Heist gang was no "Oceans 11"

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - A gang of armed robbers, some masquerading as police officers, others wearing elaborate prosthetic disguises, an inside man and a 53 million pound cash haul -- it sounds like a Hollywood film plot.

But the stunning raid on a depot in Kent which netted the gang Britain's record cash heist had none of the glamour of a movie, according to the officials who brought them to justice.

Chief Crown Prosecutor Roger Coe-Salazar said because of the sheer scale of the haul and the manner in which the men had carried out the caper, there might be a temptation to romanticise the crime.

But he said the fact they had taken the depot's manager hostage and threatened his wife and young son at gunpoint showed that the gang were no "Ocean's Eleven", a reference to the movie about a group of con artists starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

"I would like to make it clear there was nothing romantic or victimless about a 7-year-old child being held at gunpoint by a masked man," Coe-Salazar said.

"This was a callous and highly dangerous crime."

Certainly though, the heist had all the elements that would appeal to a film scriptwriter.

The gang, who began their planning more than six months beforehand, recruited a worker at the depot, Albanian Emir Hysenaj to carry out surveillance and provide details of the building and its security systems.