A jury has found a Rotorua man guilty of his role in the "Casper the Ghost" armed hold-ups of the Te Puke Jewellers and Katikati Post Shop in 2009.
The jury took three hours and 40 minutes to find Desmond Galvin-Taikato, 18, guilty of two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of unlawfully getting into a motor vehicle which was used in both robberies.
His co-accused Harley Adlam, 22, also of Rotorua, was discharged by Judge Robert Wolff at the conclusion of the prosecution case on Thursday.
Galvin-Taikato and his co-offenders burst into Te Puke Jewellers about 11.15am on July 24, 2009.
The store owner was assaulted before Galvin-Taikato and his co-offenders, wearing ski masks and hoodies, made their getaway in a car which had been stolen from outside Mount Maunganui College earlier that morning.
About 2.25pm the same day, Galvin-Taikato and two of his group - one armed with a sawn-off shotgun - held up the Katikati Post Shop and stole $950. A fourth member of the group stayed in the car acting as the getaway driver.
Prior to each robbery the group had filled up the stolen Nissan Skyline at two service stations.
Two Rotorua police officers gave evidence identifying Galvin-Taikato as the person captured on CCTV footage pumping gas into the car at Gull in Paengaroa, about 25 minutes prior to the Te Puke Jewellers hold-up.
A person wearing the same distinctive hoodie filled up at Caltex in Greerton about one-and-a-half-hours prior to the Katikati Post Shop robbery.
Galvin-Taikato's fingerprint was found on a driver licence belonging to the owner of the stolen car, which was found dumped in Pyes Pa Rd near the abandoned vehicle.
The Crown argued that the petrol station visits were connected with the robberies, and together with the CCTV footage and fingerprint evidence, the jury could be satisfied Galvin-Taikato was one of the four robbers.
Galvin-Taikato's lawyer, John Bergseng, had argued that there was not "one solitary shed of evidence" to link his client to either robbery.
Judge Wolff remanded Galvin-Taikato in custody.
He will be sentenced on September 13.
Two of Galvin-Taikato's co-offenders, Harae Tawhiti Rex Maney, 22, and Rehua Rakapa Ferris, 19, also from Rotorua, were jailed for five years and five months on October 23,2009.