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The City bonds robbery of 1990 was a heist in which £291.9 million (equivalent to £838 million in 2023) was stolen in London, England.[1] The carefully planned operation made it seem at first as if a courier had been mugged on 2 May, yet City of London police soon realised that it was a sophisticated global venture which ended up involving participants such as the New York mafia, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Colombian drug barons.

The robbery took advantage of the existence of a messenger system which moved vast sums of money around the City of London in order to ensure liquidity in the UK financial system. The money was in the form of certificates of deposit and HM Treasury bills. These bearer bonds were recovered in different places including Glasgow, New York, Miami (on their way to Peru), and Zürich. In a wide-ranging investigation, the police eventually recovered all but two of the 301 certificates, with some of those arrested allegedly turning informant, such as Mark Osborne, who was later found murdered.

Patrick Thomas, who allegedly carried out the original theft, was also shot dead. Keith Cheeseman, an extravagant fraudster, was arrested in the UK but skipped bail to Tenerife, claiming his life was in danger. He was briefly thought to have been the Bolney Torso and then was located and arrested in Spain.[2] Cheeseman was extradited to the US to stand charges of money laundering and received a six and a half year sentence. John Traynor was arrested for a mortgage fraud using the stolen bonds as collateral; he was sentenced to seven years for handling stolen goods. He escaped after a year and a half but was arrested in the Netherlands in 2010 and extradited back to the UK to serve the rest of his sentence.[3] The robbery was one of the largest in world history.

Planning

The idea for the robbery was generated by media reports in January 1990 that a courier had accidentally dropped £4 million (equivalent to £11 million in 2023) worth of bearer bonds on their way to the Bank of England.[2] A twenty-three year-old surveyor had picked up the four certificates of deposit on Throgmorton Street outside the Stock Exchange, after they had fallen out of the briefcase of a courier working for Rowe & Pitman, a subsidiary of S. G. Warburg & Co.. When he gave them back, he was rewarded with a magnum of Laurent-Perrier champagne.[4]

Upon hearing this story, an organised crime syndicate realised that if a courier was mugged, they could reap a massive haul, since bearer bonds entitle whoever is carrying them to the money denoted on them.[2] The certificates were issued every week by the Bank of England as a means to manage short term spending needs, ensuring that there was always liquidity in the system. The bills matured after one to six months and were freely traded. The system became electronic in the mid-2000s.[1] Care was taken to make the theft appear accidental, since otherwise the bonds could be cancelled. The syndicate planned to organise what would look like a mugging and then to quickly launder the bonds in Zürich before they were cancelled.[2]

Robbery

Narrow street in City of London
Nicholas Lane, the alleyway in which Goddard was mugged of £291.9 million

On the morning of 2 May 1990, 58-year-old John Goddard, an employee of financial brokers Sheppards (a subsidiary of Cater Allen) was walking along Nicholas Lane, an alleyway in the City of London. He was carrying 301 certificates worth £291.9 million (equivalent to £838 million in 2023) in bearer bonds in a briefcase, of which £121.9 million were certificates of deposit and £170 million were HM Treasury bills.[5][1] Suddenly a young man in his twenties appeared and mugged Goddard at knifepoint; the robber is widely believed to have been Patrick Thomas.[2][1]

At first, it seemed the operation had gone according to plan, despite reports the next day in The Times which declared the heist had gathered a "worthless haul" and that "the perpetrator stands to make not a penny from the crime".[6] The Bank of England was supplying false information to the media on purpose and the bonds were actually just as good as cash.[7] However, the Swiss connection which was supposed to launder the money did not work out. Therefore, the syndicate was forced to ask around in the criminal underworld for other options. The New York mafia became interested, since they were already involved in a scheme to launder US bonds in London.[2]

The contact man in the UK was Keith Cheeseman, who had previously made false loan applications to support a lavish lifestyle which included becoming chairperson of Dunstable Town FC.[8] Back in 1975, he had been charged with extorting £287,000 and remanded for a week, after arriving at court in a silver chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce; he later received a six-year sentence for conspiracy to defraud the Beneficial Finance and Loan Society with 318 fictitious loan applications.[9][10]

Told about the heist, Cheeseman went to work, liaising with associates such as Raymond Ketteridge. He sent some of the stolen bonds to Mark Osborne in the US, who then met up with mafioso Tony Dipiono in a New York bar and delivered ten bonds, each worth £1 million. However, Dipiono was an FBI agent and Osborne was arrested, subsequently deciding to betray his associates. The FBI allegedly recorded the conversations between Osborne and Cheeseman until Osborne disappeared in August 1990 and was later found murdered.[2]

Recovery

The syndicate in London came to realise that it was also infiltrated by an informer, since the City of London police swiftly began to recover the bonds.[2] The police had initially hoped the mugging was no more than an accident and the certificates would be found discarded, yet the evidence built up that it was a sophisticated plan and thus Operation Starling was set up. Soon they had reports of a bond turning up in Northern Ireland and someone tried to deposit a bond at a Natwest bank in Glasgow.[7]

In summer 1990, 80 certificates worth £77 million were recovered during an allegedly routine check at Heathrow Airport on a flight arriving from Dublin. Three Irish men were arrested and customs stated "We did not know the bonds were coming in. We found them by pure chance".[2][11] In fact the men had been under surveillance, since one of them was Thomas Coyle, a known fence. Coyle had quickly acquired 80 of the stolen bonds and realising their enormous value had recruited John Gilligan and Jim "Danger" Beirne to help sell them. Not being able to shift them in Ireland, they devised a plan to sell them to mafia connections in the US via John Francis Conlon, who had connections to various security agencies and arms dealers such as Monzer al-Kassar and Oliver North.[7] The plan was sabotaged at the first stage when Coyle, Anthony Rooney and Edward Dunne were all arrested at Heathrow. The bonds were discovered in Rooney's luggage and all three men maintained their innocence. When the case came to trial at Knightsbridge Crown Court, all three were released on technicalities. Coyle later bought a racehorse which he named 77 Mill.[7]

Operation Starling retrieved £80 million worth of bonds in Cyprus and other raids occurred in the Netherlands, Scotland, Singapore and West Germany.[2][12] A link to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was revealed in September 1990, when a man left a package at the Aeroperú offices in Miami to be delivered to Lima in Peru. A search by US Customs revealed that the package contained £71 million in stolen bonds, which the IRA was attempting to trade with Colombian drug barons in exchange for money and narcotics.[2][12] The smugglers had hidden the bonds in two Miami phonebooks.[13]

Raymond Ketteridge was arrested with another man and charged with handling £70 million in stolen bonds, only to see his prosecution dropped in London in July 1991.[14] He later won his battle against extradition from Cyprus to the US in 1994. He had been facing charges of money laundering based on the heist.[15] The police also foiled a mortgage scam which aimed to use stolen bonds as collateral, arresting John Traynor in 1990.

Death of Patrick Thomas

Thomas lived on the Turnham Road council estate in Brockley, south London, with his step-sister and her family. He presented himself as merely being an ordinary person on the estate, whilst being involved in criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing and robbery. When he and David Summerville were caught red-handed cutting up a kilo of cocaine in March 1991, they were remanded to Belmarsh Prison, then he managed to convince the jury that his co-defendant was responsible for the £30,000 haul of cocaine and thus was acquitted, whilst Summerville received a seven-year sentence.[2]

Career criminal Jimmy Tippett Junior writes in his autobiography Born Gangster that Patrick Thomas showed him the bonds in a toilet cubicle soon after robbing Goddard. Tippett was arrested in relation to the robbery and had his charges dropped before court. According to Tippett, he had been drinking with Thomas earlier in the evening of 28 December and then became separated from him when Thomas refused to be searched by a bouncer because he was carrying a gun.[16] In the early morning of 29 December 1991, after hearing a scuffle and a bang at the front door Thomas' step-sister found him lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head. He quickly died from his injuries.[2] At first, police believed that Thomas had been killed in a settling of scores by friends of Summerville, but it soon became clear that Thomas was involved in other activities. He had assorted building society accounts with over £150,000 in them and he was eventually connected to the bonds robbery as the suspected mugger.[2]

Arrest of Keith Cheeseman

Keith Cheeseman was arrested in the UK after an investigation by City of London police and the FBI. He was sentenced to six and a half year term but had managed to flee the country whilst on bail.[17][2] The Today newspaper ran a story 26 October 1991 entitled "£290m clue to headless corpse" which stated Cheeseman had been found decapitated in Bolney, Sussex. However, the Bolney Torso was not Cheeseman, who was actually on the run in Tenerife.[2] A man who stopped to urinate on his way home found the body in a wooded area, wrapped up in a carpet with neither head nor hands. The body was laid to rest in 1994, then dug up again in 2009 for extended forensic testing, which suggested the man was from Bavaria in Germany and had spent about a year in the UK before his murder. A German fraudster was identified as living nearby in Haywards Heath at the time, but police investigations have never linked him to the crime in any way. As of 2020 the corpse is still unidentified.[18][19]

After his arrest in Spain, Cheeseman was extradited to the US, where he faced charges related to a conspiracy to launder £392 million in stolen bonds, including the £292 million obtained in London. Cheeseman claimed he had skipped bail in fear for his life and pled guilty, admitting he had processed £16 million in bonds.[8] Judge Robert W. Sweet sentenced him to the maximum available term of six and a half years because he had attempted to evade justice and because of his criminal past.[20] Cheeseman had also been involved in another fraud scheme, in which he had seduced Elaine Borg, a technology consultant at Henderson Financial Investment Services (part of the Henderson Group). He rented her a luxury apartment and they conspired to transfer £8 million into an offshore account.[20][21]

Arrest of John Traynor

John Traynor escaped a dispute with criminal associate Martin Cahill in Ireland by moving to England in the late 1980s. He then reacquainted himself with old friend James "Danger" Beirne who was involved in various fraudulent schemes. The two men joined with John Francis Conlon to set up a new venture in which they would attempt to use some of the stolen bonds as collateral investment for a mortgage from a Swiss bank. Conlon had connections to Miami and presented plans for a fictitious £100 million holiday resort on a Caribbean island.[3]

Using bonds with altered numbers, they managed to gain a £200,000 advance in Geneva, although the bank sent warnings to City of London police and the Serious Fraud Office. When the courier returned to pick up the rest of the mortgage, the bank told him to wait so he called Traynor, who was sitting on a street near Bayswater Road in London. As they spoke, police swooped in both England and Switzerland, and they were both arrested. Traynor was charged with handling stolen goods and received a seven-year sentence.[3]

Traynor went to jail in July 1990 and quickly began planning his escape. As a reward for good behaviour he was transferred from HM Prison Wandsworth to HM Prison Highpoint in Suffolk. He then requested a temporary home leave to see his family and when that was granted in November 1992, he immediately took a flight to Dublin and escaped, secure in the knowledge that his offence would not lead to extradition from Ireland.[3] However, Traynor was eventually arrested in the Netherlands in 2010, as part of a combined operation by British and Dutch police investigating organised crime across borders. He was then extradited back to the UK to serve the rest of his sentence.[22]

Legacy

The City bonds robbery is seen as one of the largest heists in history in terms of the amount taken, dwarfing other UK crimes such as the Brink's-Mat robbery, the Great Train Robbery, the Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery, the Northern Bank robbery and the Securitas depot robbery.[23][24]

Globally, it is insignificant compared to the 2003 robbery of almost $1 billion (equivalent to $ 1.7 billion in 2023) from the Central Bank of Iraq by Qusay Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein,[25] or the amount of $10 billion (equivalent to $25 billion in 2023) which the Supreme Court of the Philippines suspects was stolen by Ferdinand Marcos whilst he ruled the country.[26]

The police ultimately recovered all but two of the 301 certificates that were stolen in the City bonds robbery.[1] The Bank of England continues to use the bonds system to protect financial liquidity, but the last paper bills were produced in September 2003 and the process is now completely electronic.[27]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Friedberg, Arthur L. (27 April 2020). "Rare £1,000,000 Bank of England Treasury note is in sale". Coin World. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Thompson, Tony (1996). Gangland Britain: Inside Britain's most dangerous gangs (eBook). Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-4447-1985-7. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d Williams, Paul (2012). Badfellas (eBook). Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-241-95474-4. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  4. ^ Sapsted, David (11 January 1990). "A millionaire for half an hour". The Times. pp. 3–4. Gale IF0501795614.
  5. ^ Sapsted, David (3 May 1990). "'Opportunist' snatches £292m In paper money". The Times. pp. 3–4. Gale IF0501818690.
  6. ^ "Worthless haul". The Times. 3 May 1990. pp. 1–2. Gale IF0501818656.
  7. ^ a b c d Mooney, John (2015). Gangster: The biography of the international drug trafficker John Gilligan (eBook). Maverick House. ISBN 978-1-905379-99-6. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  8. ^ a b Connett, David (12 March 1993). "Fraudster faces maximum jail term of 55 years: David Connett reports". The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 August 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  9. ^ Staff (4 September 1975). "Football chief is charged". The Times. pp. 4–5. Gale CS68255012.
  10. ^ From Our Correspondent (11 January 1977). "Football-club's controller jailed for six years". The Times. pp. 2–3. Gale CS33914923. {{cite news}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  11. ^ "£77m bonds found". The Times. 30 May 1990. pp. 1–2. Gale IF0500293651.
  12. ^ a b Tendler, Stewart (10 September 1990). "City police to check Florida bond haul". The Times. pp. 5–6. Gale IF0501827315.
  13. ^ "£71m in stolen British bonds seized in Miami". The Times. Reuter in Miami. 8 September 1990. pp. 1–2. Gale IF0500320462.
  14. ^ "Case dropped". The Times. 5 July 1991. pp. 7–8. Gale IF0501862067.
  15. ^ "No extradition". The Times. 2 July 1994. pp. 9–10. Gale IF0502055141.
  16. ^ Tippett Jnr, Jimmy (2014). Born Gangster (eBook). Kings Road Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78418-045-4. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  17. ^ Clarkson, Wensley (2010). Gang Wars of London – How the Streets of the Capital Became a Battleground (eBook). Kings Road Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78418-499-5. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  18. ^ Newsroom (19 October 2018). "Why the "Bolney Torso" killing is still unsolved 27 years later". Mid Sussex Times. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020. {{cite news}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  19. ^ "New clues in headless man inquiry". BBC News. 11 October 2011. Archived from the original on 2 November 2017. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  20. ^ a b Connett, David; Smilon, Marvin (11 April 1993). "Bond theft laundering man jailed". The Independent. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  21. ^ "Police Foil Million Pound Hacking Plot". Computing. 30 January 1992.
  22. ^ McDonald, Henry; correspondent, Ireland (2 September 2010). "Dublin gangland boss John Traynor arrested in Netherlands". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 December 2019. Retrieved 19 June 2020. {{cite news}}: |last2= has generic name (help)
  23. ^ Dennis, Jon (18 February 2002). "Britain's biggest robberies". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 December 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  24. ^ "High-profile heists". BBC News. 11 August 2009. Archived from the original on 28 February 2009. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  25. ^ Filkins, Dexter (6 May 2003). "Aftereffects: Presidential theft; Bank Official Says Hussein's Son Took $1 Billion in Cash". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  26. ^ Davies, Nick (7 May 2016). "The $10bn question: what happened to the Marcos millions?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 May 2020. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  27. ^ O'Sullivan, Des (13 June 2020). "An infamous heist: Antique sale recalls Britain's biggest robbery". www.irishexaminer.com. Archived from the original on 13 June 2020. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
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