Two men who were part of a trio involved in a night of ram-raids and break-ins across the Lake Macquarie and Central Coast areas have apologised in court.
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Ryan Bradley Conn, Luke Mundine and Mathew Harris will be sentenced next week over the crime spree in the early hours of March 3 2020.
Each faced a brief sentencing hearing in Newcastle District Court on Friday, where Judge Roy Ellis adjourned the matters for a final time.
In the witness box on Friday, Mundine acknowledged that his actions had "affected a lot of people", which he said he regretted.
"There's many effects it could have had on them [the victims]," he said.
When it was his turn to give evidence, Conn told the court he was "sorry" because those affected by the spree "didn't deserve it".
"I feel like an idiot and we shouldn't have done what we did," he said.
"No-one deserved what we did to the victims."
According to a statement of facts tendered to the court in relation to Conn's charges, the three men began their spree about 3.20am, using a stolen Toyota Hilux and two small trucks.
They drove one of the trucks into the United Service Station on the corner of Summerhayes Road and Main Road at Wyee, making part of the roof fascia collapse.
Then, five minutes later at the Starlight Power Service Station on Wyee Road, the three men broke into the premises through a cupboard behind the store counter.
CCTV footage captured Mundine with an angle grinder while Conn pulled a safe from the cigarette cabinet and carried it through the store, tripping the alarm.
They fled with 600 packets of cigarettes and tobacco as well as the safe and a laptop.
They then drove to Bottlemart at Blackalls Park, where straps were attached to the Hilux that Conn was driving so he could pull a metal frame from the building.
The group left the scene and then went to LakeMac Petroleum, on Main Road at Fennell Bay, where Conn reversed the Hilux through the front window of the store.
One of his co-accused connected the vehicle to an ATM inside using a strap so the ute could be used to rip the machine free.
The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, the statement of facts said. The ute knocked a bollard into a petrol tank before the group fled. Police found the Hilux dumped in bushland at Kearsley a few days after the crime spree.
Judge Ellis will hand down his sentences in Newcastle District Court on Tuesday.