Gang jailed for series of raids on ATMS

David Owens, 35, Shaun Ennis, 41, and Kevin Caveney, 26, scoured the motorway network looking for targets and disabled alarm systems at colleges, service stations, amusement parks and caravan sites before attacking the bank machines in a series of burglaries between January and July of last year.

One of these included a raid on the restaurant at Flamingo Land in Malton in April 2011, where a large quantity of cash was stolen from an ATM forced open with a crowbar.

Owens was jailed for seven years, Ennis received six-and-a-half years and Caveney was handed five years nine months at Preston Crown Court yesterday after admitting conspiracy to burgle. In addition Robin Vaughan, aged 39, was sentenced to 18 months for assisting offenders.

The gang, from Merseyside, was caught after police launched a surveillance operation following five raids in West Mercia, Derbyshire, Cleveland, North Yorkshire and Cornwall in early 2011.

Owens and Caveney were secretely watched as they drove down the M6 in a black Audi, stopping at various service stations without filling up, then into Somerset, then Devon and Cornwall, again visiting motorway services, and occasionally village shops, looking for free-standing ATMs.

On July 20, police officers from Titan, the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, and Merseyside Police swooped.

A search of Owen’s home in Stockbridge Village, Liverpool Caveney’s home in Speke, and Ennis’s home, in Stockbridge Village, found cash, equipment and clothing used in the burglaries.