In 2009, Sydney was hit by a wave of daring armed robberies on cash-in-transit vans where millions in cash was stolen.

They all followed a similar pattern: Balaclava clad gunmen, armed with assault rifles and pistols, assisted by a getaway driver in a rotating fleet of stolen sports cars.

Reynold Glover’s gang was accused of the robberies but found not guilty.

The robberies hogged the headlines. And – much like gangland shootings in recent times – few days went by without Sydneysiders being greeted by another morning headline announcing news of another heist.

They included:

CRANBROOK HIGH SCHOOL, BELLEVUE HILL

Date: May 25, 2009

Haul: $2935

On paper, an armed robbery at Australia’s most expensive school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs should have been a big score — but the robbers only got away with just under $3000.

And they had to outrun police in a BMW M3 that had been stolen from one of the most exclusive streets on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Cranbrook School at Bellevue Hill is the education institution of choice for Australia’s elite and its alumni includes billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and James Packer.

The attempted robbery of an Armaguard cash van, which took place inside the school’s grounds at 11am and in front of shocked teachers and students, challenged the Lane Cove heist (see below) as the bandits’ most brazen.

Hours before the robbery on May 25, 2009, the crims drove the BMW through the school’s front gate and parked near the administration building.
They then waited for the armoured cash truck to show up.

The BMW’s windows were tinted so darkly that the interior could barely be seen. Two gunmen and a getaway driver were inside.

Three students inspected the car while walking between classes.

“(We) put our faces against the window to see what the inside looked like,” one of the 15-year-old students told police.

“I saw a man … (who) moved so we ran away.”

A second student saw the man inside the car as well.

“I thought it was weird that the car was off,” he told police. “He was just sitting there. There were no lights, the radio wasn’t on and I did not notice a phone.

“There was no reaction when I looked inside his car,” he told police. “He didn’t move at all and there were no voices or anything. He was just looking out of the front window of the car.”

About 90 minutes later, the Armaguard truck drove in to pick up $2935 and bank it for the school.

Cranbrook gardener Brendan Thomas told police: “Almost immediately I saw two guys get out of … the BMW … both of these people were wearing black balaclavas on their heads and both were holding long guns.”

Armaguard officer Steve Carpenter* and his partner Raphael Premutico* were their targets.

(*Names of the guards in this story have been changed to reduce their trauma.)

Mr Carpenter was returning to the truck with the cash when both men were ordered to get on the ground.

“Now get up,” one of the men told Mr Premutico. “You are getting me into the truck.”

The guard explained that the security mechanism would only let in one person.

The gunman said: “Right, you are going to get in and open the rear doors otherwise we will shoot and kill your mate.”

Mr Premutico told police: “Due to being under duress, I forgot to complete the procedure to pass through the internal door …”

The increasingly agitated gunman yelled at him: “Hurry up or we will shoot your mate …”

Mr Premutico said: “I pressed the wrong button. I’m getting in now …”

Now inside, he looked out the windscreen and saw Mr Carpenter pressed face down on the bonnet with a gun at his neck.

The male with the rifle told Mr Carpenter: “Get your radio out and tell your mate to open the door or I am gonna shoot ya.”

“Open the door or he’s gonna shoot me,” Mr Carpenter said twice into his radio.

The gunman yelled to Mr Premutico: “I’m gonna kill your mate if you don’t open the back door.”

Mr Premutico was panicking. The truck’s security lockdown had been activated and he could not open it.

Mr Carpenter yelled again: “Open the door, open the door. They are going to kill me.”

Thirty excruciating seconds later, the other robber said: “He is not going to open the backdoor. Let’s go.”

Inside the school, music teacher John Hartley was midway through a class when he saw the robbery unfolding.

“At first I was shocked and then became worried about the safety of the students,” Mr Hartley told police.

“I did not want to alert any of the students about what was occurring. I immediately closed both windows and put the venetian blinds down.”

Very quickly after the robbery, police were on the tail of the silver BMW that left the scene on Victoria Rd, Bellevue Hill.

During the police chase that followed, the BMW crossed on to the wrong side of New South Head Rd and almost collided with an oncoming police car.

Two police cars tried to stay with the BMW but lost it in Paddington.

“After a few seconds, I could not see the (BMW),” one of the pursuing officers wrote in their statement.

“ … We ended up on the Anzac Bridge … I heard police radio tell us to discontinue the pursuit and turn off our lights and sirens,” the officer wrote.

The BMW had been stolen from a Collaroy house on Sydney’s northern beaches on March 19, 2009.

The owner had been overseas and told police it had been stolen while his wife and kids were home.

His wife phoned him and said: “Someone broke into the house while we were asleep. They took all the keys … and my purse.”

LANE COVE CHUBB BASE

Date: April 20, 2009

Haul: $2.3 million

Security guard Michael Montgomery* placed his head on the steering wheel of a cash in transit truck holding $2.3 million and gunned the engine.

Despite not being able to see where he was going, Mr Montgomery aimed the truck at the high-security gate of the Chubb compound in Lane Cove, which was the exit of the fortified base that housed millions in cash and led on to Mowbray Rd.

The other man inside the truck, who had a pump action shotgun pointed at Mr Montgomery, was calling the shots.

“Just f**king drive through it,” the balaclava clad man yelled.

It was a little after 4am on April 20, 2009, and this was one of the most daring and lucrative robberies Sydney had ever seen.

Three armed robbers infiltrated the high-security base and took Mr Montgomery hostage before hijacking a truck that was packed with $2.3 million.

They then forced Mr Montgomery to ram the truck through the fortified security gate to the outside where a stolen Audi was waiting.

Mr Montgomery had arrived at work about 3.10am and passed through multiple security checks. His job was to drive the truck on the Heathcote run to replenish bank ATMs.

The armed robbers broke into the base by using a ladder to clear a fence. Mr Montgomery later told police he was preparing to drive out when he heard “yelling and shouting”.

The balaclava-clad bandits emerged from behind some storage boxes. Fellow Chubb guard Mike Iuzzolino* turned around to see one of the men pointing a pump action shotgun at him.

“Get on the ground,” the robber said before taking Mr Iuzzolino’s pistol from his holster.

They then turned their attention to the truck and one of them said: “Drive it out.”

When Mr Montgomery was hesitant, the robber said: “Drive it through or I will blow your f**king head off.”

Mr Montgomery placed his head on the steering wheel and accelerated towards the gate.

“I kept my head down because I didn’t want to look at them and I wasn’t sure if the truck would make it through the gate,” Mr Montgomery told police.

The truck easily smashed through the gate and sent it flying.

“The truck just kept going and didn’t slow down,” he said. “There was no resistance from the gate.”

Mr Montgomery still had his head down and one of the robbers yelled “Look up, look up” when the truck veered off the driveway.

A third robber jogged behind the truck down Mowbray Rd where it was met by a silver Audi RS4, which had been stolen months earlier from a house at Longueville.

One of the gunmen said “Here they come” and fired shots at the Chubb security guards running towards them.

The gunman said “Grab the white bags” but his partner said “No, they’re full of coins. I’m getting the boxes”.

It took three tries to close the Audi’s cash stacked boot before they sped off.

Mr Montgomery let out a sigh of relief.

“F**ken hell,” he said to a Chubb base operator on the communication radio. “Did you ring the police?”

“There were shots fired,” he said through panicked breaths. “I don’t know if they’ve hit any of our boys, but.”

No one was injured.

EPPING CLUB

Date: May 28, 2009

Haul: $1.09 million

Mark Andersen was walking on Rawson St, Epping at 7.15am on May 28, 2009, when a man stopped him on a laneway that led to The Epping Club.

“Don’t go up there,” the man said.

Seconds later a stolen BMW M5 came to a screeching halt in front of a Chubb cash in transit van parked out the front of the Rawson St club.

The BMW, which had been stolen from a media executive in Bellevue Hill in January 2008, was blocking traffic in the middle of the road.

The sequence was the same.

Two armed men raced up to the Chubb guards, took their pistols and raided the truck for money. The score was big: $1.097 million.

At least 10 people were standing in the street, jaws agape, watching the scene.

Their stupor was broken by the crack of one of the men firing two shots in the air.

The getaway driver accelerated and stopped harshly, letting the robbers in with the cash and then sped up the road.

The whole sequence was over by 7.19am. Police arrived 30 seconds later. It was too late.

POTTS POINT

Date: January 12, 2009

Haul: $340,000

If the three men standing in Anthony Woodward’s backyard were going to steal his brand new blue Audi RS4, he certainly wasn’t going to make it easy for them. He yelled and threw the keys high in the air.

One of the men shouldercharged the 41-year-old as the keys left his hand.

“He … grabbed me around the head and neck from behind, kind of like a choke hold,” Mr Woodward later told police.

“He forced me to the ground with his weight on my back … I was pinned down and unable to move.”

“Be quiet,” the car thief told Mr Woodward. “I don’t want to hurt you. We just want the keys.”

The three criminals, who had followed Mr Woodward to his garage and forced the door up with their hands, searched the backyard for several minutes.

One of the criminals asked if he had a second key. Mr Woodward said “No”.

They eventually found the key near Mr Woodward’s back deck and left with his Audi.

The sports car was not seen again until 9.45pm on January 12, 2009.

It was parked on the corner of Manning St and Macleay St, Potts Point about 10m away from a NAB bank.

An Armaguard truck holding $340,000 arrived at the bank to refill the ATMs.

Armaguard officer Sebastian Diego* noticed the blue Audi and went to inspect it.

“I shone my torch into the vehicle,” Mr Diego told police. “I was pretty much right on top of the car.”

All the Audi’s windows had been tinted so dark that Mr Diego could not see there were at least four people inside.

“When I finished checking the car I then gave the all clear to (my colleague) Greg,” Mr Diego told police.

Seconds after he turned his back to the car, Mr Diego heard the door open.

“I turned around and I saw one of the offenders running towards me, with a gun pointed at me,” Mr Diego said.

“ … He had the gun right to my face,” Mr Diego told police. “I was in shock and I was very scared.

“When this person was right in my face with the gun (he) said ‘Get the f**k down,” he said.

Mr Diego obeyed.

“I heard the male say ‘Move and I will f**king shoot you’,” he told police. “I didn’t say anything to him. I just did what he told me to do. I then felt him take my weapon … a .38 Smith and Wesson.”

The other guards were ordered to do the same.

“From the time that I was on the ground I think it would have taken the offenders about five to six seconds to get the money and take off in the car,” Mr Diego told police.

Within minutes, the robbers loaded the cash into the Audi and sped away.

NORTH SYDNEY 1

Date: February 10, 2009

Haul: $1.3 million

The blue Audi was back in action on February 10, 2009.

This time it was stalking a Chubb cash-in-transit truck making a delivery to the Westpac branch on Mount St, North Sydney.

The truck had left the Lane Cove base at 6.26am and arrived at the branch in the heart of the North Sydney CBD as the early arriving office workers were getting their coffees.

Chubb guard Brett Price* was unpacking the cash delivery from the truck when he saw “three dark figures” walking towards him.

One was holding a shotgun and another had a pistol. Before he had time to react, they were upon him.

One of them said: “We’re going to take your gun.”

As soon as the words were spoken he felt a hand take his gun from his holster. The robbers knew what they were doing.

Another Chubb guard, Jeremy Piper*, later told police they knew how to turn off the truck’s duress alarm.

One of the robbers then told Mr Piper: “Just open the f**king door, now.”

The trio took two trips to move the more than $1.3 million that was in the truck into the blue Audi before making their getaway.

The end came for the Audi soon after.

The robbers took it to the driveway of a suburban unit block on Milner Cr, Wollstonecraft, and set it on fire.

NORTH SYDNEY 2

Date: June 22, 200

Haul: $957,360 stolen.

Working as the escort driver, Dennis Wong’s* job on June 22, 2009, was to arrive at the Westpac on Mount St, North Sydney, and make sure the coast was clear for the Chubb truck carrying about $1 million.

Just before 6.50am, he pulled up in front of the bank’s ATM with the truck immediately behind him.

The plan was to meet the boys in the truck and figure out where to get coffee.

He noticed a shadow outside his car and thought it was a person who had a problem with where he parked.

He leant over to wind the window down when the person opened the passenger side of his door and jammed a semi automatic pistol into his right cheek.

“Get out and get on the ground,” the armed man said. “Don’t move or I will f**king kill you.”

Things weren’t much better across Mount St at the Chubb truck.

Driver Greg Duncan* noticed a man wearing a balaclava running towards the truck holding a sawn-off shotgun.

He hid on the floor of the truck in the hope the robber wouldn’t see him and think the truck was empty.

They already had one of his colleagues who screamed: “Open the door.”

Then there was the sound of a gunshot. Mr Duncan thought his colleague was dead.

The robbers demanded the door to the truck be opened.

The guards pleaded: “We can’t. It’s got a five minute delay.”

It was a similar problem for the truck’s back door.

“It’s got a padlock on it,” one of the Chubb guards said.

The robbers, who could see the money satchels through the window, were getting increasingly agitated and were pointing their guns through the truck’s window.

One of Mr Duncan’s colleagues said: “Pass the money through the bin door.”

A red Mitsubishi Evo screeched to a halt next to the truck and the boot was opened.

They made off with $957,360 leaving the shell shocked guards to hit their duress alarm.

POSTSCRIPT

Police were under pressure to make an arrest over the robberies.

A breakthrough came shortly after the Lane Cove robbery.

A Meriton staffer found Chubb dockets and documents from the cash stolen from Lane Cove inside a unit complex in South Sydney.

He handed them to the police and led to a major development in the case.