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Is it still possible to get away with a heist?

169 points by sasvari 11y ago

paulpauper 11y ago
loading this nearly crashed my browser
- civilian 11y ago
  Get a better computer and shave your neckbeard.
- cwkoss 11y ago
  Horrible web ui
  - grkvlt 11y ago
    Yes. I have a plugin that disables rendering of text in my browser, and all I could see were the images. How do web designers imagine they can get away with this?
- blt 11y ago
  typical experience reading an article with text and pictures in 2016.
silveira 11y ago
Yes. Brazil's central bank heist in 2005. Only a fraction of the R$ 160 million (USD $71.6 million at 2005 exchange rate) were ever recovered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_burglary_at_Fortaleza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_burglary_at_Fort...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- arcanus 11y ago
  Admittedly was a fun Vin diesel movie
- nandemo 11y ago
  Managing to execute that heist is pretty amazing, but it's debatable whether they "got away" with it. One alleged mastermind was kidnapped and murdered, even though his family paid the ransom. Another was arrested. Many other suspects were eventually kidnapped or arrested. Also, I'm very skeptical about the reported figures for the recovered money, especially since part of it was found by the Military Police (which has a bad reputation for corruption in Brazil) instead of the Federal Police (which is relatively reliable).
citricsquid 11y ago
The Hatton Garden raid was meticulous in its planning, dazzling in its complexity – yet still the burglars were caught. I disagree with this premise. The Hatton Garden heist only made it as far as it did because of a number of failings outside of the gangs control, that they didn't expect. The heist was doomed to fail from the start and only made it as far as it did because of a lot of good fortune on the gangs behalf.
- baudehlo 11y ago
  IIRC They got caught by bragging about it. Not having a post-heist plan seems like a big failing.
  - banku_brougham 11y ago
    +1 post-heist plan. Every good heist movie addresses this.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    tl;dr: > The Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera. And according to David Kelly, a former NYPD detective who now works for the private intelligence company K2, it’s CCTV which has changed things most.
  - mannykannot 11y ago
    Basil's plan appears to be working so far.
vosper 11y ago
At least 10% of the $61B of assistance the US sent to Iraq can't be accounted for [1]. Since it can't be accounted for it's hard to say conclusively that it was stolen, but someone (or more likely, many someones) somewhere has it... [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/19/how-the-us-lost-billions-over-nine-years-in-iraq.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/19/how-the-us-lost-billions-over...
- tw04 11y ago
  You don't actually think all those CIA interrogation black sites were offered up by foreign countries on goodwill, do you?
  - avn2109 11y ago
    This is the correct answer. That missing money went to fund black budgets of all sorts, including the extraordinary rendition sites and a variety of other intelligence/security activities.
    - banku_brougham 11y ago
      You are hoping that tax dollars were appropriately directed toward honest black site work. I suspect a significant portion found a more prosaic destiny, theft.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Is this true because there is evidence to suggest it or is it true because it's a really compelling narrative? Because: the USG, particularly under the previous administration, being so incompetent that it could "lose" (or: lose track of) a percentage of an enormous allocation of money is also a pretty compelling narrative.
      - s_q_b 11y ago
        I would estimate (guess) that half the money ended up in contractors' pockets, and the other half never existed outside the accounting of the USG.
teddyh 11y ago
The easiest way to rob a bank is to own it.
orionblastar 11y ago
Technology has changed it so a physical heist is harder to pull off and get away with. The people doing heists and getting away with it crack the security on a website and steal the database and sell the information in it. I think that electronic heists are easier to get away with than physical heists. Plus the company targeted will just use PR to try and cover up the fact that they got cracked or issue a warning to their users that someone accessed their information. Identity Theft is growing but the people who steal personal information sell it to others to raise the money they need so the people they sell it to get caught instead of themselves.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I suspect that "heists" have lost their popularity because its easier to steal money with skimmers or by CC fraud. That said it is always interesting to see people do things like the smash and grab burglaries in Marseilles or the Riviera.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  In Chicago we had a rash of smash-and-grabs where the burglars would plow a stolen SUV into the front of a Coach or or Apple or Louis Vuitton store, grab everything in sight, and be gone within a minute. One enterprising crew actually drove through the front doors of Northbrook Court Mall at 5 AM, drove through the mall to reach the Louis Vuitton store, and then completed the job. http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Crash-Car-Into-Northbrook-Louis-Vuitton-283060761.html http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Crash-Car-Into... They didn't fare as well with Abt Electronics a few miles away: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Leave-With-Nothing-in-Attempted-Glenview-Smash-and-Grab-295751341.html http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Leave-With-Not...
  - hkmurakami 11y ago
    Reminds me of construction equipment being used to pry ATM machines open. (construction crew apparently didn't really care because the machines were insured, iirc) http://www.bigempire.com/sake/atm_robbery.html http://www.bigempire.com/sake/atm_robbery.html
  - tajen 11y ago
    Why would anyone bust an Apple store!? Would you bust a GPS store? I've always assumed Apple had a custom IMEI-based remote deactivation service for all its stores.
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      > Why would anyone bust an Apple store!? To steal laptops, which you then sell on Craigslist. Laptops don't have IMEI.
    - 11y ago
bunkydoo 11y ago
Of course it is, it just happens to look nothing like it did before the advent of the internet.
sneak 11y ago
There have been several high-profile bitcoin heists in the last few years, some of the larger ones yielding many millions of effectively untraceable cash. Also, how much of this is due to parallel construction resulting from the collaboration between the intel agencies and their investigative counterparts?
banku_brougham 11y ago
I managed to abscond with two bottles of Fiji water from a London hotel minibar, without paying. Would have cost me £16!
- rubberstamp 11y ago
  :) LOL so much at this. Don't try any more heists though
tyingq 11y ago
Bitcoin is mentioned in the article, but only in the context of "thousands of tiny thefts from ordinary people". That description doesn't match the bitcoin heists over the past few years. Mt Gox alone was $460M USD. I suspect some of the individual losses weren't uh, tiny.
- PhilWright 11y ago
  I think they meant that BitCoin was used to help with transferring money without getting caught, rather than actual heists of bitcoins.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  It wasn't a mountain named Gox.
  - tyingq 11y ago
    Ah, yes, an errant space. Or a missing period. My humblest apologies. Looks like you figured out what I meant though.
simplicio 11y ago
I wonder how much of the drop is due to simply having less physical cash lying around to steal, as most economic transactions move to electronic payment methods. I know pickpocketing has fallen off as lack of cash means thieves end up with quickly cancelled credit cards and hard to pawn smartphones instead of untraceable cash. Obviously banks still need to keep some cash on hand, but I'd think that most smaller banks (which are presumably the easier ones to rob) would've abandoned keeping the classic "giant vault with stacks of cash". (the article brings this up briefly, but doesn't really quantify it). And as the number of places that do have big piles of cash decreases, the amount of resources that can be put into protecting each one increases, so you'd expect the difficulty of robbing them to increase faster then linerally with decreasing numbers sites.
RachelF 11y ago
A better plan is the white collar crime done by the bankers up to 2008. Being too big to jail and having good lobbyists is the 21st century way to get away with a heist.
- api 11y ago
  It's an old joke at this point. If you're stupid and want to rob a bank, first you get a gun and a mask. If you're smart you get a banking license and a Federal Reserve account...
eatkinson 11y ago
The largest heist of all time was in 1990[1], which I consider pretty recent. The tools they needed to pull it off (impersonating the police mainly) seem like they could still work today. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...
- kqr 11y ago
  1990 means basically "they didn't even have digital cameras". In the context, that is not recent at all.
maxharris 11y ago
No, it was never possible to get away with a heist, and it never will be. The question of the authorities catching you is actually the least interesting part of the question. Suppose you weren't caught by the police following your heist: How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own? How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do? What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled. (Think all of the things that fall under forensic or other evidence!) As a secondary consideration, your relations with other people would also be terrible. Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from? How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught? What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Each of your questions require a sufficiently large sum of money and/or a sufficiently low sum of ethics/scruples to answer.
  - maxharris 11y ago
    Where would that money come from?! Show me how any sum of money could answer the points I raise, without digging deeper and making things worse. We're not talking about a person with an enormous ability to create wealth, and their actions would only further decimate their ability to do so.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      Let's assume I have no moral compass and managed to steal $100MM. >How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own? Doesn't matter. I don't need to make it on my own. I have $100MM. > How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do? Doesn't matter. I will never have to produce something or provide value. See above. > What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled. I don't think there's much of the world that's off-limits with a stack of money $100MM tall. > Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from? Assuming I got away with the heist, I don't have to explain my wealth to anyone. I can tell nosey people that I got it as an inheritance and that's that. > How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught? This is probably the most difficult problem you face with $100MM of ill-gotten gains. You can probably mitigate much of the risk by moving somewhere physically that does not have extradition agreements with wherever you got away with the heist. Of course with that much money, you'd have the means to move anywhere on earth. > What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it. All of these problems are solved by having a sufficiently sociopathic disposition.
vic-traill 11y ago
>Something similar has happened in the USA, where they > fell by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2014 [0] I think it is bad form to state the British decline in 'heists' as absolute numbers and then the US decline as a percentage. It obscures the point. Moreover, the headline article's calculated decline in US heists is 'fell by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2014'; however the article it references [1] states a reduction from 6822 to 3961, which I interpret as a 42% decline. Or my reading comprehension skills are completely foobar'd this evening. I don't know that it is entirely fair of me, but my tendency is to become more skeptical of the article overall when attention to smaller details like these are lacking. [0] Headline Article [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/14/todays-bonnie-and-clydes-getting-tougher-to-find.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/14/todays-bonnie-and-clydes-gett...
Jerry2 11y ago
The most interesting gang I've come across recently are the Pink Panthers. They specialize in jewelry and high-priced/luxury items. Check out this Wikipedia summary: >Named after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films, Pink Panthers is the name given by Interpol to an international jewel thief network, composed mainly of ethnic Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks, which is responsible for some of the most audacious thefts in criminal history.[2] They are responsible for what have been termed some of the most glamorous heists ever, and one criminologist even described their crimes as "artistry".[1] They have targeted several countries and continents, and include Japan's most successful robbery ever amongst their thefts. A film documentary based upon their thefts, Smash & Grab, was released in 2013. >Some law enforcement agencies suspect that the group is responsible for over US$500 million in gold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco. Law enforcement authorities suspect their involvement in the robbery of the jewelry store Harry Winston in Paris, on 9 December 2008. The thieves escaped with more than €80 million worth of jewelry. Fascinating! Rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers So to answer that rhetorical question whether "it is still possible to get away with a heist"... well, yes, if you are are really, really good at it.
- auggierose 11y ago
  Oops, I thought the Pink Panthers were an invention by the TV show "White Collar" :-)
  - embik 11y ago
    That Wikipedia article definitely reads like straight out of "White Collar".
- gedrap 11y ago
  Vice made a short video about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXleyHhi6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXleyHhi6k
a_bonobo 11y ago
Crown Casino in Melbourne lost $32 million in 2013 after a "foreign national" gained access to the security system to check out opponent's cards. http://www.geek.com/news/thieves-hack-casino-cameras-pull-off-simple-32-million-scam-1543101/ http://www.geek.com/news/thieves-hack-casino-cameras-pull-of... I'd imagine that the guy who pulled it off must have been already rich, you can't quickly win that amount of money by betting tiny amounts (in Australia), you have to start off with something big. There have been no news since then so I assume they flew home and got away with it. >Described by one source as a "whale" - a gambler who wins and loses huge amounts - he was hit with a withdrawal of licence notice, prohibiting him from entering the Southbank complex. It is believed he has since returned to his home country. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-tech-scam-nets-32-million/story-fnat79vb-1226597666337 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-t...
sjg007 11y ago
Did you forget 2008?
samstave 11y ago
Tangent: I'm starting to be convinced of a genetic tie to how the Slavic peoples have a particular mental mutation that gives them +11 to intelligence/cunning in a wider offering than is generally distributed to the global population. We have seen, consistently, over history their contributions and excelling behavior in whatever area... There is something to say about this particular mutation that the Slavic DNA has. Please do not equate what I am saying with any Arian bullshit that's not what I mean: I have met a TON of Slavic people that have prodigy level capabilities. Tesla being my ultimate example of a Slavic person who has mental capacity beyond... A best friend of mine has a five year old son who can speak three languages... We need to determine how why this happens? All peoples are awesome and amazing and beautiful, but the density of extreme-high-level-scientific contribution from a particular genetic group needs to be looked at. I just find this to be statistically very weird and interesting! Is this real or perceived?
- napoleond 11y ago
  > A best friend of mine has a five year old son who can speak three languages... Any child who grows up in a trilingual environment will do the same, barring developmental disorders. (I did.)
- rosser 11y ago
  Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?
  - acheron 11y ago
    Everywhere I look I see examples of confirmation bias. Just as I suspected.
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  Also survivorship bias perhaps "I have met a TON of Slavic people that have prodigy level capabilities."
- mtrimpe 11y ago
  There's a couple of things going on there. First of all a HUGE selection bias wrt who would actually have gotten to migrate to the US; which is where I'm assuming you're from. The second thing is that Eastern European cultures have WAY more focus on technical and theoretical/intellectual achievement. Whereas US culture is obsessed with finance and entrepreneurship, Eastern European culture is so with STEM and intellectual achievement. Thirdly; stay away from racial stereotyping. It's almost always damaging, even when positive, and it's virtually always oversimplification due to an incomplete understanding of the culture and conditions of said race.
kev009 11y ago
It's still possible for a 777 to vanish. I think people constantly over estimate our generalized competence. Just because technology exists doesn't mean it is widely deployed or even used properly when done so. And even if it is, the humans behind it are often the weakest link and can be tricked or forced to defeat it. So yes, there is a lot of room for heist in spite of technology. The hard part remains as it always is.. human element, political element for reaching "safety" or escaping easy identification/capture, etc.
pakled_engineer 11y ago
There's still the occasional massive European airport heist http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/robbers-seize-50m-in-diamonds-from-plane-in-brussels/story-e6frg6so-1226581510442 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/robbers-seize-50m... and other airport heists http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28770199 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28770199 Big heists don't happen as much mainly due to benefit denial. Banks and armored cars don't carry the kinds of cash they used to, so robbing them isn't worth the risk, however it still is worth robbing an airport or shipping docks if you have inside help so that crime persists. Here most advanced criminals just get into money laundering or counterfeiting, like that guy who served exactly zero time in prison for being caught with 100s of millions worth of phony USD http://www.gq.com/long-form/the-great-paper-caper http://www.gq.com/long-form/the-great-paper-caper
- DrScump 11y ago
  Speaking of airport heists, the infamous Lufthansa heist was featured in three different feature films, including Goodfellas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist
- LaurentVB 11y ago
  At least for the Brussels one: the heist happened and was quite impressive, but the burglars didn't get away with it. They were caught pretty rapidly, weren't they?
  - pakled_engineer 11y ago
    Took about 2 years to catch them all but that was only due to the criminals having no idea how to fence their stolen loot http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spectacular-30m-jewel-heist-ends-in-farce-as-bungled-attempts-to-get-rid-of-gems-leads-to-arrest-of-8662354.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spectacular-3...
Theodores 11y ago
Is it still possible to find a poorly defended target? Yes. The security at Hatton Garden was poor. Over that Easter weekend the vault was left completely unattended. When the burglars did set off the alarm the security guard did not check the vault, he checked whether the front door had been unlocked and left it at that. There was nobody watching CCTV from inside the vault although the main building had CCTV the vault wasn't exactly protected that way. One of the burglars did turn up at the scene of the crime in his own car, this was a bit stupid!!! That gave the Flying Squad all the information they needed to start investigating the gang. So, in response to the question, it is perfectly possible to steal poorly defended valuables where poorly defended means no CCTV etc. As for whether it is possible to escape through a built up area with the stolen goods, the stolen goods part is irrelevant, is it possible to go missing in a city? Yes!
easytiger 11y ago
Pretty much, though it took organised paramilitary involvment and a tense political peace balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery
sametmax 11y ago
Got a story for you. A recent one. In 2013 , in France, we had the biggest jewerly heist of the country's last ten years ( http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/05 http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/05). It was in Cannes, a city known for it's movie festival. The place is pretty rich, as you can imagine, because of the stars handing around and the fact it's in the south of France, on a sunny beach. On that day, there was a Jewelry gallery called "Extraordinary Diamond" at the Carlton hotel and some guy arrived ALONE, with only a mask and a gun. He took 103 millions euros worth of goods, then went away. Nobody heard of him since. So yeah, it's still possible to get away with a heist.
- neppo 11y ago
  that link doesn't seem to work
  - nandemo 11y ago
    Not sure what link OP meant, but try this one: http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/07/28/01016-20130728ARTFIG00079-des-bijoux-d-une-valeur-de-40-millions-d-euros-voles-a-cannes.php http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/07/28/01016-201...
sdegutis 11y ago
I was particularly impressed by that guy who robbed banks, never got caught, turned himself in, and did an AMA. In his own words, he "studied and perfected the art of bank robbery". http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39b67t/im_a_retired_bank_robber_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39b67t/im_a_retired_ba...
tempodox 11y ago
Dang, so I won't have a career as a robber. But the movie pictures are a nostalgic treat. The article presentation is the best I've seen recently.

169 points by sasvari 11y ago

paulpauper 11y ago

loading this nearly crashed my browser

civilian 11y ago
Get a better computer and shave your neckbeard.
cwkoss 11y ago
Horrible web ui
- grkvlt 11y ago
  Yes. I have a plugin that disables rendering of text in my browser, and all I could see were the images. How do web designers imagine they can get away with this?
blt 11y ago
typical experience reading an article with text and pictures in 2016.

silveira 11y ago

Yes. Brazil's central bank heist in 2005. Only a fraction of the R$ 160 million (USD $71.6 million at 2005 exchange rate) were ever recovered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_burglary_at_Fortaleza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_burglary_at_Fort...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
arcanus 11y ago
Admittedly was a fun Vin diesel movie
nandemo 11y ago
Managing to execute that heist is pretty amazing, but it's debatable whether they "got away" with it. One alleged mastermind was kidnapped and murdered, even though his family paid the ransom. Another was arrested. Many other suspects were eventually kidnapped or arrested. Also, I'm very skeptical about the reported figures for the recovered money, especially since part of it was found by the Military Police (which has a bad reputation for corruption in Brazil) instead of the Federal Police (which is relatively reliable).

citricsquid 11y ago

The Hatton Garden raid was meticulous in its planning, dazzling in its complexity – yet still the burglars were caught. I disagree with this premise. The Hatton Garden heist only made it as far as it did because of a number of failings outside of the gangs control, that they didn't expect. The heist was doomed to fail from the start and only made it as far as it did because of a lot of good fortune on the gangs behalf.

baudehlo 11y ago
IIRC They got caught by bragging about it. Not having a post-heist plan seems like a big failing.
- banku_brougham 11y ago
  +1 post-heist plan. Every good heist movie addresses this.
- mirimir 11y ago
  tl;dr: > The Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera. And according to David Kelly, a former NYPD detective who now works for the private intelligence company K2, it’s CCTV which has changed things most.
- mannykannot 11y ago
  Basil's plan appears to be working so far.

vosper 11y ago

At least 10% of the $61B of assistance the US sent to Iraq can't be accounted for [1]. Since it can't be accounted for it's hard to say conclusively that it was stolen, but someone (or more likely, many someones) somewhere has it... [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/19/how-the-us-lost-billions-over-nine-years-in-iraq.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/19/how-the-us-lost-billions-over...

tw04 11y ago
You don't actually think all those CIA interrogation black sites were offered up by foreign countries on goodwill, do you?
- avn2109 11y ago
  This is the correct answer. That missing money went to fund black budgets of all sorts, including the extraordinary rendition sites and a variety of other intelligence/security activities.
  - banku_brougham 11y ago
    You are hoping that tax dollars were appropriately directed toward honest black site work. I suspect a significant portion found a more prosaic destiny, theft.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Is this true because there is evidence to suggest it or is it true because it's a really compelling narrative? Because: the USG, particularly under the previous administration, being so incompetent that it could "lose" (or: lose track of) a percentage of an enormous allocation of money is also a pretty compelling narrative.
    - s_q_b 11y ago
      I would estimate (guess) that half the money ended up in contractors' pockets, and the other half never existed outside the accounting of the USG.

teddyh 11y ago

The easiest way to rob a bank is to own it.

orionblastar 11y ago

Technology has changed it so a physical heist is harder to pull off and get away with. The people doing heists and getting away with it crack the security on a website and steal the database and sell the information in it. I think that electronic heists are easier to get away with than physical heists. Plus the company targeted will just use PR to try and cover up the fact that they got cracked or issue a warning to their users that someone accessed their information. Identity Theft is growing but the people who steal personal information sell it to others to raise the money they need so the people they sell it to get caught instead of themselves.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I suspect that "heists" have lost their popularity because its easier to steal money with skimmers or by CC fraud. That said it is always interesting to see people do things like the smash and grab burglaries in Marseilles or the Riviera.

joezydeco 11y ago
In Chicago we had a rash of smash-and-grabs where the burglars would plow a stolen SUV into the front of a Coach or or Apple or Louis Vuitton store, grab everything in sight, and be gone within a minute. One enterprising crew actually drove through the front doors of Northbrook Court Mall at 5 AM, drove through the mall to reach the Louis Vuitton store, and then completed the job. http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Crash-Car-Into-Northbrook-Louis-Vuitton-283060761.html http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Crash-Car-Into... They didn't fare as well with Abt Electronics a few miles away: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Leave-With-Nothing-in-Attempted-Glenview-Smash-and-Grab-295751341.html http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Burglars-Leave-With-Not...
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Reminds me of construction equipment being used to pry ATM machines open. (construction crew apparently didn't really care because the machines were insured, iirc) http://www.bigempire.com/sake/atm_robbery.html http://www.bigempire.com/sake/atm_robbery.html
- tajen 11y ago
  Why would anyone bust an Apple store!? Would you bust a GPS store? I've always assumed Apple had a custom IMEI-based remote deactivation service for all its stores.
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    > Why would anyone bust an Apple store!? To steal laptops, which you then sell on Craigslist. Laptops don't have IMEI.
  - 11y ago

bunkydoo 11y ago

Of course it is, it just happens to look nothing like it did before the advent of the internet.

sneak 11y ago

There have been several high-profile bitcoin heists in the last few years, some of the larger ones yielding many millions of effectively untraceable cash. Also, how much of this is due to parallel construction resulting from the collaboration between the intel agencies and their investigative counterparts?

banku_brougham 11y ago

I managed to abscond with two bottles of Fiji water from a London hotel minibar, without paying. Would have cost me £16!

rubberstamp 11y ago
:) LOL so much at this. Don't try any more heists though

tyingq 11y ago

Bitcoin is mentioned in the article, but only in the context of "thousands of tiny thefts from ordinary people". That description doesn't match the bitcoin heists over the past few years. Mt Gox alone was $460M USD. I suspect some of the individual losses weren't uh, tiny.

PhilWright 11y ago
I think they meant that BitCoin was used to help with transferring money without getting caught, rather than actual heists of bitcoins.
moron4hire 11y ago
It wasn't a mountain named Gox.
- tyingq 11y ago
  Ah, yes, an errant space. Or a missing period. My humblest apologies. Looks like you figured out what I meant though.

simplicio 11y ago

I wonder how much of the drop is due to simply having less physical cash lying around to steal, as most economic transactions move to electronic payment methods. I know pickpocketing has fallen off as lack of cash means thieves end up with quickly cancelled credit cards and hard to pawn smartphones instead of untraceable cash. Obviously banks still need to keep some cash on hand, but I'd think that most smaller banks (which are presumably the easier ones to rob) would've abandoned keeping the classic "giant vault with stacks of cash". (the article brings this up briefly, but doesn't really quantify it). And as the number of places that do have big piles of cash decreases, the amount of resources that can be put into protecting each one increases, so you'd expect the difficulty of robbing them to increase faster then linerally with decreasing numbers sites.

RachelF 11y ago

A better plan is the white collar crime done by the bankers up to 2008. Being too big to jail and having good lobbyists is the 21st century way to get away with a heist.

api 11y ago
It's an old joke at this point. If you're stupid and want to rob a bank, first you get a gun and a mask. If you're smart you get a banking license and a Federal Reserve account...

eatkinson 11y ago

The largest heist of all time was in 1990[1], which I consider pretty recent. The tools they needed to pull it off (impersonating the police mainly) seem like they could still work today. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...

kqr 11y ago
1990 means basically "they didn't even have digital cameras". In the context, that is not recent at all.

maxharris 11y ago

No, it was never possible to get away with a heist, and it never will be. The question of the authorities catching you is actually the least interesting part of the question. Suppose you weren't caught by the police following your heist: How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own? How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do? What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled. (Think all of the things that fall under forensic or other evidence!) As a secondary consideration, your relations with other people would also be terrible. Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from? How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught? What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it.

ryandrake 11y ago
Each of your questions require a sufficiently large sum of money and/or a sufficiently low sum of ethics/scruples to answer.
- maxharris 11y ago
  Where would that money come from?! Show me how any sum of money could answer the points I raise, without digging deeper and making things worse. We're not talking about a person with an enormous ability to create wealth, and their actions would only further decimate their ability to do so.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Let's assume I have no moral compass and managed to steal $100MM. >How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own? Doesn't matter. I don't need to make it on my own. I have $100MM. > How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do? Doesn't matter. I will never have to produce something or provide value. See above. > What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled. I don't think there's much of the world that's off-limits with a stack of money $100MM tall. > Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from? Assuming I got away with the heist, I don't have to explain my wealth to anyone. I can tell nosey people that I got it as an inheritance and that's that. > How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught? This is probably the most difficult problem you face with $100MM of ill-gotten gains. You can probably mitigate much of the risk by moving somewhere physically that does not have extradition agreements with wherever you got away with the heist. Of course with that much money, you'd have the means to move anywhere on earth. > What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it. All of these problems are solved by having a sufficiently sociopathic disposition.

vic-traill 11y ago

>Something similar has happened in the USA, where they > fell by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2014 [0] I think it is bad form to state the British decline in 'heists' as absolute numbers and then the US decline as a percentage. It obscures the point. Moreover, the headline article's calculated decline in US heists is 'fell by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2014'; however the article it references [1] states a reduction from 6822 to 3961, which I interpret as a 42% decline. Or my reading comprehension skills are completely foobar'd this evening. I don't know that it is entirely fair of me, but my tendency is to become more skeptical of the article overall when attention to smaller details like these are lacking. [0] Headline Article [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/14/todays-bonnie-and-clydes-getting-tougher-to-find.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/14/todays-bonnie-and-clydes-gett...

Jerry2 11y ago

The most interesting gang I've come across recently are the Pink Panthers. They specialize in jewelry and high-priced/luxury items. Check out this Wikipedia summary: >Named after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films, Pink Panthers is the name given by Interpol to an international jewel thief network, composed mainly of ethnic Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks, which is responsible for some of the most audacious thefts in criminal history.[2] They are responsible for what have been termed some of the most glamorous heists ever, and one criminologist even described their crimes as "artistry".[1] They have targeted several countries and continents, and include Japan's most successful robbery ever amongst their thefts. A film documentary based upon their thefts, Smash & Grab, was released in 2013. >Some law enforcement agencies suspect that the group is responsible for over US$500 million in gold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco. Law enforcement authorities suspect their involvement in the robbery of the jewelry store Harry Winston in Paris, on 9 December 2008. The thieves escaped with more than €80 million worth of jewelry. Fascinating! Rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers So to answer that rhetorical question whether "it is still possible to get away with a heist"... well, yes, if you are are really, really good at it.

auggierose 11y ago
Oops, I thought the Pink Panthers were an invention by the TV show "White Collar" :-)
- embik 11y ago
  That Wikipedia article definitely reads like straight out of "White Collar".
gedrap 11y ago
Vice made a short video about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXleyHhi6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXleyHhi6k

a_bonobo 11y ago

Crown Casino in Melbourne lost $32 million in 2013 after a "foreign national" gained access to the security system to check out opponent's cards. http://www.geek.com/news/thieves-hack-casino-cameras-pull-off-simple-32-million-scam-1543101/ http://www.geek.com/news/thieves-hack-casino-cameras-pull-of... I'd imagine that the guy who pulled it off must have been already rich, you can't quickly win that amount of money by betting tiny amounts (in Australia), you have to start off with something big. There have been no news since then so I assume they flew home and got away with it. >Described by one source as a "whale" - a gambler who wins and loses huge amounts - he was hit with a withdrawal of licence notice, prohibiting him from entering the Southbank complex. It is believed he has since returned to his home country. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-tech-scam-nets-32-million/story-fnat79vb-1226597666337 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-t...

sjg007 11y ago

Did you forget 2008?

samstave 11y ago

Tangent: I'm starting to be convinced of a genetic tie to how the Slavic peoples have a particular mental mutation that gives them +11 to intelligence/cunning in a wider offering than is generally distributed to the global population. We have seen, consistently, over history their contributions and excelling behavior in whatever area... There is something to say about this particular mutation that the Slavic DNA has. Please do not equate what I am saying with any Arian bullshit that's not what I mean: I have met a TON of Slavic people that have prodigy level capabilities. Tesla being my ultimate example of a Slavic person who has mental capacity beyond... A best friend of mine has a five year old son who can speak three languages... We need to determine how why this happens? All peoples are awesome and amazing and beautiful, but the density of extreme-high-level-scientific contribution from a particular genetic group needs to be looked at. I just find this to be statistically very weird and interesting! Is this real or perceived?

napoleond 11y ago
> A best friend of mine has a five year old son who can speak three languages... Any child who grows up in a trilingual environment will do the same, barring developmental disorders. (I did.)
rosser 11y ago
Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?
- acheron 11y ago
  Everywhere I look I see examples of confirmation bias. Just as I suspected.
bbcbasic 11y ago
Also survivorship bias perhaps "I have met a TON of Slavic people that have prodigy level capabilities."
mtrimpe 11y ago
There's a couple of things going on there. First of all a HUGE selection bias wrt who would actually have gotten to migrate to the US; which is where I'm assuming you're from. The second thing is that Eastern European cultures have WAY more focus on technical and theoretical/intellectual achievement. Whereas US culture is obsessed with finance and entrepreneurship, Eastern European culture is so with STEM and intellectual achievement. Thirdly; stay away from racial stereotyping. It's almost always damaging, even when positive, and it's virtually always oversimplification due to an incomplete understanding of the culture and conditions of said race.

kev009 11y ago

It's still possible for a 777 to vanish. I think people constantly over estimate our generalized competence. Just because technology exists doesn't mean it is widely deployed or even used properly when done so. And even if it is, the humans behind it are often the weakest link and can be tricked or forced to defeat it. So yes, there is a lot of room for heist in spite of technology. The hard part remains as it always is.. human element, political element for reaching "safety" or escaping easy identification/capture, etc.

pakled_engineer 11y ago

There's still the occasional massive European airport heist http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/robbers-seize-50m-in-diamonds-from-plane-in-brussels/story-e6frg6so-1226581510442 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/robbers-seize-50m... and other airport heists http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28770199 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28770199 Big heists don't happen as much mainly due to benefit denial. Banks and armored cars don't carry the kinds of cash they used to, so robbing them isn't worth the risk, however it still is worth robbing an airport or shipping docks if you have inside help so that crime persists. Here most advanced criminals just get into money laundering or counterfeiting, like that guy who served exactly zero time in prison for being caught with 100s of millions worth of phony USD http://www.gq.com/long-form/the-great-paper-caper http://www.gq.com/long-form/the-great-paper-caper

DrScump 11y ago
Speaking of airport heists, the infamous Lufthansa heist was featured in three different feature films, including Goodfellas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist
LaurentVB 11y ago
At least for the Brussels one: the heist happened and was quite impressive, but the burglars didn't get away with it. They were caught pretty rapidly, weren't they?
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  Took about 2 years to catch them all but that was only due to the criminals having no idea how to fence their stolen loot http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spectacular-30m-jewel-heist-ends-in-farce-as-bungled-attempts-to-get-rid-of-gems-leads-to-arrest-of-8662354.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spectacular-3...

Theodores 11y ago

Is it still possible to find a poorly defended target? Yes. The security at Hatton Garden was poor. Over that Easter weekend the vault was left completely unattended. When the burglars did set off the alarm the security guard did not check the vault, he checked whether the front door had been unlocked and left it at that. There was nobody watching CCTV from inside the vault although the main building had CCTV the vault wasn't exactly protected that way. One of the burglars did turn up at the scene of the crime in his own car, this was a bit stupid!!! That gave the Flying Squad all the information they needed to start investigating the gang. So, in response to the question, it is perfectly possible to steal poorly defended valuables where poorly defended means no CCTV etc. As for whether it is possible to escape through a built up area with the stolen goods, the stolen goods part is irrelevant, is it possible to go missing in a city? Yes!

easytiger 11y ago

Pretty much, though it took organised paramilitary involvment and a tense political peace balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery

sametmax 11y ago

Got a story for you. A recent one. In 2013 , in France, we had the biggest jewerly heist of the country's last ten years ( http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/05 http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/05). It was in Cannes, a city known for it's movie festival. The place is pretty rich, as you can imagine, because of the stars handing around and the fact it's in the south of France, on a sunny beach. On that day, there was a Jewelry gallery called "Extraordinary Diamond" at the Carlton hotel and some guy arrived ALONE, with only a mask and a gun. He took 103 millions euros worth of goods, then went away. Nobody heard of him since. So yeah, it's still possible to get away with a heist.

neppo 11y ago
that link doesn't seem to work
- nandemo 11y ago
  Not sure what link OP meant, but try this one: http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/07/28/01016-20130728ARTFIG00079-des-bijoux-d-une-valeur-de-40-millions-d-euros-voles-a-cannes.php http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/07/28/01016-201...

sdegutis 11y ago

I was particularly impressed by that guy who robbed banks, never got caught, turned himself in, and did an AMA. In his own words, he "studied and perfected the art of bank robbery". http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39b67t/im_a_retired_bank_robber_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39b67t/im_a_retired_ba...

tempodox 11y ago

Dang, so I won't have a career as a robber. But the movie pictures are a nostalgic treat. The article presentation is the best I've seen recently.