A man with a stopwatch yells orders to the
crew as they unlock vaults and pile money into the truck sitting at the loading
dock. The robbers are heavily armed; they have locked the Securitas staff in metal
cages as they expertly maneuver their way through the building. Piles and piles of
cash are loaded into the getaway vehicle. The Securitas Depot Heist is under way. It will
be the largest cash robbery in British history, but who is the mastermind behind it? The man with the stopwatch calls out timing
and coordinates the movements of the robbers. Then, as suddenly as the heist started,
it’s over. The robbers leave the facility without tripping a single alarm or alerting
the authorities in any way. As they drive away the man with the stopwatch
around his neck removes his mask and smiles. It is UFC fighter Lee
Murray. He’s stolen over £53 million. Lee Murray was an MMA fighter who had a
chance to make it big in the UFC. But how did this once famous fighter end up carrying
out the biggest bank heist in British history? Why did he do it? These questions and more
will all be answered, but first let's take a look at what created the fighter turned
bank robber Lee Murray in the first place. Murray grew up in Woolwich, South East London.
At an early age he joined a gang called the Barney Boys, named after the Barnfield
Estate housing projects they lived in. Murray was incarcerated as a juvenile at
the Feltham Young Offender Institution for selling marijuana and crack-cocaine. It was
in his rough early years that he learned how to fight, not because he wanted to, but
because he had to in order to survive. Lee Murray was known as a ferocious puncher. In
fact, Robbie Lawler, a former UFC welterweight champion, remembers Murray during their time
training at Peacocks Boxing Gym together. In an interview with Sports Illustrated Lawler
said "Murray had world class punching power.” He would hit the mitts and
it would sound like gunfire. Murray fought in several smaller promotional
fights before receiving a contract with the UFC. His record upon entering the Ultimate Fighting
Championship was 8-2-1. Although Lee Murray only ended up competing in one UFC fight, he
did not disappoint. Murray entered the arena to a screaming electric guitar playing over the
loudspeakers and wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask. In his one and only UFC appearance,
Murray won against Jorge Rivera in the first round using a
triangle choke/armbar. However, he never got to fight in a UFC match
again. There were complications with his United States visa because of an ongoing
criminal investigation against him in Britain. The crime that Murray was being tried for was
a vicious assault during a road rage incident. Lee Murray continued to fight in different
MMA promotional events such as Cage Rage, but his fighting career came to an end when he was
stabbed multiple times in a bar fight. This event happened at a birthday party for TV actress Lauren
Pope, at a bar called Funky Buddha. Murray stated that the fight broke out when one of his friends
got into an altercation with another group of men. Murray tried to step in and help his friend
who was being pummeled by six other guys. The chaos escalated when one of the attackers
pulled a knife and stabbed Murray in the head. Murray recalls thinking the stab was actually
a punch, so he wiped the blood from his face, and kept on fighting. Then he got stabbed again
and again, not noticing until the fight came to an end. Murray looked down at his chest
to see blood literally shooting out of it. The irony is that this was not the first time
Murray had encountered a knife at Funky Buddha. A week before the almost fatal stabbing Murray
got into a fight with another gentleman at the bar who pulled a knife and slashed off one of
Murray’s nipples. You would think that would be enough to keep Murray away from the bar
for a bit, but as it turns out, it was not. These two stabbing events put an end to Murray’s
traditional MMA career. He would not be able to enter the ring for many months, and even when his
wounds did heal, there was most likely permanent damage that would prevent him from fighting
again. His days of mixed martial arts were over. Over the course of the next year Murray and
others in his gang planned a bank heist. It would be the largest robbery in
British history. On February 21, 2006 Murrary led his gang of robbers on a job that
stole £53,116,760 from the Securitas Depot. The setup for the crime was done weeks in
advance. Murray had one of the members of the gang named Ermir Hysenaj interview to
work the night shift at the Securitas Depot. A few months before the heist Hysenaj
sat down for a ten minute interview; Hysenaj was hired on the spot for 11 dollars
an hour. This inside man wore a camera on his belt buckle and recorded all the going ons inside
of the holding facility. With this information, Murray and his accomplices made a plan on how best
to steal the money within the walls of the vault. The heist started not at the depot itself,
but on a backcountry road leading to the house of Mr. Colin Dixon. Dixon was a high level
manager at the depot and had security access to all the parts of the facility Murray
needed to get into. On February 21st Murray and one of the other robbers
dressed up in fake police uniforms and outfitted a car with blue flashing lights
to disguise it as an unmarked police car. Dixon pulled over his car; two uniformed
men approached the driver side window. One of the phony officers flashed a fake badge
and ordered Dixon to step out of the vehicle. At the exact same time, a second
group of kidnappers were sent to Dixon’s house to collect his wife and son.
The family was transposed to Elderen Farm and threatened at gunpoint to either cooperate
or die. The family, along with the armed robbers, were loaded into the back of a large transport
truck and drove to the Securitas Depot. Murray and his gang of robbers reached the
depot just after midnight on February 22nd. The truck was accompanied by the fake police
car that pulled Dixon over the previous evening. Dixon was brought to the door of the facility
accompanied by a man dressed in a fake police uniform. Dixon and the robber were buzzed
in. As they entered the facility the fake police officer overpowered the security
guard and buzzed in the rest of the gang. They entered the facility wearing masks and
brandishing machine guns, shot guns, and pistols. As the robbers made their way through the
facility with their high powered weapons, Dixon ordered the workers of the graveyard
shift to think of their families and surrender willingly. Luckily for the robbers none of the
workers tripped any of the alarms, which meant they would not be disturbed by the authorities
that night. 14 people were taken by the robbers, tied up, and secured in metal cages for money
transport as the gang plundered the depot. Once all of the workers were rounded
up Murray forced Dixon to shut down the security system completely and hand
over the keys to the vault. At this point the truck that the robbers had ridden to
the depot pulled up to the loading dock. The team of robbers loaded bags of cash into
the truck as the man with the stopwatch, who was later identified as Lee Murray, yelled
timing and orders. It was clear that this was a well thought out heist that took time to plan
and coordinate. The robbery went off without a hitch. No one was physically injured, and not a
single shot was fired. The alarms remained off for the entirety of the robbery. Once the truck
was loaded up with over £53 million worth of bank notes, the gang left. The workers and Dixon
family were kept locked in the money cages. Around 3:00 A.M. Dixon’s son was able
to squeeze through the bars of the cage he was being held in and call the police. But
at that point it was too late. Murray and his gang of robbers were long gone; no one had
any idea who they were or where they went. The police immediately set out to
find the criminals offering massive rewards to anyone who had information that
would lead to the arrest of the robbers. The large reward for information, along
with missteps from members of the gang, led to arrests only days after the robbery.
After ten days five people were charged and millions of pounds were recovered. Later in
the investigation a make-up artist who had made prosthetic masks for the robbers turned on the
gang and testified against them. It was later reported that the gang put a bounty on her head
for 7 million pounds to stop her from leaking any more information to the police. Things were
unraveling quickly. But the main piece of evidence that helped the police track down the robbers
came from none other than Lee Murray himself. Days before the bank heist Murray crashed his
bright yellow Ferrari. After the accident Murray left his cell phone in the car. On it was a
recording of him talking about the robbery with other members of the gang. Now the police
knew who the mastermind behind the Securitas Depot Heist was. Unfortunately for the cops,
Murray was already one step ahead of them. When members of the gang started being picked
up by the police Murray fled to Morocco. Once in Morocco Murray was protected from
British authorities because there was no extradition treaty between
the countries at the time. Murray’s father had been born there, which
granted Lee Murray automatic citizenship. Once safely in Morocco, Murray began living a
life of luxury. He bought a one million dollar mansion and then dumped hundreds of thousand of
dollars into renovating it. He had a massive mural painted on one of the walls commemorating his
only fight in the UFC. Murray drove around in a gold Mercedes-Benz and installed a multilevel,
fully equipped, gym in his mansion. He also commissioned bronze and gold statues of himself
that he used as decorations around the house. This extravagant lifestyle didn’t come
without its pitfalls. The British and Morrocan authorities began working closely together
to keep surveillance on Murray at all times. Eventually, Morrocan police arrested Murray
on drug charges. Then, in 2009 while in jail, British authorities became involved in his case.
Murray knew he was in trouble. He attempted to escape prison using small saws that were smuggled
inside a plate of biscuits. This escape failed. A year later, Lee Murray was
charged and convicted for his part in the Securitas Depot Heist. He
was sentenced to ten years in jail, which was eventually extended to twenty five
years to be served in a Moroccan prison. Other members of his gang who made it to Morocco were
sent back to Britain to serve their time there. Lee Murray’s story is unlike any other. He had
a rough childhood being raised in a gang run neighborhood where he learned to fight or die.
He spent time in jail as a juvenile because of his affiliation with the Barney Boys and his job
as a drug runner. Then he used his fighting skills to earn notoriety. He fought hard and made
it all the way to the UFC, living the life of a playboy along the way. When everything came
crashing down after being stabbed numerous times, ending his fighting career, Murray went
back to what he knew from his childhood, crime. He was able to pull off the
largest bank heist in British history where he and his accomplices stole
£53,116,760. Unfortunately for Lee Murray, he eventually got caught and is now serving his
twenty five year sentence in a Moroccan jail. Now check out Largest US Cash Heist Ever - How
They Pulled Off Insane Armored Truck Robbery. Or watch Insane Way Bank Robbers Executed
Perfect Bank Heist (Stole $20 Million).
