Robber who pretended rolled-up cardboard was a gun hid stolen cash up his bottom

A man who robbed two newsagents after making staff believe he had a gun has been jailed for a decade. Nicholas Hinds, 36, held up a Nisa convenience store in Northern Moor, Wythenshawe in south Manchester, using a roll of cardboard in a plastic bag arranged to look like a shotgun on December 2 last year.

The shopkeeper gave Hinds money but activated his emergency alarm, and police quickly traced the robber to his nearby home. Hinds was found sitting on the toilet. Concerned he would dispose of evidence, police ignored his pleas for privacy and joined him in the bathroom. He was arrested and when he was searched at the police station he was found to be wearing two pairs of underpants and had £130 sticking out of his bottom rolled up ‘like a cigar’, Manchester Crown Court heard.



Weeks earlier, on the morning of October 26, Hinds raided the Circle News store, also in Wythenshawe. On that occasion he also stole cash from the till after brandishing his cardboard shotgun. Hinds dumped the cardboard tubes and plastic bags used in both robberies in the area for police to find with his fingerprints on.

He went on to deny robbery, claiming that he used the cardboard tubes to smoke cannabis, saying the money found by police was his wages from a labouring job, and denying that the notes had ever been up his bottom. But his pleas of innocence were rejected by the jury and he was sentenced to 10 years.