15 ms·

Harvey’s Casino Bomb

225 points by realloc 5y ago

nom 5y ago
Super interesting. How is it that we don't hear about such cat-and-mouse games anymore? Do they not happen or are they not talked about? It seems like it's a thing of the past, but why?
- strulovich 5y ago
  Isn’t ransomware the modern version of it?
  - 1-more 5y ago
    Ransomware is also a better sort of arbitrage against the legal system. If you somehow got caught and prosecuted you didn't do a violent crime, so that has to probably help you somewhat. Of course you did do a federal crime so you have to serve 85% of your time no matter what.
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      Not at all. White collar criminals often serve longer than even violent criminals. Look at Bernie Maddof, Allen Stanford and others
      - whoaisme 5y ago
        In your mind what does the word often mean?
      - 1-more 5y ago
        I think we gotta take a step back and find something with some data; I offered pulled-from-my-ass conjecture and you countered with anecdotes. We gotta actually find a study or something of how much time people actually serve.
        paulpauper 5y ago
        page 835.. relevant info https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3409&context=dlj&httpsredir=1&referer= https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Because it doesn’t usually work out. Most of the time if you’re asking for physical cash to be transferred you’re going to get caught especially today given the miniaturization of electronics for trackers or beacons. It’s just too easy to follow whatever truck is being used to move the money and large amounts of money is quite bulky. You could maybe see some come back because of cryptocurrency and like the other reply said you could say that ransomware attacks is the modern day equivalent of this kind of extortion.
  - dmix 5y ago
    Exactly, mostly cellphones and high-tech surveillance has made the FBI's job much easier. That and today when everything is labelled 'terrorism' they get some friendly help from the intel community. Where in that case even hiding in a bunker in Pakistan next to a military base is only saving you a number of years. In this casino story they already had a 6-person SWAT team flying high enough not to be detected, above the helicopter doing the planned cash drop. While the solo helicopter pilot was a special agent armed with an MP5 and night vision, and a bag with fake $3 million of bills and every intention to catch or shoot the guy picking up. All of this was organized while the timer of the bomb was ticking down. Given the low odds, it's boils down to an over-complicated suicide mission, with high risk of it not working out. Nor any point even if does. With the financial system also under a ton of surveillance and the involvement of his family and even one of their girlfriends. It's no wonder that this sort of thing has become a rarity even for the clever ones like this guy.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Bit of a stretch, but I think it can be attributed to the overall reduction in crime since the early 90s, most likely brought upon by the elimination of lead in gasoline.
  - runj__ 5y ago
    What parent commenter is talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis It is very much a hypothesis, but it certainly could be true.
nerdbaggy 5y ago
Here is a great long form about it https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/
- phab 5y ago
  And they have a fun interactive game you can play to defuse the bomb too! https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/ https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    I'm confused by this game - did the original panel have lights? I was hoping this was a logical model of the original bomb, but switching #5 seems to set it off. The article says that #5 was known to be dummy.
    - bathory 5y ago
      the game is similar to "simon says" and has nothing to do with defusing the dummy
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
>Tourists at neighboring casinos bet on when the bomb would go off, or if it would go off. After the bomb detonated, crowds cheered and reveled from a safe distance. Completely unhinged tourists. Hotel explodes and people cheer cause they probably won money.
- beervirus 5y ago
  Meh, no one was hurt. Vegas is all about spectacle, and this was certainly a spectacle.
  - anonu 5y ago
    The schadenfreude is killing me. Im sure many working class people lost their jobs. A hotel was demolished causing substantial monetary loss for its owners and investors. The FBI had egg on their face.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      It wasn't demolished. The structural integrity was not damaged, $18M was spent on repairs, and it reopened about 10 months later. Given the owner's attitude towards his staff, it seems likely they would all have been re-hired if they were still looking for work.
      - tyingq 5y ago
        Interesting. You wouldn't expect that given these pictures[1] and phrases like "creating a five-story chasm in the casino". [1] https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a-byte-out-of-history-harveys-casino-bomb/harvey_082609 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...
        bombcar 5y ago
        Evacuate the casino, but leave some cars in the parking lot (lol).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swader999 5y ago
Great, I'm probably on a list now for clicking that link.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  They can't arrest all of us. :-)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    That's a great sentiment until you're one of the ones that they do arrest!
- IshKebab 5y ago
  A really boring list.
bhickey 5y ago
https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  I swear if they don’t make this into a feature film real soon now, I’m gonna sue someone.
- rob74 5y ago
  Thanks! When I saw the photo, I was immediately reminded of this article, which was posted here about one year ago (I think?), but I hadn't bookmarked it...
tyingq 5y ago
If you're confused by the description of two boxes and the picture of the single box, the picture is of the smaller box that was on top. The box on the bottom held the dynamite. From googling around a bit it wasn't exactly 1,000lbs of dynamite. It was 18 cases of Hercules Unigel dynamite, each case about 40lbs, so 720lbs. A tech-oriented rundown of the device: https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-looks-like/ https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo... (some factual errors, for example, there was no TNT in the device. Just dynamite. But a good overview of the anti-tamper pieces)
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Interestingly, the ransom note made the same factual error, calling the explosive TNT instead of dynamite. "If exploded this bomb contains enough TNT to severely damage Harrahs across the street. This should give you some idea of the amount of TNT contained within this box. It is full of TNT." (You can read the full thing at https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a-byte-out-of-history-harveys-casino-bomb/harvey_082609 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...) That's part of why they tried decapitating the device with a shaped charge. TNT isn't as easy to set off as dynamite is. According to a different account I read, if it had, as advertised, been TNT (and there weren't a few loose sticks in the top), that plan would have had a decent chance of working.
Ndymium 5y ago
In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's." I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk about it to anyone outside those that are directly involved. But criminals that have executed the "perfect crime" get caught driving over the speed limit, with expired license, spending money too lavishly... I suppose he would have been caught some other way if not for this, but it almost seems like a comical trope to me. Maybe you are the best bomb maker around, but you weren't that good at the simpler things.
- syntheticnature 5y ago
  A big part of it is the same asymmetry you see with security. All the other side needs is one mistake that leaves an opening.
- tyingq 5y ago
  >I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I think the same when you watch TV shows like Dateline. Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%. And I doubt that 40% are all master minds.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    that's because there are very few masterminds on the other side of the fence. The idea of a detective as per cop movies are romanticised, a lot of them are doing bare minimum and are as dumb as the criminals.
    - silexia 5y ago
      I had the misfortune of seeing this first hand. I caught an employee who embezzled $19,000 from my company red handed. The police refused to help even after I reported it until I called the mayor's office and complained.
eplanit 5y ago
This is so close to the plot of the movie Juggernaut[1], and occurred only 4 years after the movie's release -- I can't help but wonder if the bomber was inspired by the plot. That movie had bombs (on a ship, not a casino) with multiple triggering mechanisms: some behind flathead screws, movement switches, photoelectric detectors/triggers. So similar. A really good movie, by the way. 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/
kodon 5y ago
Great read. Found this youtube from the FBI that shows the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clWUhbxBh8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clWUhbxBh8Q
- silexia 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing the YouTube video, it was a great addition to the article!
jstx1 5y ago
I first heard of this on an episode of The Dollop - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/309---big-john-and-harveys-casino https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/309---big-john-and-harv... It's a great story.
danans 5y ago
Is that a toilet bowl float in the picture? Perhaps that was functioning as the mechanism's accelerometer?
- rob74 5y ago
  From https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/: > Fourth, inside the top box Big John rigged a float from a toilet cistern. If the box was flooded with water or foam, the float would rise, completing a circuit. The "accelerometer" was another device: > Fifth, beside the float was a tilt mechanism built from a length of PVC pipe lined with more aluminum foil; inside hung a metal pendulum held under tension from below with a rubber band. [...] Once this was armed, if the bomb was moved in any way, the end of the pendulum would make contact with the foil, completing a circuit.
whereistimbo 5y ago
Heh. FBI is using Cloudflare.
- sand500 5y ago
  Their website is probably built by a third party contractor.
JaggerFoo 5y ago
$3 Million vs cost to repair/rebuild casino with a five story crater - which was the better choice economically? They would've caught the guy eventually, so they may have been able to recover some of the ransom.
- tsycho 5y ago
  Fair point, but the other part of the game theory equation is deterrence - by paying the ransom, you might encourage others to copy the crime, even if many of them get eventually caught.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Word gets out you paid a $3m ransom for a bomb and bombs start appearing everywhere.
usefulcat 5y ago
Given that the bomb exploded, how do they know what was inside the detonator? I guess the culprit had some technical drawings in his possession when he was arrested?
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  They did do extensive X-Ray scanning of the device. Additionally, they sandbagged the device before exploding it, so I would assume they re-constructed the device after the explosion. Given that the detonator was housed in a thick steel shell, there would be minimal heat damage due to the explosion.
SCAQTony 5y ago
They never mentioned how disable the bomb
- seano314 5y ago
  They used a shaped charge to knock off the detonators from the larger payload. Basically used a smaller, targeted explosion to disable a larger explosion. Below is a video on how these type of explosions works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYAr5jEXHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYAr5jEXHo
leemcd56 5y ago
> I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I always think of this very thing. BTK, for example, was caught because of metadata found in a Word document he mailed into the police on a floppy disk.
greengrom 5y ago
People are crazy about the game, I always hear news related to this type of activity, there are times of the best pages such as https://www.theladycrypto.com/best-bitcoin-casinos/ https://www.theladycrypto.com/best-bitcoin-casinos/ where they say that the players are even threatened with bombing their offices in order to recover what was lost in this crazy world is where we live.
- JessicaBosworth 5y ago
  I think it's better to play at Online casinos, it's calmer. It is really very interesting to watch and probably play in real casinos, but now the network is actively developing and any online industry is not only the future, but also the present, including gambling, and all this has entered our lives forever. Also, fewer and fewer people will go to real casinos, and they will play in online casinos https://jennycasino.com/top-rated-online-casinos/ https://jennycasino.com/top-rated-online-casinos/ , as it is much more convenient and comfortable, since you do not need to go anywhere, and the winnings are paid in convenient ways.

225 points by realloc 5y ago

nom 5y ago

Super interesting. How is it that we don't hear about such cat-and-mouse games anymore? Do they not happen or are they not talked about? It seems like it's a thing of the past, but why?

strulovich 5y ago
Isn’t ransomware the modern version of it?
- 1-more 5y ago
  Ransomware is also a better sort of arbitrage against the legal system. If you somehow got caught and prosecuted you didn't do a violent crime, so that has to probably help you somewhat. Of course you did do a federal crime so you have to serve 85% of your time no matter what.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    Not at all. White collar criminals often serve longer than even violent criminals. Look at Bernie Maddof, Allen Stanford and others
    - whoaisme 5y ago
      In your mind what does the word often mean?
    - 1-more 5y ago
      I think we gotta take a step back and find something with some data; I offered pulled-from-my-ass conjecture and you countered with anecdotes. We gotta actually find a study or something of how much time people actually serve.
      - paulpauper 5y ago
        page 835.. relevant info https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3409&context=dlj&httpsredir=1&referer= https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
rtkwe 5y ago
Because it doesn’t usually work out. Most of the time if you’re asking for physical cash to be transferred you’re going to get caught especially today given the miniaturization of electronics for trackers or beacons. It’s just too easy to follow whatever truck is being used to move the money and large amounts of money is quite bulky. You could maybe see some come back because of cryptocurrency and like the other reply said you could say that ransomware attacks is the modern day equivalent of this kind of extortion.
- dmix 5y ago
  Exactly, mostly cellphones and high-tech surveillance has made the FBI's job much easier. That and today when everything is labelled 'terrorism' they get some friendly help from the intel community. Where in that case even hiding in a bunker in Pakistan next to a military base is only saving you a number of years. In this casino story they already had a 6-person SWAT team flying high enough not to be detected, above the helicopter doing the planned cash drop. While the solo helicopter pilot was a special agent armed with an MP5 and night vision, and a bag with fake $3 million of bills and every intention to catch or shoot the guy picking up. All of this was organized while the timer of the bomb was ticking down. Given the low odds, it's boils down to an over-complicated suicide mission, with high risk of it not working out. Nor any point even if does. With the financial system also under a ton of surveillance and the involvement of his family and even one of their girlfriends. It's no wonder that this sort of thing has become a rarity even for the clever ones like this guy.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Bit of a stretch, but I think it can be attributed to the overall reduction in crime since the early 90s, most likely brought upon by the elimination of lead in gasoline.
- runj__ 5y ago
  What parent commenter is talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis It is very much a hypothesis, but it certainly could be true.

nerdbaggy 5y ago

Here is a great long form about it https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/

phab 5y ago
And they have a fun interactive game you can play to defuse the bomb too! https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/ https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/
- stickfigure 5y ago
  I'm confused by this game - did the original panel have lights? I was hoping this was a logical model of the original bomb, but switching #5 seems to set it off. The article says that #5 was known to be dummy.
  - bathory 5y ago
    the game is similar to "simon says" and has nothing to do with defusing the dummy

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

>Tourists at neighboring casinos bet on when the bomb would go off, or if it would go off. After the bomb detonated, crowds cheered and reveled from a safe distance. Completely unhinged tourists. Hotel explodes and people cheer cause they probably won money.

beervirus 5y ago
Meh, no one was hurt. Vegas is all about spectacle, and this was certainly a spectacle.
- anonu 5y ago
  The schadenfreude is killing me. Im sure many working class people lost their jobs. A hotel was demolished causing substantial monetary loss for its owners and investors. The FBI had egg on their face.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    It wasn't demolished. The structural integrity was not damaged, $18M was spent on repairs, and it reopened about 10 months later. Given the owner's attitude towards his staff, it seems likely they would all have been re-hired if they were still looking for work.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      Interesting. You wouldn't expect that given these pictures[1] and phrases like "creating a five-story chasm in the casino". [1] https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a-byte-out-of-history-harveys-casino-bomb/harvey_082609 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...
      - bombcar 5y ago
        Evacuate the casino, but leave some cars in the parking lot (lol).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

swader999 5y ago

Great, I'm probably on a list now for clicking that link.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
They can't arrest all of us. :-)
- dylan604 5y ago
  That's a great sentiment until you're one of the ones that they do arrest!
IshKebab 5y ago
A really boring list.

bhickey 5y ago

https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/

ManuelKiessling 5y ago
I swear if they don’t make this into a feature film real soon now, I’m gonna sue someone.
rob74 5y ago
Thanks! When I saw the photo, I was immediately reminded of this article, which was posted here about one year ago (I think?), but I hadn't bookmarked it...

tyingq 5y ago

If you're confused by the description of two boxes and the picture of the single box, the picture is of the smaller box that was on top. The box on the bottom held the dynamite. From googling around a bit it wasn't exactly 1,000lbs of dynamite. It was 18 cases of Hercules Unigel dynamite, each case about 40lbs, so 720lbs. A tech-oriented rundown of the device: https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-looks-like/ https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo... (some factual errors, for example, there was no TNT in the device. Just dynamite. But a good overview of the anti-tamper pieces)

mumblemumble 5y ago
Interestingly, the ransom note made the same factual error, calling the explosive TNT instead of dynamite. "If exploded this bomb contains enough TNT to severely damage Harrahs across the street. This should give you some idea of the amount of TNT contained within this box. It is full of TNT." (You can read the full thing at https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a-byte-out-of-history-harveys-casino-bomb/harvey_082609 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/august/a...) That's part of why they tried decapitating the device with a shaped charge. TNT isn't as easy to set off as dynamite is. According to a different account I read, if it had, as advertised, been TNT (and there weren't a few loose sticks in the top), that plan would have had a decent chance of working.

Ndymium 5y ago

In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's." I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk about it to anyone outside those that are directly involved. But criminals that have executed the "perfect crime" get caught driving over the speed limit, with expired license, spending money too lavishly... I suppose he would have been caught some other way if not for this, but it almost seems like a comical trope to me. Maybe you are the best bomb maker around, but you weren't that good at the simpler things.

syntheticnature 5y ago
A big part of it is the same asymmetry you see with security. All the other side needs is one mistake that leaves an opening.
tyingq 5y ago
>I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I think the same when you watch TV shows like Dateline. Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%. And I doubt that 40% are all master minds.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  that's because there are very few masterminds on the other side of the fence. The idea of a detective as per cop movies are romanticised, a lot of them are doing bare minimum and are as dumb as the criminals.
  - silexia 5y ago
    I had the misfortune of seeing this first hand. I caught an employee who embezzled $19,000 from my company red handed. The police refused to help even after I reported it until I called the mayor's office and complained.

eplanit 5y ago

This is so close to the plot of the movie Juggernaut[1], and occurred only 4 years after the movie's release -- I can't help but wonder if the bomber was inspired by the plot. That movie had bombs (on a ship, not a casino) with multiple triggering mechanisms: some behind flathead screws, movement switches, photoelectric detectors/triggers. So similar. A really good movie, by the way. 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/

kodon 5y ago

Great read. Found this youtube from the FBI that shows the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clWUhbxBh8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clWUhbxBh8Q

silexia 5y ago
Thank you for sharing the YouTube video, it was a great addition to the article!

jstx1 5y ago

I first heard of this on an episode of The Dollop - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/309---big-john-and-harveys-casino https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/309---big-john-and-harv... It's a great story.

danans 5y ago

Is that a toilet bowl float in the picture? Perhaps that was functioning as the mechanism's accelerometer?

rob74 5y ago
From https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/ https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/: > Fourth, inside the top box Big John rigged a float from a toilet cistern. If the box was flooded with water or foam, the float would rise, completing a circuit. The "accelerometer" was another device: > Fifth, beside the float was a tilt mechanism built from a length of PVC pipe lined with more aluminum foil; inside hung a metal pendulum held under tension from below with a rubber band. [...] Once this was armed, if the bomb was moved in any way, the end of the pendulum would make contact with the foil, completing a circuit.

whereistimbo 5y ago

Heh. FBI is using Cloudflare.

sand500 5y ago
Their website is probably built by a third party contractor.

JaggerFoo 5y ago

$3 Million vs cost to repair/rebuild casino with a five story crater - which was the better choice economically? They would've caught the guy eventually, so they may have been able to recover some of the ransom.

tsycho 5y ago
Fair point, but the other part of the game theory equation is deterrence - by paying the ransom, you might encourage others to copy the crime, even if many of them get eventually caught.
bombcar 5y ago
Word gets out you paid a $3m ransom for a bomb and bombs start appearing everywhere.

usefulcat 5y ago

Given that the bomb exploded, how do they know what was inside the detonator? I guess the culprit had some technical drawings in his possession when he was arrested?

kumarvvr 5y ago
They did do extensive X-Ray scanning of the device. Additionally, they sandbagged the device before exploding it, so I would assume they re-constructed the device after the explosion. Given that the detonator was housed in a thick steel shell, there would be minimal heat damage due to the explosion.

SCAQTony 5y ago

They never mentioned how disable the bomb

seano314 5y ago
They used a shaped charge to knock off the detonators from the larger payload. Basically used a smaller, targeted explosion to disable a larger explosion. Below is a video on how these type of explosions works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYAr5jEXHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYAr5jEXHo

leemcd56 5y ago

> I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. I always think of this very thing. BTK, for example, was caught because of metadata found in a Word document he mailed into the police on a floppy disk.

greengrom 5y ago

People are crazy about the game, I always hear news related to this type of activity, there are times of the best pages such as https://www.theladycrypto.com/best-bitcoin-casinos/ https://www.theladycrypto.com/best-bitcoin-casinos/ where they say that the players are even threatened with bombing their offices in order to recover what was lost in this crazy world is where we live.

JessicaBosworth 5y ago
I think it's better to play at Online casinos, it's calmer. It is really very interesting to watch and probably play in real casinos, but now the network is actively developing and any online industry is not only the future, but also the present, including gambling, and all this has entered our lives forever. Also, fewer and fewer people will go to real casinos, and they will play in online casinos https://jennycasino.com/top-rated-online-casinos/ https://jennycasino.com/top-rated-online-casinos/ , as it is much more convenient and comfortable, since you do not need to go anywhere, and the winnings are paid in convenient ways.