One of Britain's biggest and most audacious robberies was executed with military-style precision: One gang abducted the cash depot manager's family while another tied up guards and made off with up to $118 million.
Police said they made one arrest and were expected to release other details late Thursday on the robbery, which bore striking similarities to a 2004 robbery in Northern Ireland. Police blamed criminal gangs - not terrorists - and said the hunt continued for the other men.
"This is organized crime at its top level. This was planned and executed with military precision," said Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Leppard of Wednesday's raid in the sleepy market town about an hour's drive from the Channel Tunnel, which separates England and France.
The heist at Securitas Cash Management Ltd. began when some of the thieves, dressed as police officers, stopped the firm's manager as he drove home Tuesday about 20 miles from the cash depot. The manager got into their car, which he believed to be a police vehicle, and was handcuffed, police said.
At the same time, another team of masked thieves went to the manager's house in the town of Herne Bay and persuaded his wife and his 8-year-old son to go with them, saying the man had had an accident. The manager allegedly was told to cooperate or his family would be hurt.
The group with the manager then went to the depot and tied up the manager and 14 of the depot's employees before loading the cash into a truck, police said. It took the men about an hour to load the cash. The staff managed to escape about an hour later and called police.
"I would doubt very much whoever did it had a terror link," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defence College. "Normally, they don't go for high-risk ventures with massive amounts of law enforcement focus."
The Tonbridge raid bore similarities to the 2004 heist that netted thieves $46.1 million. Three men - including a bank employee - have been charged.
In both cases, the robbers targeted a bank's cash-distribution center - and used hostages as the key device for breaching security. During both heists, police say, the raiders disguised themselves as police officers to gain the confidence of their victims before seizing them.
International authorities have blamed the outlawed Irish Republican Army for committing the Northern Bank robbery but police on Thursday pointed suspicions instead at a conventional organized-crime gang. Since the early 1970s, the IRA has robbed scores of banks in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland but has no such track record in Britain.
Police offered a $3.5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the Tonbridge cash - a stack that would weigh about 900 pounds and reach an estimated 35 stories high, according to crime expert Jeffrey Robinson.
Police issued an all-ports alert but said they were still trying to come up with a description of the robbers. Some of the men wore balaclavas and goggles.
Video footage was released of a white van the men used to carry the cash and said several other vehicles used in the heist were still missing. No one was injured in the robbery.
Bank officials had not determined an exact amount that was stolen but said the notes included marked and unmarked bills.
The robbers will have a difficult time laundering or converting such a large amount of cash, said Peter Lilley, a money laundering expert at Britain's Proximal Consulting.
One option would be to take some of the cash to countries with looser monetary regulations where the money could be put in offshore accounts or invested on the property market over a long period of time to avoid detection, he said.
"Physical money possesses greater risk than electronic money or even gold," he said.
