The Bedford Heist

by Frederick Linden-Wyatt

  Young offenders are defined as aged 18-20 years of age. However, young men continue to mature into their mid-twenties. There are some important things to consider that could improve outcomes for people in this wider age group of 18-25. What I have seen from these young people is that they have never consider a wider perspectives or thinking about the future when making decisions, know who they are and what they want to be, as well as their ability to resist peer influence and temper themselves. The above three factors are called ‘psychosocial maturity’. Psychosocial immaturity is prevalent in young men in custody or under our underfunded probation service. This affects how they engage with and respond to prison regimes, probation licenses and supervision.

  What the prison service needs to do is to give these men some structure to their lives as this has been missing for most of their sorry lives so far. To me, it’s pointless placing these young men in an institution and do extraordinarily little to turn their lives around. IMO prison is far too soft on these young people and they should be used on farms picking the crops in all weathers for 5 days a week. They should also be trained to become brick layers, plasterers, chippies, plumbers and electricians so that when they leave they can help fill the shortage of skilled labour the building industry needs. These young men should be released to the probation service on licence to work for building firms. The builder would be paid the minimum wage by the government (which is passed on to the offender) for a period of one or two years as this would cost far less than keeping them locked up.

  To do this the whole Young Offender Institution rules need changing and money provided to employ teachers and craftsmen to train up these young men. If they had a job and accommodation already set up for them once they leave, then I’m sure few would go back to the useless and criminal lives they were leading before. If the young offender breaches his release terms then they would be sent back and placed in solitary confinement until they learnt better.

  Chapter 25. Preparation for the heist

  Before we could hold our heist at the end of May a lot of background work had to be done. We would need the following. Workshop, Van, Traffic lights and signs, Mobile phones, handguns and untraceable debit card. Money wasn’t a problem as my wife had a sizable life insurance, but I still had to be careful how much I withdrew just in case the police checked later. I decide to make six withdrawals of £2,500 each time over a six-week period. To cover my tracks, I visited six horse racing venues and retained the program and my entry ticket. I always went in the family section as I wouldn’t be staying and it was the cheapest, I visit racecourses at Huntingdon, Doncaster, Southwell, Market Rasen, Fakenham and Towcester. I didn’t hang around as I have seen the damage gambling can do but if I were ever asked why I had drawn £15,000 out, I could say that I’m unlucky with the horses.

  Workshop/Barn

  I needed a place to store the van and of course the traffic lights and other equipment ready for the heist. It needed to be a few miles outside of the Bedford area with no major roads nearby as I didn’t want to keep pinging any ANPR cameras on a regular basis. It took me longer than I thought to find the ideal workshop but, in the end, I found a large un-used barn just outside the village of Astwood which was just off the A 4288 Newport Pagnell to Bedford road. The old barn had a sign outside reading “Workshop to let”. It gave a local telephone number and the name of R Becket, so I assumed it was direct to the farmer and not via a letting agency as I didn’t want to take that route as agencies can be very nosy. I had set up my new mobile phone which had an inbuilt voice distortion app from FunCall that would not only distort my voice but also display a false mobile number on the receivers’ phone. I called the number and spoke to the farmer who wanted far too much money for this old barn. I told him that my company had a two-year contract to test and repair, if needed, railway bridges in the surrounding areas. All I wanted to do was to store one or two vans along with the traffic control equipment and other small items so that we need not wait for them to be sent from our depot in Newcastle. I said that we would need it for a year or two and would make the site and barn more secure by installing new locks and CCTV cameras to deter any thieves.

  We would only use the site one or two times a month, so we wouldn’t be a nuisance. I also said that we were prepared to pay cash up front and we would only show the transaction in our petty cash folder. He could do what he liked with the money. In the end he must have seen pound signs and we agreed on £200 a month or in this case £2,400 up front for the year. He said he was happy with that and asked how we would pay. I knew that the barn didn’t have a lock on it so we wouldn’t need a key so I said that if he was happy I would send a courier over with the cash with a simple form he needed to sign to say that it was for a twelve month contract with an option to extend it for a further year. Farmer Becket must have been one of the struggling dairy farmers you see on the news moaning about how they are losing money by selling milk to the supermarkets. I didn’t give a dam as farmers are always moaning and if I remember right there used to be a Milk Marketing Board which set the price of milk but this was killed off by the farmer led Conservative party who introduced the Agriculture Act 1993 which ended the Milk Marketing Board and also the Potato Marketing Scheme.

  I arranged for Doug Boswell my number 2 to get on his motor bike and meet up with me at the tearoom café on the market square in Olney. I would bring the money with me in £20 notes along with a form for the farmer to sign as a receipt and the address and name of the farmer. If questioned by the farmer, he would tell him that he was only the courier and didn’t know any more. I would then get Douglas to visit the site and make it secure. He should also fit light sensors and a mock CCTV camera which will hopefully keep the thieving tow rags out. You really can’t trust anyone these days.

  Van

  We would need a van to carry the traffic lights and control boxes in and I had heard that Highways England would be selling some of their old vans at the Fleet Auction Group held in Coalville, Leicestershire. I planned with Douglas my number 2, that I would pick him up at the bus stop at the end of his lane at 7am on Tuesday. I never pick people up from their home as they may have nosy neighbours. Having met hundreds of criminals I thankfully kept a database of all their details outside of prison and I’m glad I did.

  Finding a set of trade number plates that would allow Douglas to drive the van back to the barn would be easy. My contact for number plates was also going to be able to clone me a set of plates from another van still being used by Highways England, once I had sent him the number plate details. This would get by the need to register our second-hand van with the DVLA and would also save having to arrange insurance.

  Chatting to a policeman when he was waiting to collect a prisoner, I raised the subject of cloned vehicles and he said that 1 in 12 vehicles on the road are now cloned. I asked what the police were doing to stop this happening, but he said that there was little they could do as they just didn’t have the manpower available. IMO if all car registrations that were pinged by any ANPR were entered into a national data base in real time the computer could cross reference to see if the same number plate pinged twice within a ten-minute period outside a ten-mile radius. If a clone was spotted, then the traffic police could stop both vehicles to see which one had been cloned. I didn’t tell him which has turned out to be the right decision as I didn’t want them finding our cloned van.

  Traffic lights and road signs.

  For the heist to work we would obviously need to obtain traffic control systems and the various warning signs and we had two options for this. One was to go to the construction auctions and buy second-hand for cash or we could check on https://www.roadworks.org/ to see what road works were in place at any time and for those that showed that traffic lights were being used we could go along and borrow them. If we went for this option, it would mean that Douglas would have to work the night shift until he had stolen the three sets of traffic control lights we would need. I suggested that if he wanted to t
ake this option then it would be best that he acquired 4 sets, so that he had a backup.

  He said that he liked the idea of borrowing the lights best and would let me know when they had been obtained, checked and safely stored at the barn. We would also need three road work tents to house the generator along with standard cones. We would need roadside message boards such as ‘pedestrians this way’ and it would look better if we removed a small section of the tarmac on the bridge as this would take a long time to repair. To make the tarmac removal easy, we would need a cutter like a Stihl TS 410 brick saw concrete cutter or an Angle Grinder with spare cutting disc to cut into the tarmac. You’ll also need a kango hammer with a chisel head. This type of equipment can be purchased easily for cash at various depos around the UK or cheaper still on eBay. We will need to do a few test runs on the old tarmac behind the workshop but I’m sure it will work ok.

  Mobile phones.

  I wanted to send out my heist invitation in the form of a mobile phone with a simple message stating that the phone was from someone they know and to charge the phone ready for use and I would call them in a few days’ time to explain more. I went for the simplest non-traceable cell phone I could find and pick up in store. I went for the Alcatel One Touch 10.16 - Sim Free Mobile Phone which cost £16.99 from Argos or £19.99 from Tesco plus I added £20 to pre-paid sim card for any calls. I didn’t want to buy more than two at a time and I wanted to pay cash, so that the purchase wasn’t traceable. It took a few weeks to get hold of the 20 phones that I would need but it will be worth the effort. Once the heist at Bedford was over and everyone had been paid, I could ask for the sim card back and issue a new one and simply microwave the old ones.

  Suitcases.

  We would need 18 of these and sourcing them was also time consuming as I wanted all of them to be the same and to have four wheels on the bottom so that if they were too heavy to carry they could be wheeled back to the railway station. I had seen that Dunelm had the right kind of suitcase and it was the right size and was only £45. Doug and I spent some time sourcing these but thankfully they had a 172 stores spread across the UK to choose from.

  Handguns.

  This is one part of the operation I didn’t like dealing with, but it would be pointless attending the bank without one. I only wanted untraceable replicas as I didn’t want anyone getting shot at the party. As I needed 18 of them, I thought that this would be difficult but again Doug Boswell my number 2 came up trumps as he knew a chap in London who could supply them for cash. I was surprised how cheap these were with prices starting as little as £45 for a Colt 1911 Plastic Replica Automatic Pistol but we would have to pay more if we needed 18. I also wanted a real gun for security measures as I didn’t want any toe-rag stealing the money from us whilst it was being processed at the barn. I gave Doug £4,000 and asked him to do his best. If they were to cost more just let me know how much more, he needed.

  Untraceable debit card.

  I will need to obtain one or more of these cards as I need to buy things such as train tickets online and don’t want the transaction to register back to me. I found the best way to do this is to get hold of a prepaid visa/master card with cash for the purchase. Make the purchase with the prepaid card and then throw the card away. I needed an email address for the vouchers and Doug again came to the rescue and showed me how to open an account on the dark web via a website called Tor. This uses an encryption process so that it’s nearly impossible for others to trace you. Doug also said that to access the dark web safely and anonymously, you need to use a VPN. Not only will a VPN allow you to unblock Tor in countries where it has been banned, but it will also prevent your ISP, government agencies, or other third parties from monitoring or tracking your Tor usage.

  Chapter 26. Internet taking 1,000’s of jobs

  Simon Westdale was a smart young man who had lost his way through no fault of his own. Thankfully, he was still single, but he had a long-time girlfriend waiting for his release. He was serving a four year stretch for robbery and he was full of remorse. I had to overcome this problem as he was beating himself up which only made matters worse. I told him that everyone makes mistakes. It's how they respond to their mistakes that matters. He couldn’t change the past, but he could start today to ensure that the future is mapped out for the better. I didn’t tell him that after being in prison he would find it difficult to find work and like many, he would just give up.

  I asked Simon to tell about his childhood and life to date. He said that he had a steady childhood but was never good on obtaining grades for his schoolwork and ended up with a few B’s and a host of C’s. After he left school at 16, he went to Tresham College in Kettering, Northamptonshire and took a course on travel and tourism as he had always been fascinated with travel. He said that he had done well and could have studied for a further year or two and obtain a HNC/HND at Bedford College but decided against as he was short of cash. After Tresham College he decided that he wanted to start to earn some money and found a job at his local travel agency but after making it up to assistant manager he was made redundant due to more people booking their holidays online, rather than going in to a shop to book.

  He said that this annoyed him as he had read in the travel trade press that Peter Smith from Tui travel (better known as Thomson holidays) was among the five highest earners among FTSE 100 firms who made over £100 million between them in one year. Smith’s pay package earned him £13.3 million making him the fourth highest paid boss in the UK.

  Simon carried on and said that being inside gave him the time to research the problem and he confirmed that bosses were raking it in and didn’t give a dam about the workers that made them the money nor their customers, who had to pay more for their holiday to cover their greed. One of the biggest moans he had from potential clients was that the holiday price offered was too high. Peter Smith’s salary alone could send hundreds of hard-working families on a holiday every year. Smiths’ earnings of £13.3 million is more than one man can spend in a lifetime and it’s alleged that many high earners are now sending their money offshore to avoid paying UK taxes. The Country loses out on the tax which should have been paid and again when the Country must borrow money to attempt to balance the books. Currently, the UK debt stands at £1.84 trillion equivalent to 85% of GDP (Figures are pre Covid-19). Even with the tough austerity measures put in place by the conservative government the countries debt levels continued to grow.

  Simon went on to state that it was difficult to get another job as all major travel firms were closing shops and laying staff off. Thomson’s biggest competitor was Thomas Cook (Europe's second-largest tour operator) which went bust in 2019. Previously in 2011 Thomas Cook nearly went bust but was saved by its bankers who set up a £200 million rescue loan as they had little choice in the end but to lend more money or write off the £1 billion which was owed to its lenders including 17 banks.

  Simon said that he found it difficult to get work as all my expertise was in selling travel. Going to the job centre every two weeks was a real struggle as all they could offer was manual work. After six months I came across and advert which stated “Couriers wanted. High rewards offered to the right people”. I attended the interview and was told that I could earn £400-£1,200 weekly doing courier work in your own van or a hired van. The job would be self-employed with flexible hours working for one of the largest couriers in the UK. As a self-employed courier van driver for Tip Top Express, a typical day would consist of a collection from anywhere in your allocated area which would be within a ten mile radius of where you lived, followed by delivery to various homes and businesses again within my allocated area. After being unemployed for six months I was desperate for a job but also didn’t have much cash left to buy a van or even rent one. In the end my parents offered to help as they could see how stressed I was from being out of work. I decided to hire a van from the company but to find my own insurance. The insurance cost me more than I expected because I would be using the van for business work.r />
  However, I went to see my contact at the job centre and told him the good news but when I asked him about any benefits until I was paid he said that all benefits would stop the day I became “employed” as I would no longer be seeking work. I said that I wouldn’t be paid for a month and I had to provide all the petrol for the van, so I asked him what the government expected me to live on for the next four weeks. He said that he may be able to help with petrol cost to get me to and from work but not for anything else. I left feeling down as the job centre had done nothing to help me find work and they wouldn’t help me until I had any pay coming in. No wonder a lot of people don’t bother to tell them that they have started work. It was obvious that the rules had been written by someone who had never been on the dole or visited a job centre in their life.

  Thanks to my parents I managed to survive the first month, but the wages were a lot less than they told me at the interview. I found that I had to deliver up to 200 parcels a day with no time for toilet breaks while earning less than minimum wage. I found that I was exceeding the legal maximum shift of 11 hours and finish my day dead on my feet. I soon realized that if I wanted to eat during the day then I would have to take a sandwich with me and eat it while driving. Finding a toilet was also difficult and I took a 2-litre plastic milk bottle to pee in to. Any call for a number 2 would have to wait until the end of the day. I would also have to break the speed limits to make up any lost time. Icy patches, traffic jams and road closures all added to my day from hell.

  Many courier companies only offer self-employed jobs as it saves the company having to pay the minimum wage, holiday or sickness pay. After only six weeks I soon realised that this wasn’t going to make me my fortune or even give me the basic money to live on. You feel trapped as the company always owed you two week’s salary and I had heard that those who had left found it difficult to get the money owed to them. The company would always come up with an excuse such as the van needed new tyres as I had been breaking too hard or there was a claim for damaged or undelivered parcels.