PSNI issues serial numbers of £1.5m stolen notes

Police have issued the serial numbers of £1.5m (€2.13m) of the new notes stolen in the £22m (€31m) Northern Bank robbery in Belfast.

They urged retailers, other banking institutions and members of the public to be on the look out for the £10 notes.

The numbers are: BC 850001 to BC 8550000; BC 9100001 to BC 9150000; and BC 9350001 to BC 9400000.

Northern Bank has still not made available to police the serial numbers of more than £13m (€18m) in new bank notes, so detectives were unable to say whether the gang had started to use the money.

The officer leading the hunt for the gang denied there was any suggestion they had botched catching the bank robbers when they missed them by minutes.

Chief Superintendent Andy Sproule, said that after a traffic warden relayed a report of a white van and suspicious activity outside the bank side door, officers were there as soon as possible.

The police team returned to the bank last night with an identical white Ford Transit box van as that used by the robbers in a bid to nudge the memory of passers-by.

He said CCTV camera footage showed the van – with the false registration RCZ 6632 – had been in the side street outside the bank between 7pm and 7.15pm and between 8pm and 8.15pm on Monday and that cages of cash had been loaded onboard on each occasion.

The Chief Superintendent said the van had still not been recovered.

Given the van was only away from the scene for 45 minutes between the two occasions it would not have been able to drive far beyond Belfast to unload, because of the level of pre-Christmas traffic on the roads.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) confirmed yesterday that they had investigated a report of suspicious activity in Wellington Street beside the bank at around the time the robbery took place.

A man and woman approached a traffic warden in nearby Donegall Place at around 8.10pm to report suspicious activity involving two men and a white van beside the bank.

Detectives investigating the robbery appealed for the man and woman who spoke to the traffic warden to contact them as a matter of urgency.

Police only discovered a robbery had taken place at the bank hours later when the hostage wife of a bank official was freed miles away and the alarm raised.