapped twice, and they abandoned the attack. As the gang left the shop's car park police moved in on them.
During a pursuit which reached a speed of 90mph, the gang hurled a fire extinquisher and bricks at a police vehicle. A stinger was used on the BMW and it was eventually boxed in by police vehicles and three members of the gang, Crimea Price, John Price, and Arthur Gaskin, dragged from it.
Inside the BMW were tools used to break-in to Transit vans; nine different registration plates in the boot; and the footwells were full of bricks.
Such was the mindset of the gang even when they failed to get the cash at the Moira store they had to steal something - so took a box of Minature Heroes chocolates, which was also found in the car.
DI Henderson said: "I have no doubt if we had not intervened after the Moira job they would have gone to another village probably that night. This was a highly sophisticated criminal group. They went to the offence location knowing what their role was."
After forcing the gang's car to stop, police searched Lee Leatherbarrow's home in St Helens and he was arrested. "We would say Crimea Price was leader of this group, but Leatherbarrow was the brains - he is very good mechanically, and with vehicles, it played a very important part. At his home we found items used for making number plates and locksmith tools."
Colleague, DI Mike Higgins, said: "The gang were based to the east and west - the St Helens area and Doncaster and would converge to meet at one or the other. At that point they would cease contacting each other and go out in the bandit car.
"It was hard work as at first we were monitoring a gang, but didn't know who they were - just where the jump off point for the getaway car was. But each time they committed a new offence we knew more about them."
During a raid in Huddersfield they threatend a member of staff who to their surprise was in the store doing a nightime stock check. They brandished an iron bar at her. In another raid they mistakenly assumed that a woman driving by in the early hours was a covert police officer and rammed her car with a Transit van, as she passed by while they were changing number plates on a car in Shrophire.
DI Henderson said: "It was a sophisticated way of doing the crimes. The transit vans they stole on the night had to have a tow bar as they would put a huge builder's strap around it and then the machine. In the boot of the car would also be a whizzer tool for cutting through steel shutters"
The gang caused an estimated half million pounds worth of damage by wrecking the stores.
"The one where we eventually caught them was in a village on the border of Leicestershire and Derbyshire and was closed for a week afterwards, depriving a community of their way of getting cash but also their groceries," he said.
One of the gang was happy to splash his ill-gotten cash. In a search of Crimea Price's home, police found thousands of pounds worth of Versace and Louboutin shoes and jewellery - including a baby's dummy in a gold clasp on gold chain - which were seized plus a £100,000 Land Rover Defender.
At Liverpool Crown Court the gang, Lee Leatherbarrow, 33, of Lascelles Street, St Helens; Crimea Price, 32, of Southworth Road, Newton-Le-Willows , Arthur Gaskin, 35, of no fixed address; and John Price, 28, of Newport Street, Burslem were all jailed after admitting conspiracy to commit burglary. Leatherbarrow and Gaskin received seven years and six months in jail; Crimea Price was sentenced to eight years and John Price to six years.
Chief Constable Mark Roberts, “This was another outstanding investigation by Cheshire officers targeting offenders who had plagued the whole north-west and beyond. Our committed teams keep the force punching above its weight in tackling organised crime and we have recently travelled to all points of the UK and internationally to bring offenders to justice. Whilst the rest of the country sees crime rising, Cheshire has actually seen a reduction and that's not by luck as we keep making the County a hostile environment for criminals.”
The gang's crime spree:
14/03/2022 – Co-op High Street Sleaford, Lincs - £21,420 stolen.
16/03/2022 – Co-op Morston Close, Worsley - no cash taken.
18/03/2022 – Co-op Fylde Road, Southport - no cash taken
18/03/2022 – Morrisons, Sutton Park Drive, St Helens - £46,990.
23/03/2022 – Co-op Ermine Street, Grantham - no cash taken.
24/04/2022 – McColls , Birdwell, Barnsley - no cash taken.
30/03/2022 – McColls Peckers Hill Road, St Helens - £14,780.
01/04/2022 – Co-op Abbots Road, Stoke - £117,320.
06/04/2022 – Co-op Pant, Shropshire - £3,460.
14/04/2022 – Co-op Leek Road, Stoke - £110,630.
15/04/2022 – Nisa Longshaw Street, Warrington - £34,800.
28/04/2022 –McColls Wimbourne Ave, Stoke - £98,200.
06/05/2022 – McColls Gadfield Grove, Atherton - no cash taken.
11/05/2022 – Co-op Service Station Duckmanton, Derbyshire - £10,070
11/05/2022 – Co-op Skelmanthorpe, Huddersfield, - £24,690
27/05/2022 – Co-op West End Road, Haydock - £78,100
10/06/2022 – Co-op Woolstanton, Staffs - £20,240
04/07/2022 – Nisa Park Road South, Newton Le Willows - no cash taken
07/07/2022 – Co-op Shoreheath Road, Moira - no cash taken
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