Buy a decent junker, fit it with false plates and fill the tank

Getting away with a bank robbery needn’t be like getting away with murder

I WAS GREATLY amused by the recent misfortunes of a bungling bunch of Welsh bank robbers who were caught as a result of an act of such unalloyed numptyism that it would be remiss of me not to bring it to your attention.

Their trial in a Cardiff court heard that James and Wayne Snell had masterminded what they, and their two accomplices, must have believed was a brilliant heist.

This coterie of clowns confronted security guards delivering cash to the bank last May, having first smashed their way into the glass-fronted lobby using heavy iron drain covers. After asset-stripping the guards, they made off in a waiting car with a smidgeon over £100,000, having not fired a shot.

The perfect crime? Indeed. Apart from one teeny, tiny detail. These incompetent imbeciles had spent several days staking out their target in James’s BMW and were spotted hoofing the drain covers into it just hours before the robbery.

And what, you ask, enabled witnesses to identify their car so readily? Could it possibly have been the fact that the personalised licence plate read J4MES?

An attentive, off-duty cop spotted James swanning about in his car two days later. Wayne was subsequently nabbed in a flat, wallowing in a pile of filthy lucre.

The Brothers Dim got 20 years in the chokey between them, giving them plenty of time to think up new number plates for when they get out. May I suggest EEJ1T or H4LF W17?

You’d think this the zenith of brainless brigandry. But you’d be wrong. There are many, many wannabe crooks out there who are far, far lower on the evolutionary ladder.

Take, for example, the pair of witless galoots who robbed a bank in Florida in June, using one of their own cars as a getaway vehicle.

Tragically for them, they were forced to hop out and run off when it ran out of petrol round the corner. Rather than sacrifice his car for the sake of his liberty, the owner returned to pick it up short time later and was promptly arrested by a laughing Daytona Beach policeman.

Then there was the gang in Malaysia who hijacked a cash-in-transit van carrying $1.3 million. They stole a small car before holding up the guards at a shopping mall.

While one robber drove the van away, the other followed in the car. Police later recovered the van nearby with nine bags containing $786,000 still in the back.

The local police chief said it appeared they’d been forced to abandon over half of their haul because they couldn’t fit it all inside their pilfered hatchback. “I consider them quite stupid. Their planning was very short-sighted,” he said. You don’t say.

Finally, a chap, whom we’ll call Eddie, was making his escape after robbing a bank in Virginia a while back when things went pear-shaped. Returning to his rented getaway car, he realised he’d locked the keys inside. Grabbing a plank of wood from a nearby pick-up truck, he tried to smash the glass.

The truck’s owner arrived, pulled out his gun – it was Virginia, after all – and started chasing Eddie, who scarpered, trailing $100 bills behind him.

Eddie eventually turned and tried to shoot his pursuer with his own gun, but it went off in his pocket, blowing a hole in what police euphemistically called “his upper leg”.

Catching up with his injured prey, the truck owner then shot him again, just to be sure. As you do.

The thing is, making a getaway from a bank-job is actually fairly straightforward. I speak from a position of knowledge, having found some foolproof instructions on the internet. I’ve gone through them a dozen times and they appear absolutely watertight.

Simply buy a decent-sized junker, fit it with false plates, fill the tank and check the keys are in your pocket before you storm in, all guns a-blazing. Failing that, use a bicycle.