7 minute read
Busting open an ATM gang
Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann
Photography: Jess Wray-McCann and supplied
It’s December 2018 and, for the past three nights, thieves have tried breaking into bank ATMs in small towns around Ballarat in Victoria’s west.
While the crooks failed in forcing their way into the machines on those occasions — at Creswick, Skipton and Maldon — just two weeks earlier a Bendigo Bank ATM in Beaufort had been broken into and $189,000 in cash was stolen.
Local detectives decide it’s time to bring in the experts and that’s when the job lands on Detective Senior Constable Andrew Pybus’s desk at the Armed Crime Squad.
While non-armed crimes of this type aren’t what Det Sen Const Pybus and his colleagues usually look into, their close relationships with banks are seen as vital in this case, along with their ability to investigate multiple crimes linked as a series.
Now a senior sergeant, Pybus formed part of a crew that included Detective Sergeant Amanda Cohen, Leading Senior Constable Robert Curran and detective senior constables Robert Omerod, Cara Brockwell and Brett Waterson.
“We went up there and visited each of the sites and got a handover from the local crime investigation units to get our heads around what we needed to do,” Sen Sgt Pybus said.
The Armed Crime Squad was thorough, even going back into the dispatch records around the time of the offending for jobs that had come up over the radio, small or large.
The detectives’ first break came from something as minor as a noise complaint at Cosgrave Reservoir just outside Creswick.
People living nearby called police about suspicious grinding noises coming from the reservoir car park and took note of a Toyota Landcruiser ute and a Holden Commodore leaving the scene.
Given the incident happened just an hour and a half before the attempted ATM break-in at a Creswick bookshop on 14 December 2018, it piqued the interest of investigators.
A look back at CCTV footage showed a Toyota Landcruiser ute and a Holden Commodore involved at the Creswick and Maldon attempted thefts.
As the Armed Crime Squad’s Tactical Intelligence Operative, Ldg Sen Const Curran got to work and found a report of a stolen Toyota Landcruiser ute that matched the description of the one they were interested in.
The call went out for police to be on the lookout for the ute.
As the detectives continued their investigation, two more ATMs were hit on 29 December 2018 — an unsuccessful attempt to break into an ATM at Dunkeld, then $96,000 stolen from an ATM at Lake Bolac.
CCTV footage showed the ute and Commodore were both again involved.
The following day, a Ballarat Highway Patrol officer got in touch with some crucial information.
“He was working at a breath testing site when the ute drove through and he had a brief conversation with the driver,” Sen Sgt Pybus said.
“The member’s body-worn camera footage showed the driver as a man called Grant James Nalder.”
The detectives now had a prime suspect. They also had another name – Martin John Locandro – who was the registered owner of the silver Commodore seen at Creswick.
By looking into Nalder and Locandro, it was discovered the pair was regularly at the Haddon home of a man called Robert Stanley Fitzpatrick.
With three suspects in the frame, investigators were able to identify another crime that was previously not linked to the ATM series — the theft of $32,000 stored in calico bags from a safe at the Avoca Shire Turf Club on 17 October 2018.
CCTV footage from a Ballarat bank a month later on 16 November showed Nalder depositing $5505 in cash, using one of the calico bags from the turf club.
On the same day, which was almost two weeks before the first ATM theft, Nalder paid $5510 to a business that sells surplus tools from the mining industry.
Sen Sgt Pybus said it was suspected the transaction was for the powerful equipment Nalder and his crew used to force open the ATMs.
While the net was starting to surround Nalder, Fitzpatrick and Locandro, Sen Sgt Pybus said they still needed more evidence.
A few days after another attempted break-in to an ATM in Queenscliff on 13 January 2019, police began surveillance on the stolen ute Nalder was driving and Locandro’s Commodore.
Their surveillance efforts proved their worth just days later when both cars had left Fitzpatrick’s home in the early hours of 26 January and travelled to Ballan, where CCTV footage would show an unsuccessful attempt by offenders at 1.30am to break into the Bendigo Bank branch.
Things were beginning to come together for Sen Sgt Pybus.
But only hours after the Ballan incident, he got a phone call that would change everything.
“One of the local members rang me, saying, ‘We’ve found a stolen car right outside Fitzpatrick's house’ and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I know which car that's going to be’,” he said.
Sen Sgt Pybus said he was frustrated the Toyota Landcruiser ute had been seized by local police, but then he learned of the treasure trove of evidence found within the vehicle — identification cards, a balaclava and gloves, angle grinders, bolt cutters, a sledgehammer and a jemmy bar.
But most pivotal of all was a powerful hydraulic spreader — the type used in the mining industry and by emergency services to free people trapped in crashed cars.
The Armed Crime Squad detectives were confident they had enough evidence to arrest Nalder but wanted more for Fitzpatrick and Locandro.
On the morning of 3 March 2019, after a few weeks of no incidents, Sen Sgt Pybus awoke to news that beggared belief.
While the hydraulic spreader had been seized by police, the crooks were not deterred.
In the early hours of that day, they stole a front-end loader and drove it to the small town of Clunes in a convoy with a stolen F350 pickup truck and Locandro’s Commodore.
They used the front-end loader to tear up the front of the Clunes Newsagency, which had a Bendigo Bank ATM in its shopfront.
But they were interrupted by a local baker before they could steal anything and fled the scene, leaving the front-end loader still running.
Arrests and search warrants quickly followed.
Sen Sgt Pybus said searches at the trio’s properties turned up an “Aladdin’s cave” of tools, clothing and other equipment used in the offending.
One of the most damning pieces of evidence came after the seized spreader was sent to Victoria Police’s Ballistics Unit.
The unit not only focuses on forensically analysing and comparing firearms and fired ammunition from crime scenes, but marks from other types of tools as well.
Bendigo Bank installed one of its ATMs at the Victoria Police Forensic Services Centre for Sgt Andrew Nisbet from the Ballistics Unit to test the seized spreader on.
Sgt Nisbet compared the microscopic markings left by the spreader in his testing with the markings left on ATMs at the crime scenes.
“We had that fantastic, ‘there-it-is’ moment when I could confidently say the seized spreader was the one used in the crimes,” Sgt Nisbet said.
With the net of evidence surrounding them, the three men pleaded guilty to charges relating to their crime spree, which totalled about $320,000 in stolen cash.
They were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying between seven years and 23 months.
