http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-16556547

All that for £6k

This is quite near where I live - funnily enough, they tried this back in 2007 but the tunnel was discovered about 15 metres from the target and was then filled in with concrete. You'd think that would be that, but no.

Mancunians, being the resourceful bunch of scallies that they are, dug another tunnel that apparently must have taken about 6 months! The cash machine, inside a Blockbusters branch, would usually have about £20k in it except that this was over Christmas so due to more people using it it only had £6k in there. D'oh!

If they'd have had a proper job, they could have earned twice that in that length of time!!

Say it took 6 months and 4 people worked full time to do it, that is 24 man months, and at minimum wage (£6) and 35 hours a week that is (pre tax)

over £10,000 a year pre tax (take home approx £9500)

So in the 2 man years £19k.... for hard manual labour, and they got 6k between them....

Crime clearly doesn't pay (well)

It's a pity it didn't collapse on them.

How's the building's foundations doing?

Well, crime doesn't pay well when you don't have the common sense to keep an eye out for when the machine has been filled.
Even if it had paid well they would have only broken even unless they managed to empty the machine more than once and you'd hope someone would have noticed something like that going on.