Andrew Rule: The armed robbery professionals who stole $5m in heists across Melbourne

A bandit in a beard, a pistol hidden in a newspaper and $288,000 stolen from a train in Ascot Vale was just the beginning for a robbery crew that police believe netted $5m from seven painstaking heists across Melbourne.

The 1994 Armaguard robbery was staged using fake roadworks to halt traffic on the Monash Freeway entrance from Punt Rd near the old Nylex factory.

As an actor, George Zakharia made a good armed robber. Still, he once fluffed an exit scene by leaving behind a thumbprint on a newspaper, a slip that earned him nearly ten years behind bars.

The kick boxer and fight promoter that world champion Jeff Fenech praised as “brutal in the ring, all brains out of it” learned from that mistake. He never went back inside after getting out of jail in the early 1990s. And, for a long time, neither did his brothers in arms.

Zakharia and his mates were hard cases, still are. But the fight game and the film game appeal to their performer instincts, leading them to bit parts in some cheap and cheesy films over the years — and now to a gritty new television drama, Monk 458.

Among the real-life hard men hitting their marks in the test screening this week with Zakharia are the deadly calm Dave Hedgecock, the flashy Toby Mitchell and handsome Hollywood celebrity bodyguard Richard Norton, not to mention the film’s maker, Dale Reeves.

This cast from the past must be among the toughest bunch of grandfathers in the land. And there are others that Zakharia has performed with elsewhere, notably Paul “The General” Fyfield (a.k.a. “The Fox”) and Percy “No Mercy” Lanciana.

George Zakharia copped nearly 10 years in jail for an armed robbery.

Lanciana couldn’t be at the screening in St Kilda last Monday as he’s serving at least 10 years in high security for his role in a real-life heist as audacious as an action movie. That one-off 1994 production featured a small crew of method actors playing a road crew, complete with lollipop signs, hard hats, concrete saws, shovels and brooms.

The payday was way above the actors’ union scale, given they whacked up $2.3 million (in hefty 1994 dollars) after removing it from an armoured van with a key that their private “props department” had conjured up.

The fact it took 22 years to arrest the former kickboxing champ (and a bent lawyer) over handling cash from that long-ago robbery underlines how well it was planned and executed.

The fake roadworks robbery, staged after halting traffic on the Monash Freeway entrance from Punt Rd near the old Nylex tower, was one of a series of heists that police firmly believe are linked to the same highly-skilled crew.

Their first known job together had led to George Zakharia’s arrest in 1982 after he and his well-rehearsed accomplices took a $288,000 railways payroll from a suburban train at Ascot Vale.

It so happened that their mate, light heavyweight boxer Treveor “Stretch” Anderson, was a printer who earlier that year had done a job printing a flyer notifying rail workers of a bumper back pay following a wage rise.

The bandits knew the extra heavy payroll would be on a particular train on the Broadmeadows line early that morning. They made sure one of them was on board and three more waiting for its first stop at Ascot Vale at 6.40am.

Dumped Armaguard van found after the robbery. The thieves are said to have made off with $2.3 million.

Front page from Herald Sun on June 23 1994 detailing the robbery.

In robbery, as in life, luck’s a fortune. George Zakharia’s luck turned bad when an observant commuter sat near a bearded man reading a newspaper and noticed that his bushy red beard clashed with his jet black eyebrows.

The passenger also noticed that when Redbeard stepped off the train at Ascot Vale, newspaper in hand, he didn’t head for the exit but turned to the rear of the train — to the guards’ van.

Redbeard confronted the train guard, using his newspaper to conceal a pistol. As he tied up the guard, he put the paper on the seat.

At the same time, one of three other lurking bandits bailed up the driver while the other two jumped into the fourth carriage to grab a strongbox containing the $288,000, although they missed heaps more cash carried in two leather valises.

Just before the train was due, someone had called Ascot Vale police claiming a man had “gone berserk” with a gun on the far side of the suburb. This diversion made it highly unlikely a random patrol would stumble across the crooks as they escaped.

But the polished plan had a flaw. After the guard was freed, he souvenired the newspaper the bearded bandit had left, which was why police were able to retrieve it later. That’s why forensic experts found Zakharia’s print and he copped nearly 10 years in jail.

The take of $288,000 was plenty in 1982. But it was just a starting point for a disciplined crew that police believe netted close to $5m from seven painstaking heists over the next 24 years.

The last of those big raids was so neatly planned it was grand theft, rather than armed robbery. It happened at Sunshine Plaza shopping centre, three days before Christmas in 2006.

In an era before credit cards dominated, automatic cash machines were regularly filled, so armoured vans did regular runs. The Christmas rush meant heavier payloads, so the van that parked near the Commonwealth Bank to refill its ATM was a hot target for anyone who knew how to get into it.

Percy “No Mercy” Lanciana was arrested 22 years after the robbery. Picture: Sarah Matray

Which, it turns out, someone did, with a little help from an inside man, later identified by police as the driver’s offsider. On a stagecoach, he’d be “riding shotgun.” This day, he was playing for the black hats.

As the bandits watched from nearby, the insider slowly stepped out of the truck, leaving his door slightly ajar as the driver entered the bank. The insider then bent down, his back to the truck, and tied his shoelaces.

A man appeared nearby, dressed in identical guard’s uniform, strode to the van, opened the door left unsnibbed for him, tossed a cloth over the internal camera and climbed into the back. He grabbed two full cash bags, opened the rear door and walked away, staying clear of camera range.

The bags contained $1.1m — thanks to the shoelace-tying guard, who happened to be a kickboxer trained by Paul Fyfield, a longtime associate of George Zakharia and his brothers, Percy Lanciana and others.

It wasn’t until 2016 that police thought they had enough evidence to charge Fyfield over the Sunshine job. They were wrong, as the ably-represented Fyfield was acquitted, and to this day is legally considered innocent.

When Fyfield faced trial in 2016, police told court he was part of a tight-knit crew linked through boxing and martial arts gyms since their teens. They alleged the Sunshine sting was the seventh of a series that began with the Ascot Vale train robbery in 1982.

Police allege that in between, there was an armoured car robbery of $185,000 in late 1991, at least $500,000 from Myer’s city store in August 1993, a Chadstone armoured van robbery of $107,000 and a Chadstone shopping centre robbery of $80,000 in May 1994, in which three people were shot in the legs.

Thieves stole $2 million from an Armaguard van parked outside Sunshine Plaza just before Christmas 2006.

But the two biggest were the last two that police allege were connected — the Richmond fake road crew triumph in 1994 and Sunshine Plaza in 2006.

Apart from those, there was speculation about at least one interstate robbery, again seemingly dependent on good inside information.

But there was allegedly a more sinister side to one member of the gang. Police have linked that man to three separate murders, two of them paid hits — on criminal Dimitrios Belias in 1999 and bouncer George Germanos in 2001.

The Herald Sun has been told that the same shooter also executed a fourth victim, young mother Antje Jones, in a St Albans house in September, 1981.

Two witnesses saw the hitman paid (for the Jones hit) in a Footscray restaurant frequented in that era by local crooks and police. This is intriguing, as it dovetails with the “gym gang” and its cosy links with the security industry and rogue police.

Modern investigators raking over Antje Jones’s murder wonder why local police and crime department chiefs in 1981 effectively dismissed the killing as a “burglary gone wrong,” when she was executed with a heavy-calibre handgun while embroiled in a property dispute during a hostile divorce.

The Herald Sun is not suggesting that the dead woman’s ex-husband Clifford Jones was behind the murder, for which he had a watertight alibi. In 2019, a new generation of police arranged a $1m reward for information that might throw more light on a crime that got no real traction with their predecessors.

The interlocking interests linking the “gym gang” to rogue police and ex-police involved in the ruthless but lucrative security business, often show up. Especially in the mystery surrounding who really organised the $500,000-plus Myer heist in August, 1993.

The man charged with it, helicopter pilot Wladimir “Jamie” Babeaff, beat it after his defence counsel and an honest investigator uncovered an explosive statement by the ex-lover of a Myer security guard who’d acted as the “inside man”.

The guard, who later fled interstate, helped police on the basis he would not be prosecuted for his part. He willingly steered investigators towards Babeaff — but the snitch’s ex-girlfriend told a different story, stating that a shady team of ex-police were heavily involved.

The woman’s frank statement ended the trial and got Babeaff acquitted. It heavily implied the rogue ex-cops not only shared in the loot (reputedly more than the acknowledged $500,000) but they also hoped to win the Myer security contract as a result.

If true, this would have been a gold-plated win-win for everyone but the Myer insurers. Babeaff was delighted to be acquitted but swore privately to his own counsel he had not helped pull the heist, and had been “stitched up” while the real crooks covered their tracks.

The mystery of the midnight Myer raid is long overdue for re-investigation.