After a three week trial a jury a Leeds Crown Court jury yesterday unanimously found Darren Sobande, 32, guilty of conspiring to rob with others between 2005 and 2007.

Sobande, of Wesley Road, was implicated in five robberies on security guards including a £37,000 raid on a guard who was threatened by a balaclava-clad man wielding an axe in December 2005 at Tesco in Oakwood, Leeds.

The cash in the box taken from the guard was stained with a unique dye.

The jury had heard Sobande laundered hundreds of pounds of the stained cash buying phone cards from machines at St James's Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary.

Prosecution witness John Kelly, 38 - now under a police witness protection programme - told Leeds Crown Court via a TV link how he witnessed Sobande put around £60,000 in £20 notes in his washing machine in a bid to wash purple dye off the money.

The prosecution claim Sobande and Anthony Bryant, 37, stopped a stolen Honda Civic at Morrisons in Hunslet before discarding clothes in the store.

Sobande was convicted of being involved in robberies on guards at Tesco in November 2005; Paul White's, Shannon Street, Leeds in September 2006; McDonald's, Gelderd Road, Leeds in November 2006; Superdrug, Tong Street, Bradford in February 2007; and Costco, Leathley Road, Leeds in June 2007.

The jury are still to return a verdict on Bryant, of Hyde Park Road, Burley, who denies conspiracy to rob.