The gang had targeted cash machines in several of their burglaries and prosecutor Andrew Dallas revealed that they would have stolen a further pounds 70,000 in cash had they managed to escape with the automatic telling machine (ATM) they had pulled out of a another Co-op store in Mapplewell near Barnsley.
Iain Fiddes, director of press information for the Bank of Scotland, said yesterday: "Our automatic telling machine branch in Linwood is replenished by an outside security company."
Fiscal depute Frank Clarke said he began working for the bank in February 2011 and "moved up the ladder," so that by 2015 he was "authorised to check automatic telling machines."
He said: "I've been advised that in the headquarters in Gogarburn, Sir Fred Goodwin employed somebody whose sole job was to ensure bank notes dispensed from automatic telling machines there bore his signature and his signature alone."
There may even be some legal requirement to keep some somewhere, but, just as we have seen some conventional phone boxes turned into "money boxes" where telephones have been stripped out and replaced with Automatic Telling Machines, so we should not expect them all to last forever.