A gang which mounted a cross-border raid on Tayside care homes left booty submerged in the River Tay, where it was later found by an angler.
After hitting the homes in Dundee and Forfar, the gang made their way to Perthshire, where they hid stolen watches and other items.
More than five years later, one of the group has finally been brought to justice.
Anthony Cahill was told the misery he caused care home residents would go on to be compounded by the coronavirus lockdown after jurors at Forfar Sheriff Court convicted him.
The Ballumbie Court and Harestane care homes in Dundee and Benholm care home in Forfar were all struck in the dead of night on February 6 in 2020.
Cahill and his gang travelled 300 miles in a sporty Audi S3 and made off with almost £12,000, as well as watches, jewellery and iPads.
A sheriff labelled his offences “particularly mean-spirited”.
Cahill, from Liverpool, who hit headlines for trying to steal an ATM in a fluffed ram-raid at a Cornish Co-op six months earlier, was locked up for more than three-and-a-half years.
It was the second trial after one started in February, only for proceedings to collapse when a juror made online inquiries about the crook’s extensive criminal past.
Early morning raids
At Ballumbie Court care home, the staff administrator had locked the office just before 5pm on February 5 when she finished work.
Keys to the safe, petty cash tin and comfort fund tin were left in a desk drawer.
At 2.30am, it was noticed the office window had been opened within the previous 10 minutes.
Money boxes, receipts, a carrier bag, cigarettes, a bank card, keys, lanyards, a brooch and three watches had all been stolen, along with £1,055 from the safe.
Probing police later found money tins and receipts stolen from Benholm in Forfar discarded on a grass verge nearby.
Meanwhile, the care home manager at Harestane had locked the office at 7.30pm on February 5.
At 3am, another person noticed the door was unlocked, the safe was open and the large window had been removed and placed inside the office.
Cahill’s gang had made off with baskets of paperwork, money tins, jewellery, keys and three more watches.
They also took £9,489.48 in cash and a wallet containing another £560.
The baskets of paperwork, money tins, wallet and £560 were all found later that day, discarded around 100m away.
Also targeted was Benholm care home on Forfar’s Glamis Road.
The manager there locked her office door at 6.30pm on February 5.
When she arrived at 8.20am the next morning, the window was open.
Money tins, iPads, a fan and £1,240.94 in cash had been stolen.
Two tins and one iPad were found by police dropped in the grounds.
A day after the raids, Cahill’s DNA was found on two cigarette butts and a black snood recovered from a rural cottage 50 miles away at Bolfracks Estate near Aberfeldy.
The Audi was recovered by police three days after that.
However, it was not until June 13 that year much of the gang’s loot was discovered nearby.
An angler was out fishing when he stumbled upon Cahill’s sunken treasure, dumped in the River Tay a short distance from the entrance road to the estate cottage.
Jettisoned there was a bank card in the name of a Ballumbie Court resident, keys for the care home on a lanyard and keys for the care home’s staff lockers.
Also submerged were the plundered brooch, two Lorus watches and an Infinite watch, all stolen from Ballumbie Court.
The angler also found two sets of keys for Harestane care home, a Reflex watch, an Everite watch and an Imaldo watch, each taken from the Kirkton home.
Harestane care home is run by Priority Care.
At the time, its director Andy Prior said he was “shocked and saddened individuals could carry out such a heartless act”.
He said: “The most sickening part is that most of the money taken was from the client comfort fund.
“This money has been raised with great effort by relatives, staff and volunteers through numerous events and activities.”
A spokeswoman for Ballumbie Court care home said management were “deeply saddened and angered”.
Guilty
Throughout the trial, Cahill denied breaking into the homes and stealing from them. He chose not to give evidence.
Jurors deliberated for around an hour before convicting him by majority of all three charges.
Sheriff Paul Ralph jailed Cahill, of Rockford Avenue in Kirkby, Merseyside, for 44 months.
Cahill had been hoping to be released from the sentence he is currently serving in HMP Durham on April 17.
After Cahill, 39, had been led away in handcuffs, the sheriff told jurors: “There was a time around about 2021 where there was a spate of people arriving in Scotland from the Liverpool, Birmingham and London areas committing serious offences” with the view that sentences would be lighter than in England.
The sheriff noted things went from bad to worse for Cahill’s victims as the first Covid lockdown was imposed just a month later.
Criminal past
Following the verdict, prosecutor Sarah Wilkinson explained Cahill was once jailed for five years – for a drugs offence.
In 2021, Cahill was jailed for another four years for his role in a botched bid to steal an ATM from village shop in Cornwall.
Before carrying out the raid, his gang stole heavy-duty slings from a crane hire firm, then took a pick-up truck and car from a dealership forecourt.
They used the plunder to ram-raid the store, hooked slings to the cash machine and tried, unsuccessfully, to drag it out with the pick-up so instead fled with booze and vapes.
A year earlier, Cahill was fined after hurling his shoes at his local police station.
In 2016, he received an 18-month prison sentence when he ran over a five-year-old boy in an uninsured BMW 5 Series in his hometown two days after Christmas.
The boy was left with a huge gash on his ankle and suffering nightmares.
Second trial
Cahill first appeared in court in August 2020.
His trial began earlier this year but collapsed after the prosecution had led all its evidence when a juror began googling Cahill’s previous convictions.
Juror Chanel Hogg admitted being in contempt of court during the trial in early February.
For more local court content visit our page or join us on Facebook.
