Media Centre

An armed robber who stashed £9,000 under his bed and in his airing cupboard after a security van heist has been jailed for seven years.

Officers discovered £7,000 in £20 notes stuffed beneath the mattress of Gary Scott, 42, as well as £2,000 in coins and five bullets in his airing cupboard.

His bath was also splattered with blue security dye containing SmartWater which linked him back to the robbery. Hydraulic cutting equipment, which had been stolen from fire stations and used by the robbers to prise open cash boxes, was also seized from Scott’s home.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard how two masked thugs brandished a handgun and repeatedly punched a post office security guard in Gordon Road, Ilford. The duo then sped off in a VW Polo — earlier stolen to order in Dagenham — but were tracked using homing devices inside the cash boxes.

SmartWater found on the hydraulic cutters was found to match an earlier raid on a security van at Homebase in Dagenham on April 14 last year, the court heard.

Scott denied any prior knowledge of the Ilford robbery on June 11 last year and claimed he was set up by an underworld boss. But a jury rejected his story and unanimously convicted the thug following a seven-day trial.  The court also heard Scott had previously been jailed for three and a half years in 2004 for threatening a pub landlord at gunpoint.

He was convicted of conspiracy to rob, possession of criminal property and possessing ammunition without a firearms certificate.