EXCLUSIVE | 

Bank robber to locksmith – Infamous tiger robbery gang leader turns hand to new career

Notorious tiger kidnap gang leader is linked to business after release from prison for botched ATM raid

Today at 06:56

Ireland’s most infamous tiger robbery gang leader has turned his hand to a new career after his wife set up a locksmith business.

Tammy Saunders, who is married to bank robber Stefan Saunders, is the registered owner of Lock Enforcement Ltd, which was set up in 2022. She is also listed as company secretary of the business.

Both Stefan and his wife Tammy are targets of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

Last year, the couple lost a court battle with CAB to have their home declared the proceeds of crime.

Saunders, who trained as a plasterer, is known to be a self-taught locksmith who brought his own set of keys to robberies.

He completed a prison sentence in September 2020.

A van with a locksmith company name has been spotted parked at the couple’s Hazelbury Park home in Clonee, Co Meath, which was targeted by CAB.

The locksmith company is registered to an industrial unit in Mulhuddart where another company called U Design is based, which also featured in CAB’s High Court action.

Tammy’s address is given on company records as a property in Finglas which had originally been part of the CAB case against them but has now been sold.

A website for Lock Enforcements describes the firm as providing “a high standard of service with old fashioned values” and adds that it provides “landlord services like property recovery and overdue rent collection.”

This week a sign for U Design hung on the industrial unit in Mulhuddart but there was no indication of a locksmith business being run from the address.

The U Design company was part of the CAB case against the couple in which it was argued the firm was used to launder money.

While Judge Alex Owens found in favour of CAB, he ruled there was not enough evidence to support the claim that the firm was used to launder criminal proceeds.

Stefan Saunders, until his arrest in 2016, was regarded as one of the most prolific bank robbers in the country and became the target of a huge garda operation against his gang.

An affidavit from an investigating officer described the Saunders Organised Crime Gang as being involved in the Brinks Allied cash-in-transit robbery in 2005 in which €2.5 million was stolen.

Stefan Saunders was interviewed by gardai in connection with the heist but he was not prosecuted.

Saunders was investigated and tried over a 2010 tiger kidnapping but a judge ordered his acquittal in that case.

In 2016, he was caught red-handed in the act of robbing an ATM in Co Meath for which he got a 10-year sentence, which he has since served.

The Sunday World previously revealed how just five months before that attempted robbery Saunders was stopped by UK police at Heathrow Airport, who suspected him of watching a cash-in-transit flight to Dublin.

Interpol alerted gardai in a criminal intelligence report that Saunders and two other associates were suspected of carrying out surveillance of the cargo plane. One of the men, convicted robber Damien Noonan, took a flight to Dublin to be able to watch the plane from the departures area, according to the 2016 report.

Saunders and another man were spotted by police parked in a ‘blacked out’ vehicle before being searched and questioned about their identity and reasons for being in the area.

Saunders had previously been investigated by CAB when a relative of his wife Tammy was the target of a probe by the agency.

He is regarded as a dangerous criminal who once attended a military training camp and did a course in counter surveillance run by former Soviet soldiers in Eastern Europe.

Despite being jailed for the attempted raid in Co Meath, he was released on a jail scheme involving community service.

Although Tammy Saunders was never prosecuted and has no convictions, CAB’s case stated that gardai believed she was also part of the robbery gang.