The gang caught trying to raid the Money Zone

Police surveillance foiled a daring diamond plot. JASON BENNETT reports.

LONDON - A security van containing £10 million ($34 million) in cash pulled out of a depot in central London at 6.45 on a dull February morning.

Within minutes a gang of armed robbers carried out a daring plan that left a trail of burning vehicles in what detectives described as a "scene of carnage".

The complexity and scale of the attempted robbery in February 2000 shocked Scotland Yard and led to one of its the biggest surveillance operations.

The failed raid was a prelude to an even more audacious crime 10 months later - the attempted robbery of £200 million ($685 million) worth of diamonds from the Millennium Dome.

The same men were the masterminds behind both jobs. The gang were eventually caught red-handed as they smashed their way into the exhibition centre in Greenwich, southeast London, on board a mechanical digger.

Yesterday William Cockram, aged 49, from Catford, southeast London, Robert Adams, 57, from north London, Aldo Ciarrocchi, 32 of Bermondsey, Kevin Meredith, 34, from Brighton, and their leader, Raymond Betson, 40, of Chatham, Kent, were sentenced to a total of 71 years in prison.

The four principal raiders were found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of conspiracy to rob the Dome. The fifth, Meredith, was given a five-year sentence for his role as a getaway driver aboard a speedboat.

During the security van robbery three lorries were jack-knifed across either end of the Nine Elms Lane carriageway in Battersea, south London, to block the Securicor vehicle. But the robbers were forced to abort their attempt after being unable to break open the van's doors. They set off incendiary bombs before fleeing across the Thames in a high-powered boat.

Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, which deals with armed robberies, immediately set up an investigation, codenamed "Magician". Officers then became involved in a surveillance operation on suspected stolen vehicles begun by Kent police last April. They believed the vehicles could be linked to their gang.

On August 25, a man was followed from Kent to the Dome, where he paid special attention to the jewellery exhibition in the Money Zone, which housed the flawless Millennium Star diamond and 11 blue diamonds owned by De Beers.

That the Dome could be the location of the offence was "almost too incredible to be true", said Detective Chief Superintendent Jon Shatford, the head of the Flying Squad.

On September 1, the police checked a vehicle at the Dome's car park and discovered it belonged to Raymond Betson.

Surveillance film showed Betson with a man called William Cockram, accompanying a woman with a child in a pram.

Betson, 40, and Cockram, 49, were considered among the most dangerous armed robbers in the country.

They are believed to have been responsible for a series of raids involving many millions of pounds.

Betson is also suspected of carrying out at least two contract killings.

Betson was the senior partner and Cockram his right-hand man.

Betson has 18 convictions, mainly for dishonesty and theft, and Cockram has 15 convictions for dishonesty, theft, car crimes and unlawful wounding.

Undercover officers filmed the two men meeting Aldo Ciarrocchi, 32, on the banks of the Thames opposite the Dome. Ciarrocchi was considered one of Cockram's family, having dated his daughter for six years.

Two other professional criminals were recruited for the theft, Robert Adams, 57, a convicted cocaine smuggler, who had served six years in jail for trying to kill his wife, and Terence Millman, 56, who had a string of robbery convictions.

For the planned escape across the Thames the gang enrolled 34-year-old Kevin Meredith, a skipper from Brighton.

The gang was seen taking a mechanical digger to a coal yard in Plumstead, about 5km from the Dome.

On November 7 the police watched as Meredith took a speedboat to the Isle of Dogs and launched it, while Betson set off from the coal yard aboard the digger, followed by a white transit van.

At the Dome, undercover officers mingled with visitors and nearly 100 armed detectives were hidden nearby.

Cockram, Adams, and Ciarrocchi switched from the van and got into the digger's cab alongside Betson.

At about 9.30 am Betson crashed the digger through a metal gate, a set of double doors, and into the Dome.

Dressed in gas masks and body armour, the raiders leaped out of the cab. Ciarrocchi let off a blue smoke grenade as Cockram ran into the vault and, using a nail-gun, punctured a small hole in the reinforced glass surrounding the Millennium Star diamond.

Adams used a sledgehammer to smash a larger hole in the glass. The break-in took 27 seconds.

Outside, about 40 armed officers overpowered Betson and Ciarrocchi. Officers stormed into the vault and forced Adams and Cockram at gunpoint to lie face down.

As officers handcuffed Adams and led the bewildered robber away he said: "I was 12 inches from pay day." But Adams was mistaken - De Beers had taken the precaution of replacing the diamonds with fakes.

Meredith was captured by officers in the speed boat at the Millennium pier. Millman was arrested in a van on the other side of the river. He would die of cancer while on remand.

At court the four gang members who took part in the raid pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal but denied the more serious charge of conspiracy to rob.

Betson and Cockram were jailed for 18 years each, Ciarrocchi and Adams received 15 years apiece, and Meredith got a five-year sentence for conspiracy to steal.

Judge Michael Coombe told the men: "You played for very high stakes and you must have known perfectly well what the penalty would be if your enterprise did not succeed."

The gang had planned to sell the diamonds to members of the Russian mafia. The payment is unknown, but it would have run into many millions.

- INDEPENDENT