From the Wrong Side of the Tracks...Chapter 26 – Cash in Transit
After three months in my own Touring with Protection business, I received a call from a very wealthy businessman in Umtata (now known as Mthata). He said he heard about me from a police friend of his and that he would like to talk with me concerning business.
I met with him, and he offered me a job at his company as his security manager. I declined. I told him I preferred working for myself. He explained to me he had a Cash-in-transit business operating only during the last two weeks of every month. His guards withdrew money every day in Umtata and then travelled to all the remote areas in the Transkei to cash the pensioner’s cheques during the last two weeks of the month. He further stated that he was not insured on the money he transported every day and that there were already a few attempts to rob the vehicles.
I told him I would be interested in running his cash-in-transit payout operation, but only on a contract agreement. I added one further condition. He had four teams. I insisted on contracting four guys of my own choice to be placed on those vehicles. He agreed, and I picked my team from ex-cops I knew well. Three of them I knew personally, and the fourth guy came highly recommended by one of the guys I had chosen. We put the cash-in-transit teams through training and drills and spent a lot of time on the shooting range with them. We were ready for anything, and we resumed the cash-in-transit payments.
The recommended guy who came onto the team, and whom I did not know, was from Cape Town. The two of us became friends, and after the cash-in transit stint, we worked together during many ventures and adventures.
During my time with me and my team on the cash in transit operations, nothing happened in the first two months. Then came the third month. An informer I had in Umtata approached me.
He told me we were being watched by a gang specialising in cash-in-transit robberies. Apparently, they were from Gauteng. Although I was always on the lookout for anything of this nature, I was still unpleasantly surprised to hear about it. The distance from Gauteng to Umtata was over nine hundred kilometres. My informer told me he could point out their vehicles to me.
The morning after he gave me the information, I picked him up, driving a vehicle different to the one which I normally used. Whilst the team was loading the cash at the bank, the informer and I drove around the streets adjoining the bank. He pointed out two vehicles to me. One a 5-series BMW. The other an old Mercedes Benz. Both vehicles had GP (Gauteng Province) registration plates. Shocked, I immediately phoned through the description of the vehicles to my team members and told them to be on high alert.
I asked the informer if he could find out where these alleged robbers stayed. He answered he knew exactly where they had been staying during the past week. He took me to a township outside Umtata and pointed out two houses situate next to each other. He further told me that this was where they were staying and slept at night.
I was extremely worried about the situation. I decided before an attempt was made to rob us, causing somebody to get shot and maybe killed, to call for help from old friends whom I befriended during my police career. They were rough guys, always available to help me out. Let’s just say they owed me a favour or two. I did not want to involve any of the guys that were in my team, although there was no doubt in my mind that if called upon, they would have assisted with the problem. I kept the problem to myself.
Two days later, I met up with the ‘help’ that arrived. We decided to ‘visit’ our alleged robbers at three o’clock the next morning. As arranged, we travelled to the township the next morning. The vehicles pointed out by my informer earlier in the week were parked in front of the two houses which he had shown me on that day.
We gained access to the two houses. I told the men from Gauteng we found inside who I was and that I knew they were planning something. I warned them to rather leave Umtata. I took photos of them and told them I would show those photos to my people manning the cash-in-transit vehicles. I informed them my men were all locals and three of them were living in the same township where they were staying. I further told them that their lives would be in danger from the moment I showed their photos to the men working with me.
After I left them and walked back to my vehicle, I noticed that the BMW and the Mercedes were badly damaged, I don’t know what happened to the vehicles, but they did not look the same as when we stopped there at three o’clock that morning.
The following day I heard from my informer, the ‘would be robbers’ got onto a bus the previous day and had left for Johannesburg. Going back to where they came from. The next three months working with my men on the cash in transit vehicles went by without any incident.
I then got an offer from another entity in Johannesburg, that I felt I could not refuse. Many offers I received sounded too good to be true, and believe me this was just the beginning of countless similar offers.
The cash in transit guy I had worked for was not happy about me and my team leaving, but there were other better ventures beckoning.
And me? I was chasing that once in a lifetime contract everybody was looking for. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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