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A GANG of armed robbers have been jailed for a total of 27 years for a string of raids, including one near Barclays Bank in Epping High Street, which netted a total of £100,000.

Dean Cronin, 22, Daniel Dye, 20, and Jack Larwood, 18, held up at least four cash-in-transit vans in three months before being tracked down by police.

The raiders used an imitation firearm to petrify guards delivering cash boxes.

Getaway driver Dye was sentenced to a total of ten years in a young offenders' institution, Cronin was jailed for ten years and Larwood was sentenced to seven years youth detention.

On October 3, 2006, the gang snatched a £25,000 cashbox from a van outside the Woolwich, in High Road, Benfleet. The same amount was taken from another cash delivery near Barclays Bank in Epping, on November 14, 2006.

A week later the gang snatched another £25,000 cashbox when Barclays was again targeted, in Shenfield, near Brentwood.

They returned to Benfleet and a cash delivery outside another Barclays, on December 28, 2006, when a further £25,000 was swiped at gunpoint.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard the gang backed out of attacks on deliveries outside Lloyds TSB in The Broadway, Loughton, on October 17, 2006, and on a van in South Woodford on January 26 last year.

Dye, of Dagenham, Road, Dagenham, was described as the most "unsophisticated" gang member after it emerged that he failed to wear a balaclava or gloves and left a Lucozade container with his DNA on it in a getaway vehicle.

Cronin, of Pettits Lane, Romford, who has City and Guilds qualifications in motor mechanics, had three previous convictions for possessing offensive weapons.

Larwood, of St George's Road, Dagenham, claimed he was a "late recruit" who, being the youngest, looked up to the other members of the gang.

Cronin and Dye pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob between September 1, 2006, and March 15 last year, and conspiracy to have imitation firearms with intent.

Larwood pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob, conspiracy to have imitation firearms with intent and possessing a prohibited weapon.

A fourth member, William O'Hanlon, 21, of Farmway, Dagenham, will be sentenced on June 6 after pleading guilty to two counts of possessing criminal property.

2:21pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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