Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/02/thieves-use-giant-mechanical-d.html
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Here to be the pendant. The thieves used excavators not bulldozers. Dozers can only push material whilst excavators can lift and move.
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Also a mid-size excavator can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars so if you’re going to run a heist like this you probably don’t want to use your own equipment unless you’re really confident of the payoff.
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You can be the pendant, I’ll be pedant
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Fair enough,
I wont even edit the post to keep yours current.
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Previously:
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So brazen! It’s like highway robbery!
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That’s a cool way to swing.
You’re swinging like a pendant!! 
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I’d be very surprised if these guys didn’t practice on something first.
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Someone should teach these thieves the more modern, less-destructive type of brute force.
Pendulum.
Pendants hang, pendulums swing.
/end excessive pedantry
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I’ve never seen a pendant that did not swing (while wearers move about, while bent over a bit).
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…like England do.
/obscure music joke
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This could only ever happen in Italy or Florida.
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Yeah, this seems brilliant until you realize they probably used a millions dollar worth of equipment to steal the 2.3 million and lit some of it on fire. Also, the excavators require some experience to learn to operate… So there seems like there will be multiple lines of investigation to find this crew.
Also, nothing is ever locked if you have a big enough power tool.
Looks to be a smashing success.
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Just about any mom & pop construction contractor can rent one of those things, very few questions asked. They could have rented it using forged credentials (and cut outs), or they might have “borrowed” it from a construction site the night before. If the thieves are reasonably competent, there’s lots of ways they could have gotten access to the excavator without leaving much of a trail for the cops to follow.
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I think this story comes close to equalling the greatest construction equipment-assisted heist in all of literature:
Sitting in the cab of the ball and chain demolition crane, his feet resting on the two brakes, his hands moving on the three levers in front of him, Wee Jock Miller pursed his lips and made careful calculations in his head. Two minutes maximum for this part of the job, Willie had said. Wee Jock Miller had promised ninety seconds, and with a little luck he would even trim that time.Willie was waiting at the controls of the cat, the front-end shovel-loader. Wee Jock spared a glance in that direction, his scarred face crinkling in a grin as he let out the hoist a few feet, timing it with the swing.
The crane was a twenty-three ton Ruston Bucyrus with a fifty-five foot derrick. A lovely machine, in Wee Jock’s critical opinion. You could use the ball like a pile-driver, dropping it through a reinforced concrete roof; you could slew the derrick to swing the ball like a pendulum; or you could use the horizontal dragline to draw it back for a forward swing. There was a clutch for the hoist and another for the dragline, a footbrake for each, and a slewing lever. When you juggled those controls just right, you could play with that ton of steel like a tennis ball on a string.
Wee Jock Miller chewed on the end of an unlit cigarette, watching the swing of the ball, and pushed the slewing lever forward, aiming to strike just below where the safe stood. It was there all right. He had seen the side of it after flicking the ball into the room to drag the edge of broken brickwork away. It stood in the exact position marked on the plan Modesty Blaise had produced for him. A good plan, that. A builder’s plan. He did not wonder how she had come by it. He had served her for four years in the old days of The Network. She always got what was needed for a job, or she didn’t send you in. Wee Jock Miller had trusted few men in his life, and only one woman.
The ball struck precisely where he had aimed it. Brickwork shattered and fell. Now the end of the floor joists beneath the safe had no support. He slewed the derrick smoothly, ready for another blow, but it was not needed. The joists sagged. The safe, with bits of brickwork still adhering to its back, toppled outwards and fell to the pavement with a single loud, crunching clang.
Wee Jock muttered with deep satisfaction, ‘Beat that then, Wullie boy.’ He switched off the engine and jumped down from the cab, watching the shovel-loader lunge towards the fallen safe.
(Modesty Blaise: The Impossible Virgin, by Peter O’Donnell)
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So they stole fiat currency out of a Fiat?
(I’m easily amused.)
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They’ll have to investigate who could steal an excavator. And who, in organized crime, is involved in construction. So, let’s see: the Italian mafia. Well, that narrows it down.
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