Manchester Gang escapes with just £6,000 after 100ft tunnel heist!

After a Manchester gang have spent 6 months of hard graft, while paying attention to every detail when working on the tunnel, scraping away tonnes of dirt to dig through the Manchester Shopping Centre.

Announcing an investigation into what police believe is a local criminal outfit, police yesterday revealed fresh details into how the "mole gang" spent months digging a 100ft-long passage beneath a video shop where a cash machine was located. However, the Hollywood-style heist yielded just £6,000 in a city where a luxury apartment can cost £1,000 a month.

Police said the theft at a Blockbuster store in the Fallowfield shopping precinct in Levenshulme, the incident occurred between 5.30pm on 2 January and the following morning. A 4ft-high tunnel was supported with scaffolding and wired up to the local electricity grid for lighting. An entrance cut into a nearby railway embankment led beneath a car park to the shopping precinct. Police, however, said they have yet to discover how the gang disposed of the tonnes of earth.

The robbery has echoes of criminal ventures in films such as The Bank Job, in the 2008 release a gang digs a tunnel beneath a fast food restaurant to reach an underground vault. However in South Manchester's real-life version, the gang appear to have used heavy drilling equipment to reach the cash machine. It is believed they bored tiny holes into the floor of the video store through which they poked telescopic cameras to check their progress.

A source at the shopping precinct said yesterday: "There was just over £6,000 in the machine. It was only when security came to fill the machine back up that they discovered the hole."

Police admit they are baffled at the target given the obvious expertise and determination possessed by the criminals. Even when fully stocked, the cash machine can only hold £20,000.

Detective sergeant Ian Shore, from Longsight CID, south Manchester, said: "In all my years of service, I have never seen anything quite as elaborate as this. These people obviously spent a long time plotting this crime and I doubt they would have been able to keep their plans secret for all that time. The financial detriment to the victim could have been a lot worse.''

Manchester police hope to allow the media into the tunnel later on today.