Thieves spent months digging a 50ft long tunnel to steal tens of thousands of pounds from a cash machine.
The ‘midnight mole’ or ‘Mole in the Wall’ gang worked in the dead of night to burrow their way underground and up into a Tesco supermarket.
Now police are looking at links between the daring break-in and a string of similar subterranean raids.
And they are appealing for anyone who saw men “acting suspiciously and covered in soil” to get in touch.
The crooks started their “complex” tunnel on nearby wasteland and toiled for weeks to reach their target.
Once inside the Tesco express store, they plundered £86,000 of cash from the ATM and made their escape.
Greater Manchester Police 
The audacious theft was discovered the next morning, but detectives believe it had been planned months in advance.
The entrance to the tunnel was on wasteland next to a car park at the shop.
Metal cartridges from the machine full of cash were stolen.
A Tesco petrol station is also on the site but the thieves managed to avoid petrol pipes when digging their way to the machine, reported the Manchester Evening News.
Det Supt Mark Toker said: “These people had obviously spent a long time plotting this crime and I doubt they would have been able to keep their plans secret for all that time, without telling others about their elaborate scheme.
“The offenders must have spent long periods of time in the area over the last few months, which people may have noticed.”
Greater Manchester Police 
The cashpoint raid was discovered last Friday when staff arrived for work at the store in Eccles, Greater Manchester.
Det Supt Toker appealed for help in catching the gang.
He said: “You may have seen people acting suspiciously, possible covered in soil.
“I would ask anyone with any information about the robbery to call us as soon as possible.”
It is just the latest in a string of underground tunnels dug by thieves in the Manchester area in recent years.And police suspect the same team – dubbed the ‘Mole in the Wall’ gang – may be responsible.
In August 2007, a gang dug a 40ft tunnel trying to reach a Blockbuster store in Fallowfield.
It was uncovered by workmen when it was just 15ft short of its target, an ATM machine.
But the ‘midnight moles’ were not caught and in January 2012, there was a successful underground raid on the same store.
This time the gang dug a 100ft tunnel under a busy car park and drilled through 15 inches of concrete before stealing thousands of pounds from the ATM.
Police found that the second tunnel had been started just yards from the first one.
It had taken six months to dig and inside officers found abandoned tools, shovels, a wheelbarrow and bags of soil.
Another target: A previous tunnel dug behind the East West Continental foods store in Burnage, Manchester two years ago
The culprits were never caught and at the time Det Sgt Ian Shore said: “In all my years of service, I have never seen anything quite as elaborate as this.”
A month later a gang dug down from behind a railway station platform in an attempt to snatch an ATM from a corner shop in Manchester’s Burnage district.
They were foiled after vibrations from their late night digging triggered a security alarm at a nearby convenience store.
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