Originally published at: Video of dumbfounded security guards after $100M jewel heist | Boing Boing
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I guess it’s a combination of exposure to heist movies and a general disdain for people who buy and sell expensive jewels (FU and your blood diamonds, De Beers!) but jewel heists (at least when nobody is harmed) sure seem like the coolest type of heists.
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Wired had a GREAT true crime heist story some years back. One of my all-time favorite magazine articles:
Pseudo-spoiler (potentially relevant to this story): These heists raise questions as to whether the stolen goods are really worth their insured values, and whether the stuff included in the insurance claim was really all stolen. The potential moral hazard can lead to all kinds of suspicion.
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Just a plain common looking semi filled with mega millions of gems and goodies protected with a walmart padlock. Seems foolproof to me. I hope they threw the loot in the backseat of a top down red convertible and honked their horn when they left.
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This just reminded me of one time I was in Paris and there was a crazy robbery at a jewelry store (vehicle through the front of the store kinda thing).
I saw Timothy Hutton in a store there; he was starring in Leverage at the time…
Hmmmm… Coincidence or… research?
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Sometimes that kind of security can be suprisingly effective, if you can somehow manage to maintain a level of secrecy and, ideally, a decoy:
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So, wait… tens, possibly hundreds of millions (if the owners can be believed) of dollars worth of jewelry was being kept safe by… a padlock? That’s it - a padlock? While unattended for half an hour? Something I wouldn’t even trust to protect my cheap-ass bicycle?
Though I find that Hollywood movies have created unreal expectations about how these things play out that the reality (e.g. they just walked in and took the loot) is usually incredibly disappointing. Even the whole “they tunneled into the vaults!” scenario usually turns out to be “they went into the completely insecure store next door and just knocked down the drywall between the two when no one was around.”
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New York Magazine had a sizable article on this a couple of months ago
The guards and deputies agreed it appeared to be a calculated theft for another reason: The stolen items were not the most convenient to grab, as the bags from the immediate opening of the back door would have been were the thieves in a hurry to take what they could. The missing bags were stowed further back and had been seemingly handpicked even though the entire load was wrapped in identical, bright-orange heavy plastic bags that concealed what was inside.
“Well, what doesn’t make sense to me is you would think the back half of the trailer would be empty rather than leapfrogging the stuff,” said one deputy.
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Usually, but not always! This famous attempted heist had everything that a Hollywood blockbuster needed: It was conducted by a well-coordinated gang in broad daylight using an industrial digger to smash through a fence and wall, smoke bombs, gas masks, body armor, nail guns to penetrate the glass, and a speedboat standing by for the getaway. I almost wish they had succeeded.
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The lede buried in that video is that the thieves knew exactly which bags had the highest value items. They left a couple of dozen less valuable ones behind. You can hear the guards comment on that.
The thieves had very good information, which screams inside job.
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The English versions always seem a lot more Hollywood than the American crimes, ironically*. Although part of me wonders if the robbers hadn’t seen far too many heist films, and if was possible they could have just pulled the boxes off the back of a barely-guarded truck when the stuff was being moved to/from the location…
*(I wonder how much of the American approach is framed by the recognition that the robbers could very well show up with a full-on military grade arsenal at which point the guards will just let them have the goods, making all security much more low-key as a result.)
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This is a basic cash-in-transit van in the UK. The cash or valuables are contained in cases which are loaded and unloaded through the little hatch. If you open a case the wrong way, a dye pack inside will explode and stain the banknotes.
The diamonds at the Millennium Dome would have been transported in a van with at least this level of armouring and physical security, and probably an armed police escort as well.
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Man, this reboot of Heat is kinda boring…
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Hmmm. Speaking of the Lock-picking Lawyer, has anyone seen him lately? On a beach in Belize, maybe?
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from the nymag article
The guards and deputies agreed it appeared to be a calculated theft for another reason: The stolen items were not the most convenient to grab, as the bags from the immediate opening of the back door would have been were the thieves in a hurry to take what they could. The missing bags were stowed further back and had been seemingly handpicked even though the entire load was wrapped in identical, bright-orange heavy plastic bags that concealed what was inside.
“Well, what doesn’t make sense to me is you would think the back half of the trailer would be empty rather than leapfrogging the stuff,” said one deputy.
“As much as they took in a little amount of time — they knew what they was getting,” said Beaty.
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If in fact the bags in the middle of the truck had the most valuable stuff, that’s suspicious as hell.
But if the bags were all identical, I could definitely see a thief leaving the bags at the very back so that if somebody opened the truck to check on the load, they might not immediately notice that stuff was missing. Kind of like when my kids eat the Oreos that are farthest from the opening of the package…
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Cell phones get more security.
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