Gang stole thousands from elderly victims in targeted hits

A COLOMBIAN gang stole thousands of pounds from vulnerable elderly people by following them from banks after loitering and watching them withdraw large amounts of cash.

- ROB KENNEDY

The cruel thieves distracted their unsuspecting victims in a series of offences committed across the North East and further afield.

A court heard they would hang around in banks and building societies and wait until they saw an elderly person make a significant withdrawal.

They would discretely signal to each other before tailing them, sometimes distracting them immediately and other times following them around shops before striking.

Now, Armet Asprilla Cortes and Willmer Guzman, who were two of four people involved in the seven-month plot which netted more than £60,000 from 14 victims, have each been locked up for 44 months at Newcastle Crown Court.

The pair were arrested in July as they tried to leave the UK.

On August 15 last year, a woman was followed after withdrawing money from a bank in Hexham, Northumberland.

A man distracted her as she was getting into her car by putting coins on the ground and asking if they were hers. Some £7,000 was stolen from her handbag from the passenger seat of her car.

On August 27, they used a similar ruse to steal £15,000 from a woman in Gosforth.

On December 2, a woman took the bus to Northumberland Street, in Newcastle, and took cash out from a bank.

She got the bus home and was walking towards her address when she saw a female in the middle of the road as if she had slipped.

The victim tried to help her up and a man approached, speaking to the woman on the ground in a foreign language.

She gestured that she needed a drink and sat on the victim's steps.