“Where are you? The guys from Utrecht are waiting for you,” was the SMS that Clancy N. received on May 29, 2018 from his alleged accomplices. He couldn’t read them anymore. But the police investigators did. They seized his cell phone. On May 29, Clancy N. drove from the Netherlands to Germany in a black VW Golf. Poing was entered as the destination on the navigation system. The VW Golf, with which the 26-year-old was traveling, caught the attention of investigators on the A3 motorway near Aschaffenburg. The license plates of the car were reported as stolen, as it turned out during an inspection.
Also, they were misplaced. The front license plate was on the rear of the car, the rear on the front of the vehicle. An unfortunate mistake. In addition, the investigators discovered almost all the equipment needed to blow up ATMs in the Gulf: oxygen bottles, pressure gauges, crowbars, gas lines – only the ignition device was missing. Clancy N. should have delivered the explosive cargo to an apartment in Poing for his clients, a “highly criminal organization” according to the public prosecutor. There, members of the gang had apparently set up a base for their raids in Munich and the region.
Even if Clancy N. played a rather subordinate role, the Ebersberg district court showed no mercy. In August last year, the 26-year-old was sentenced to two years and ten months in prison for preparing an explosive device. Both the public prosecutor and the defense have now appealed to the Munich II Regional Court. The prosecution with the aim that N. is sentenced to a higher sentence. The 26-year-old’s lawyer said his client did not want an acquittal, but a “lighter sentence – he knew what he was doing.” Before the district court in Ebersberg, the 26-year-old “talked the matter nicely,” admitted attorney Patrick Ottmann.
The gang is said to have blown up four ATMs in spring 2018
The “boys from Utrecht”, who waited in vain for their courier in Poing, are said to have blown up four ATMs in spring 2018 alone. One in Munich, one in Grünwald, two in Ottobrunn. There, the “Plofkraaker”, Dutch for cracker, stole no less than 350,000 euros in a coup on April 25, 2018 alone. In October of the same year, four members of the gang were caught trying to blow up an ATM in Germering. They have since been sentenced to long prison terms. One of the men managed to escape on foot in Germering. He too is now behind bars and is awaiting trial before the Munich II Regional Court at the end of this month.
Clancy N., who hails from one of the Dutch Caribbean islands and came to the Netherlands in 2015, recruited the gang in Utrecht at the beginning of 2018. N. now reported in court that he had talked to a man about whom he knew nothing more about a joint. He was offered 800 euros for the transfer of the equipment that the “Plofkraaker” needed to blow up the ATMs – including 300 euros as a down payment, according to N. He was told to “bring laughing gas to Munich.” The presiding judge asked whether it didn’t seem strange to him, 800 euros for the transport of nitrous oxide from the Netherlands to Germany. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t have enough to eat.” A short time before he was recruited, N. had lost his job and his apartment. After speaking with his defense attorney, he finally admitted that the offer “struck me as odd”.
A “high criminal organization”
In his pleading, senior public prosecutor Kai Gräber, among other things, credited N. with the fact that no damage had been done and that the crime was a long time ago. At the expense of the 26-year-old, the prosecutor assessed that he was a member of a “highly criminal organization”. In addition, the transport of the gas cylinders represented an enormous danger. An accident could have resulted in an explosion on the freeway, Gräber said, and called for three years in prison for preparing an explosive device. Lawyer Patrick Ottmann said the accused was an “easily seduced person” and “not a gang member, at most a courier.” Ottmann pleaded for a prison sentence of “not more than one year and ten months”, suspended on probation.
The court finally sentenced Clancy N. to two years and four months in prison. The judgment of the Ebersberg district court – two years, ten months – is “quite appropriate,” said the presiding judge in the verdict. “Certain things” have “improved” since the conviction in August 2021. Among other things, there is now a confession. A suspended sentence would not have been considered. Also, no prison sentence of less than two years. It is about “sending the signal to possible perpetrators” that participation in the ATM blow-up leads to prison sentences. Turning to Clancy N., the judge finally said: “I hope you are cured of all kinds of courier trips.” The judgment is final.