FOUR members of a gang that robbed two G4S bank vans of £50,000 in York have been caught and convicted, The Press can reveal today.

Their guilty pleas were revealed at the start of the trial of an Acomb man accused of helping in the two raids, outside the Lloyds TSB branch in Acomb Front Street and the nearby HSBC branch.

Geraldine Kelly, prosecuting, told a Sheffield jury about the pleas, and read out a statement from one of the security guards attacked by the gang.

G4S driver David Lewis told police two men in balaclavas grabbed him round the waist and struck him on the knee as he was delivering £25,000 in new notes in a cash box to the Lloyds TSB branch on April 18, 2012.

“I heard one of them say: “Get the box”,” he told police. “By the time I realised what was happening it was all over.”

As he curled up in a ball on the ground and hit his alarm button, the gang made off in a Peugeot reported stolen in Wallasey, Merseyside, a few weeks earlier, said Miss Kelly.

Giving details about the second robbery on October 11 outside the HSBC bank in Acomb, Miss Kelly alleged three men attacked a security guard from behind and took his cash box containing £25,000 before making off in a car at speed up Carr Lane.

There they threw out the empty cash box before swapping cars in a car park off Beckfield Lane, Acomb, and burning the car they left, before later also abandoning the second car.

Kieran Luke Charles Guildford, 21, of Gale Lane in Acomb, is alleged to have travelled with conspirators Martin Cooke and Adam Herrington from their homes in York to Liverpool and back to fetch a Ford Focus to use as a second getaway vehicle for the first robbery.

Miss Kelly said CCTV evidence from the garage at the A59-A1237 junction on the York outer ring road showed Guildford in the convoy of three cars as they returned to York a few hours before the robbery.

“If you are organising a robbery for the next day, you are going to recruit someone you can trust to assist and that is why Kieran Guildford was there,” she alleged.

“It defies common sense that Guildford would have just gone along and stayed out of the loop the entire time.”

Guildford told police he had made the trip to Liverpool and back but denied knowing anything about the robbery.

He said he was paid £100 off a cannabis debt for going as a passenger and spending the rest of the night at a flat in Ordnance Lane after returning to York.

The jury have been shown phone analysis data showing Cooke made calls with co-conspirator Matthew Hawskby in York during the Liverpool trip.

Guildford denies conspiracy to rob G4S vans between April 16 and October 12, 2012.

The same charge has been admitted by Cooke, 26, formerly of Walmgate; Herrington, 26, formerly of Ordnance Lane; Hawksby, 25, formerly of Newbury Avenue in Acomb and Marlon Otis Benjamin, 23, also of Wallasey. Lisa Johanna Gardner, 37, of Wallasey, has admitted assisting an offender.

The prosecution claim the co-conspirators woke a Woodlea Avenue resident in Acomb as they drove cars into a cul-de-sac of garages off her road shortly after midnight on April 18, shouted to each other and banged car doors before parking the Ford Focus and leaving with the other cars.

Twenty-five minutes later a single car returned and the Focus was collected.

Phone evidence shown to the jury allegedly shows Herrington at about 1am near Kirk View in Acomb, where the Peugeot was abandoned after the robbery.

Miss Kelly said the prosecution did not know which members of the gang carried out the robberies as they wore balaclavas and the jury have seen telephone data from Benjamin’s phone which places him in Liverpool the night before the first robbery, after the York party left.

After the robbery, phone evidence allegedly showed Cooke travelling to Liverpool where he arrived shortly before 1pm.

The prosecution says it has no evidence linking Guildford to the second robbery.

The trial continues.