Tuesday April 26, 02:17 PM
ITN
A £20 million stolen chequebook fraud has been smashed by police.
Officers made 35 arrests in a series of dawn raids across the country.
A Royal Mail worker was among those detained as police swooped on a gang suspected of using chequebooks stolen from the postal system to obtain money from victims' bank accounts.
The investigation, code named Operation Bangor, was the largest ever undertaken by Barnet Police.
More than 1,500 chequebooks were reported missing, with householders shocked to discover that cheques ranging from £800 to £1,200 were being cashed from chequebooks they had never received.
The chequebooks had been sent in the post but never arrived.
The gang targeted the Golders Green area of north-west London, where up to £5 million was believed to have been stolen in the scam.
Detectives also found cheques were being sourced elsewhere and carried out further raids in Surrey, Kent, Cambridgeshire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Manchester.
