January 6, 2025 • 64 mins
Everyone loves a good heist film -- but how accurate are they? Join Ben and Matt as they delve into the stories of modern history's biggest heists, actual criminal conspiracies carried out across the world to steal millions of dollars' worth of loot. Who got caught? Who got shot? Perhaps most importantly... who got away free, and where might they be living today?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you
with one of our favorite subjects of discussion. Heist. Did
you guys hear recently guy got arrested in the United
Kingdom for stealing three hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars
worth of cheddar.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh man, we love a wacky heist. There was the
one where someone like stole like change, I.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Think, or it was like pennies. I believe there's just
some week books.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah well wait, well that's right, the Bluey coins.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Maple syrup cartel. We've got an episode about why maple
syrup heist are surprisingly profitable. Back in twenty nineteen, we
started exploring the biggest heist in history, actual criminal conspiracies,
you know, the kind of stuff that's cinematic and I
(00:53):
don't know if you guys remember this one, but it
was a rollicking good time. It was was one of
those episodes where we had to take breath off air
and remind ourselves that sometimes people did get shot, sometimes
people did die.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Oh yeah, you know the one that we haven't covered
that would be great for this is the one that
Fight Night was based on. Right, wasn't that a kind
of a heist.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Or a million dollar Well, it was a stick up
at like a poker game that took place during the
big Muhammad Ali comeback fight. But it was it was
a heist of a type for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
It counts. Shaking something you're not supposed to take is
a heist. Hey, I mean even if it's extra candy
from the bowl at your dermatologist.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh, don't do that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
They'll get you. They always remember. Here we go from
UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know. A production
of iHeart Radios House Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Nol is not with us today.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Noel the bag Man Brown is indeed on adventures. They
call me Ben. We are joined as always without our
super producer, Paul, Mission Control DEC and AKA the Coordinator.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt
off Air, You and Paul and I have been talking
(02:36):
about some of our favorite things.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Heist, right, yeah, heist movies, heist, heist and fiction. I
think are one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Not in reality, right, it's there's this cool team up
moment in a lot of heist films, right. And we
we spoke about which we would ideally or realistically play
in a heist, and Paul loved. I loved when Paul
(03:11):
immediately replied, well, I guess I would be the coordinator
in a heist. And if you go on places like
TV tropes, you will see the various categories, the common
positions and roles in a lot of heist Paul, I
have to be honest. I feel like maybe you chose
(03:34):
the coordinator just because it also the category also says
the coordinator functions as mission control.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah. He found that and he went, that's it. That's
what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You read the whole article, and Matt, you had some
interesting choices. You had two that spoke to you. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I'm mostly thinking about it in context of this show.
So I would go with the partner in crime. So
not the master because I think we all know who
the mastermind would be, especially in the context of our
crew and show Ben. But I would be the partner
in crime. I would be the person who is second
in command, who assists and maybe the only one. This
(04:16):
is a quote, maybe the only one besides the mastermind
who actually knows what's going on.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You know, that's that's flattering to to imply that mastermind position.
I don't know, man, I always I always thought I would,
I would function as a face, at least in my
past experience. I tend to do this work a lot.
(04:42):
But what we found was that we constructed the four
of us a fairly solid again fictional heist crew. And
today we're we're looking at heist. You know, heist when
you think about it, their conspiracies. People are conspiring to
(05:07):
do something nefarious.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, certainly, And a lot of the examples we're going
to get to today involve inside jobs with all things
within that conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Loaded term loaded term there. But who does not love
a good heist film?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You know?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
The formula is pretty solid at this point. A team
of specialists with some dubious gifts and specializations and no
small amount of internal tension band together.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
For I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Sometimes it's the big one, capital B, capital O. Sometimes
it's one last job before we go straight, you know,
or before we retire to some remote destination. There is
one rule that always applies to any heist film, no
matter which country, culture, or time period it comes from,
(06:04):
and that one rule, that one ever constant, ubiquitous rule,
is things go wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, the perfect plan isn't quite so perfect. But you know,
a lot of these movies are based on actual heists,
actual or at least loosely based on actual heights.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Inspired by true events.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Because all the time there are people and groups of
people conspiring to rob banks and armored cars and various
institutions and jewelry stores and everything museums. Yes, they're true
and they're real, but the big question today is how
do they work? How do they function in reality outside
of those fictional worlds?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Right? How do real heist actually work? Here are the facts,
and let's call this why you shouldn't rob a bank.
Some of this research comes from an older and older
piece that Paul and I did for a show called
brain stuff. Oh I remember this, Yeah, which is available
(07:06):
on YouTube. Yeah, I was nuts on this one. If
we want to get a handle on real life heist,
we can look at the numbers, and the numbers may
surprise some of us. In twenty eleven in the United States,
let's focus on the US just for this part. In
twenty eleven in the US, there were over five thousand
(07:28):
bank robberies fourteen documented once. Most of these, oddly enough,
happened during the day while the bank was open at
some point.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, there are when there is a teller or a
bank manager or someone on the scene.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Also multiple witnesses. People who just came to make a
depositor get a money order and we're probably thinking about
grabbing Chipotle after they were not planning for this. Also,
the all the data shows that they there are two
favorite days for bank robbers. Those days are Tuesdays and Fridays.
(08:07):
Despite what feature films might have us believe, the majority
of robbers are not experts. They are not professional bank robbers.
They are rank amateurs. Eighty percent of individual bank robbers
have never been convicted of a bank robbery before. It's
their first time out.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And may probably the numbers will show us the first
time getting caught.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, yes, yes, that is true. The criminals also, contrary
to what heist and fiction would have us believe, are
not teaming up in some super swanky, awesome oceans eleven
Avengers Voltron esque kind of thing. Instead, eighty percent operate alone.
(08:55):
And they also use predictable patterns. They tend to if
they survive the first one, if they escape the first one,
they tend to do the same things, sort of franchise
and repeat it.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, or you know, they're not experienced in how to
manage the money and the spoils once they've attained them, right,
and then that will lead them to be to being caught.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. According to
the Department of Justice, the FBI's clearance rate for bank
robbery is a little under sixty percent of those cleared robberies.
Of the crimes that are solved, about half of those
are solved within thirty days. And people will bank robbers,
(09:43):
I mean will get caught sometimes not for anything directly
related to the bank robbery, as you said, Matt, they
will get caught after the heist using you know, bills
with sequential serial numbers, using something that can be traced.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
There was a Yeah, there's this excellent vice video called
rap Monument, which has it's just a cavalcade of mostly
amazing MC's And there's a line in one of these,
in one of the verses where they say the bank
vaults don't talk, but the numbers read, and that is
(10:26):
that is directly alluding to the way that serial numbers
on bills, especially larger bills, can be traced. So if you,
if you happen to be sitting on a stack of
ill gotten cash, please be very aware that someone somewhere
(10:48):
knows the numbers of those bills and they're kind of
waiting for you to use them.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, absolutely, or especially to use them to make a
large purchase of an expensive thing, especially if you do
it sequentially several times of a large purchase such as
a oh, I don't know if Ferrari or a mansion,
or a Wendy's.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Franchise, A Wendy's franchise. Sure, I mean, that's when you've
really made it, right.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So we're talking a lot about how people get caught
using the money they've stolen, but we haven't talked about
how much money professional or lucky robbers actually make. It
is surprising conspiracy realists. We often hear about millions of
(11:42):
dollars billions of dollars in some cases disappearing, but life
for the average bank robber is pretty hard scrabble and
hard won. There was a study by several British economists
that examined just the nuts and bolts math this. So
what they found is the average return on a bank
(12:04):
heist in the United Kingdom is nineteen thousand, seven hundred
dollars per person per heist. In the US it's way worse.
It's only a little bit over four thousand dollars per mist.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, and a lot of that, you know, if you're
looking at it on average, you're talking about the loan
actors that walk into a bank hand a piece of
paper over that says empty the register, give me everything
you have, I have a gun, and then they walk
out and that's it. They don't go for the vault,
they don't go for any of the big ticket items,
they don't go to the security deposit boxes. They just
(12:44):
go in, get that money and then leave. So that's
definitely swaying numbers there, right, And you're also talking about
the UK where weapons are like firearms are much more
difficult to come by, so it's its whole other thing.
Like if you walk into a bank just wielding a
knife or something, change the calculus a little bit about
what can go down and what you can get.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right. Also, the UK is one of the most closely
surveilled areas of the world. We did mention this in
a previous episode, just the density of cameras.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing that these people also found,
these economists that are looking at the numbers, they found
that if you increase the number of people in your crew,
you actually can move those numbers a little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That's right. Yeah, every additional member of a heist gang
raises the value of the robbery or the takeaway by
in the UK it's a little over nine thirty three pounds.
That translates to a bit over fifteen grand, So that
feels like a valuable contribution. But we have to keep
(13:52):
in mind the per person hall diminishes with every new
member added to the gang, and of course the likelihood
of something going wrong, someone squealing, someone making a rookie
mistake that rises exponentially.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Oh yeah, but it definitely gets into that thing where
if you have if you have a crew like we
were talking about in the beginning, of people who are
managing things, who have a specific task, who are going
to go in and get the money and take the
money and do all that, you can see it working
in there.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Absolutely, So, how does this work out if any of
our fellow listeners were professional bank robbers, what would they
have to do to make it a genuine living right
to not have to constantly be hungry, homeless, et cetera,
just to meet their basic needs.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Oh yeah, So let's look at just in the United States,
the poverty line and where these how these numbers match up.
So in twenty thirteen, the poverty threshold at least would
be an annual income of eleven four and ninety dollars
per per So for one single person, eleven and a
(15:03):
half thousand dollars a year, that'd be your income, right,
And this means that on average, if you were just
a professional bank robber or just all by your loansome,
you'd have to rob three banks a year, and you'd
have to keep all the loot and not do anything
with it necessarily, or at least, I don't know, you'd
have to invest smartly or launder it correctly and smartly
(15:28):
just to stay out of the poorhouse, I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And the most recent number we can find
for the poverty threshold is from twenty sixteen. Yeah, two
and eighty six dollars, So that still hasn't moved very much.
But making a living as a bank robber has become
increasingly difficult.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, but hey, think about it this way. That's only
three maybe four jobs a year, and that's it. That's
all you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
I imagine there's a lot of pre production that goes
into that. Maybe, or who knows, maybe there's yeah, maybe
there there are just some people who impulsively rob banks
and keep getting away. There are so many stories of daring,
ambitious heist not just related to banks. Banks we tend
(16:22):
to have more information about because they're one of the
most common forms of this sort of crime. But here's
the thing, not all heists are created equal. Some high
screws didn't just conspire to, you know, rob a vault
at a bank. They conspire to move massive, gargantuan amounts
(16:44):
of loot, some things that are objectively priceless works of
art that cannot have a value assigned, and so on.
And the most bizarre thing about it is some of
these crews got away. So let's let's explore this. Let's
look at some of the world's biggest heist Let's look
(17:07):
at some of the folks who were caught, and let's
look at some of the folks who are still out
there today.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And we'll do that right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Here's where it gets crazy, Matt, what do you say
do you want to do? You want to start off
with some heist where the perpetrators were ultimately apprehended.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Oh yeah, absolutely, And let's okay, let's first jump to
September twelfth, nineteen ninety seven. This is a story about
a bank robbery that feels like several major emotion pictures
that I have seen or at least heard about. The
(17:54):
target or let's just say, the title of it is
the Dunbar Armored Robbery. That's like what we're going to
call it here. And the target was Dunbar Armored Incorporated.
And they are an armored truck company. So what they
do is they move cash and valuables from one place
to another in a vehicle that is generally you know,
has a crew of people who are there to protect
(18:14):
the money, and they're all armed. It seems like an
extremely dangerous thing to attempt to rob, at least on
the surface, right. But in Los Angeles, California, a group
of people, including a man named Alan Pace the Third,
got together and conspired to rob the Dunbar Armored Inc. Company,
(18:38):
So instead of robbing a single one of these cars,
they went to the source of where the cars go
back to the depot basically right. And this guy, Alan
Pace the third was working at Dunbar and he knew
the ins and outs of the place. It was in
fact an inside job, and he had a crew of
(19:00):
people that came with him. They tied up some security guards,
they made off with a whole bunch of money, and
they also destroyed all of the security tapes. They didn't
they didn't destroy the cameras or anything. They took the
actual tapes, so there was no real evidence. And it's
kind of a weird thing because for a long time
(19:21):
they couldn't figure out exactly what happened. But they realized
it must have been an inside job because somebody knew
entirely too much about the security where the cameras were,
how those cameras were recording, and where that stuff would be,
and how much money would be where at what time. Anyway,
it's a really fascinating thing to look at.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's also, I believe, still the largest cash robbery to
have occurred in the US. Right.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I think it's been estimated to be that because it
was around eighteen. It was around nineteen million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
In nineteen ninety seven, which would make it closer to
thirty million dollars today. Yeah, this story is amazing, but
it doesn't end happily for mister Pace.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Oh no, no, no, he got caught as well as
several other people. Alan Pace the third was considered the mastermind,
you know, if we're going to use those terms. He
was the guy who came up with the idea because
he was the inside man. He knew the ins and outs.
But he also had some people working with him, like
Eric Damon Boyd, one of the accomplices. There were several
(20:38):
people working with him that ended up going to jail
and getting arrested and you know, going to trial and
ended up in the slammer.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah. Eugene Lamar Hill, I think was the was the
weak link there, or at least at first.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
The slip up is Lamar Hill, the guy that was
was trying to he got caught with the sequential bills
with the original rapper and everything.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That tells you how much this stack of money is worth.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
That's the thing. Because this gang attempted to be pretty
smart and pretty strategic about how they would seem to
legitimately have created such wealth. They were buying real estate,
and then I believe they were also starting business fronts,
(21:29):
you know, right, like like a PO Box Corporation or
LLC stuff like that. But Eugene was talking to a
real estate broker and he I guess he felt too
comfortable or he got a little lax and he literally
(21:52):
handed this guy that stack of bills, like you said,
that could have just come from an armor t rock
and his associate, He's often referred to as Hill's friend,
but I would say maybe acquaintance is a better term,
because his real estate buddy notices this strap of cash
(22:18):
and he goes immediately to the police. And once Eugene
Lamar Hill is arrested, he confesses and he names all
the members of the crew.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Well, yeah, and they also connected Hill up to this
U haul that the crew had rented, because they were
bringing that in to load all of the cash into
this U haul and it was Hill who actually had
rented it. And then I think there was a broken
taillight or something that was found on the scene of
the robbery. They connected that up to that specific U
haul they found Hill. They like they connected all those
(22:51):
pieces together and that's how they get most of the
rest of the crew with that confession.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So justice is served mostly. Unfortunately, the law enforcement agents
were not able to recover all of the money, some
of which remains missing today.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, they only recovered about five million of that. You
know at the time was nineteen million, so you know
that a lot of that just went into stuff those
those front companies in the real estate and all that
other stuff. But they probably were able to get back
some of that real estate because you could actually tie
it to the being used by that money. Really really
(23:32):
cool case. I mean, it's messed up. Those guys saw
justice or experience justice, are experiencing it. But again, I
think a pretty good example of one of these highly
coordinated events.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, and that's this is fascinating to me because these
people went to prison, right, Yeah, but how how does
a person feel if they are in prison for a
crime they definitely committed, and they know that they will
(24:09):
not only get out at some point, but they also
know the money that they stole is somewhere and they
may be able to access it. It's got to be
pretty intense.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
You know, we're going to get into a similar thing
to that a little bit later in the episode, where
you just you're biding your time in jail because you
know where the rest of it is.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Let's go across the pond for the next one, the
Securitas Depot heist.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yes, okay, so this one jumps us forward to February
twenty first, two thousand and six. This time we're in Kent,
southeast of London. If you're looking at a map and
secure TOAs just like the old Dunbar group, they guess what,
(25:01):
transferring tons of money and valuables in armored cars, And
this time we're at a Securitas depot instead of a
dumbbar depot. Same very very similar kind of thing, and
this one went down similarly with a couple of twists.
The first big twist is that these guys realized that
(25:23):
in order to be successful they were going to need
some leverage. They went to the home of Colin Dixon,
who was the manager of this depot, and he and
his family were kidnapped at gunpoint, and a crew or
at least one or two people stayed behind with that
family while Colin basically brought all of these robbers of
(25:44):
this crew of people to the depot let them in.
Those guys then essentially kidnapped all of the workers who
were at the depot and they tied them all up
and they took just giant basically cages and pallets of
cash and valuables. They loaded him onto a giant truck
(26:05):
and took off and they ended up making away with
fifty three million British pounds.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Which makes this the largest cash robbery in UK history. Again,
this is ruthless work, but they do end up getting caught,
right they I do want to stay just for a
second on their process here. Yeah, because the way that
(26:33):
they got Colin Dixon was pretty devious.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
They impersonated police officers.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah. They pulled him over and he was basically like, okay,
well this is fine, I'm gonna work all this stuff out.
And then they said, well, sir, we need you get
out of your car. They took him to the back
of the car, basically locked him in the back of
the car, and then asked him a bunch of questions
that police officers generally wouldn't ask, and they put a
gun in his face.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So after the robbery, Dixon and his family survive Thankfully,
after the robbery secured, US offers a reward of two
million pounds, no real questions asked, Just give us information
that will lead to the arrest of these assailants. And
(27:23):
it works out because on February twenty third, two days later,
police have already arrested two people and charged them with
conspiracy to commit robbery.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
But they're just people who were on the crew, right right,
because some of the main people that were involved with this,
or at least that were thought to be the masterminds,
had actually fled to Morocco smartly I think on their
part there, but they fled and they were I believe.
They're justcribed in several places as cage fighters or former
(28:03):
cage fighters. There's a guy named Paul Allen and another
one named Lee Murray or Murray m r Ay. So
after these guys are arrested, you're talking about ben two guys,
and then it ends up being five guys that get arrested.
It's basically the whole crew except for the masterminds and
these guys in Morocco. Then finally Paul Allen gets extradited
(28:27):
from Morocco. He gets charged, but he keeps telling everybody well, no,
I wasn't the mastermind. I was just doing what I
was told. I was working for this guy Lee Murra
or Murray, and Lee is already incarcerated in Morocco. So
it's like, I guess he was kind of using Lee
as the fall guy perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, Because while they were in Morocco they did a
number of things, some of which were very clever, some
of which are understandable, and some of which are you know,
sort of not thought through. They went on a spending spree,
as reported in The Guardian by Matthew Weaver and his associates.
(29:10):
They went on a spending spree. They were making it
rain in Morocco. They bought property. They bought jewelry, which
is you know, very very popular. We'll get to the
loose diamonds, don't worry, holds its value, one of the
sketchiest things people can have. They also bought illegal things
(29:32):
like drugs, and this is something smart that they did.
They invested thousands of dollars or pounds rather in plastic
surgery for their associates. I've always been curious about whether
that kind of tactic works. If someone is attempting to
(29:55):
disappear you know, we hear about despots having plastics. Yeah,
we hear about you know, people in drug cartels getting
plastic surgery. The thing, the thing about it is not
to quote Donald Rumswell directly, but it's it's an unknown
unknown right. If someone successfully has has used plastic surgery
(30:18):
to evade the long arm of the law, we'll never
know about it. Yeah, so maybe we only know about
the people who got caught with a bad nosed job
or something.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah, I just got to look for all those tremendously
rich people with lots and lots of work done, start
asking questions.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I'm sure we may be conflating populations there.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Don't do that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
So what we see here is that they're they're caught because,
despite their best intentions, they went to a country that
has an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. And in
our earlier conversations about pseudoside, we've learned right that the
(31:02):
only way people can fake their death and profit from it,
or the only way people can commit a huge crime
like this and survive without going to jail, is essentially
to relocate to someplace that does not extradite.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, that's really the only way. And in the end,
they were covered about twenty four million I think, I
think twenty four million pounds of the fifty something fifty.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Four Yeah, I wonder what happened to that, right, because
what we see here, maybe it's a little bit misleading, folks,
because in both of the heightst we just talked about
the people got caught, but the money didn't get caught.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah, not necessarily, it got moved around in the market.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Right. There we go, There we go. We have another
example from the United Kingdom that has even higher stakes.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Oh this one, we're going back before either of the
previous two, back to nineteen eighty July.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Twelfth, great year for bank robberies.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is in Knightsbridge, London. This
is or it's a part of London's in the UK.
It's in the city of Westminster, I believe. And the
target here is a thing, a place called Knightsbridge Safe
Deposit Center, so less of a bank, more of a
giant repository of safety deposit boxes, a giant a collection
(32:27):
of safety deposit boxes. And there was a small crew
of people that went into there, including this gentleman named
Valerio Viiccei Vishay via Viccha. I don't know how to
say it, but Valerio, let's call him. They walked in
(32:48):
pretending like they were just going to get a safety
deposit box, and as soon as they got into the
secure area where the deposit boxes were, they pulled out
his crew pulled out pistol, held everybody up. Then they
put a closed temporarily closed sign on the front of
the safety deposit center. Then they invited a couple other
(33:08):
people in who were part of their.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Crew, dressed as security guards.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yes, and they began basically just busting open all of
these safety deposit boxes and they got away with a ton.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Of money, A huge amount of money, right, wasn't it
around sixty million pounds? It was over sixty million pounds
I believe.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, But again that's not cash, right, it's it's valuables,
mostly valuables, some cash, probably bonds and all these other things.
But the safety deposit boxes were owned by millionaires in London,
owned by famous people like sports. They're just famous peoples
of all.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Ilk aristocrats, yes, money royalty. Right. They forced open one
hundred and fourteen boxes, I think, yes, what around two hours,
so they were in the room for a while.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, but one hundred and fourteen box is full of
whatever it was, and uh, they're yeah, thinking about sixty
million British pounds. But then, okay, so these guys make
off with all this, they are they are successful with
these past three. The robbery itself goes off pretty well, right,
right in all three of these, right, they get in,
(34:25):
they get the spoils, and then they leave. The problems
are given enough time, you have enough people involved, somebody
slips up, and this is what occurred. There were several
several accomplices of Valerio who ended up getting caught. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, and let's let's spend a little bit of time
on Valerio because he is anomalous in the world of robberies.
Remember we said earlier at the top that eighty percent
are loaners, eighty percent are first time amate two with
this not your buddy Valario. He came to England from Italy,
(35:07):
where he was already wanted on charges for something like
fifty armed robberies. Yeah so maybe not necessarily banks, but
this guy was no stranger to the hustle.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
No, he wasn't. He also wasn't the kind of guy
that liked to lay low after he's done a job
or something and not spend a lot of money, not
have a lot of visibility. He liked to be out
there living as is described by several websites. We looked
at lavishly. That's how he did his.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Thing, living Levita Loca. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, Well, and then that leads him down a pathway
because he ends up, Oh where did he go? He
skipped the.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Country to South America.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
He went to South America right after this large robbery,
and he was doing really well, you know, spending a
ton of money. He's got a ton of money now.
But he ends up wanting to get a ferrari I
think a tester rosa. I believe that's what it was.
And he goes back to the United Kingdom just temporarily
(36:09):
flies back over there just to oversee the shipping of
this ferrari back to where he's living in South America,
and the authorities, of course somehow notice that he's there.
You can only assume he's using a passport that's not his.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, here's the thing, he was not aware that he
was already directly tied to this crime because of a
single fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. Oh wow, that belonged to him,
though was found on the scene. Also, I know we
just mentioned blood, but we should say no one was killed, right, Oh, yes,
(36:47):
of course, right. So he goes This guy is such
a pill. He he goes back to England, as you said,
to get his testosa ship to South America. Not the
smartest move. And people who saw him thought he was
(37:08):
not an impressive person. They thought he was a show off.
They thought he was flexing too hard, like he wanted
people to see his rolex and he wanted to talk
about how his love of exotic cars. He was doing
his best to not blend in. So the cops set
(37:29):
up a roadblock. That's how they get him. They literally
know where he's coming from and where he's going, set
up a roadblock. They take him out of his car.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Yeah, because they smash a windshield of his Ferrari, right.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Which I think was sort of them proving a point.
You know, that's their version of showing off their rolex.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
And he is sentenced to twenty two years in prison,
but I believe being extradited to Italy.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, he goes back to Italy after a little bit
of jail time, ends up spending more jail time in Italy,
but he ends him this thing that's called a day prison,
or he's got like day privileges while he's at prison,
so he can actually leave for a certain amount of time.
He's got a company that he's running, and he ends
up getting into some dastardly stuff. Again, I think he's
(38:28):
he's spotted by like a patrol vehicle or something, just
kind of your standard police patrol vehicle in Italy, and
he's doing something weird. He ends up getting in a
shootout with an officer and dying.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Right, So let's connect some dots here, because he's in
a shootout, which means he has a firearm in Italy
while he is technically in prison. Right. I think he's released,
as you said, during the day, and he has to
be back in his cell at ten thirty or something
(39:02):
like that, and he's acting suspiciously quote unquote acting suspiciously?
What does that mean? You know what I mean? In
this country, there are a lot of innocent people who
have been fatally shot for quote unquote acting suspiciously. In
this guy's case, I gotta say I believe law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Well, yeah, it appears that he may have been waiting
for literally an armored truck or I mean again, there's
some rumors that I was reading about on there, but
who knows. In the end of this huge heist, the
sixty million pounds worth of stuff, authorities got ten million
or they were covered roughly ten million pounds worth of
stuff and valuables, but the rest of it was either
(39:47):
spent or can't be found. So there you go, kind
of the same ending there.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, he also he wasn't a good person. Any
loss of human life is a tragedy. I don't want
to make light of the fact that this guy died.
He was also by acting suspiciously. In his case, he
was sitting in a stolen car, that's what it was,
(40:17):
while he was waiting for the van. I would say
that is suspicious. Yeah, I was like, just because a
person is in a stolen car does not necessarily mean
they stole it. But it doesn't look good.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, you should at least check it out. And if
they have a weapon and they, you know, fire shots
at you as a police officer, I think that's how
things are going to go.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
There was a quote from his time in court when
it was originally sentenced for the Knightsbridge robbery. I just
want to see what you think about this. I want
to hear your reaction to this. So one detective said
this guy wanted to be known as the mastermind of
the world's biggest robbery, and then continuing to say he
(41:01):
had an ego the size of the Old Bailey. And
then at the trial. At the trial, this dude says
to the judge, maybe I'm a romantic lunatic, but money
was the last thing on my mind, you know, which
is a very strange way to plead your case. It's like, look,
I just it's.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Just the excitement.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, it's not about the money. It's loading a message.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, you'll send a message. Well, yeah, I mean, this
is the kind of guy who watched He reportedly watched
Scarface almost sixty times and that was just his favorite
movie and he wanted to be Scarface. He had a
ring or something that Yeah, he had a key ring
that was golden and it was a shotgun. Yeah. Anyway,
(41:47):
I'm done talking about this Valerio guy. Let's take a
quick break from our sponsor and we'll come back and
talk about some of the heists that went really well
for the people who perpetrated them, or at least it
didn't go well for the authorities chasing down the perpetrators.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And we're back. Let's talk about some of the heists
where the perpetrators got away asterisk asterisk caveat at all. So,
just to be clear about this kind of situation we're
(42:31):
talking about, there are quite a few, a surprisingly vast
number of enormous cases. I don't necessarily want to call
them heist cases where we know money disappeared and we
know where it was last scene, but we don't know
(42:52):
what happened to it. The breadcrumb trail has disappeared, right,
So we can laundry lists some of those, but some
of them deserved their own episodes. We decided to start
with a couple of cases where we do know the
(43:13):
nuts and bolts of the crew and we know a
little bit about how it worked.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, we at least know the best assumptions, according to authorities,
about perhaps the groups that were involved here. So let's
jump to January twentieth, nineteen seventy six, and let's go
to Lebanon, specifically Beirut, and there's let's see the target
here is the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut,
(43:42):
and what occurred here on this day is it's believed
that some crew of people officially unknown crew of about
eight soldiers as well as a separate team of individuals
who were safe crackers, they gained access to the vault
of this bank, the British Bank of the Middle East
in Beirut, and they were able to empty the entire
(44:05):
contents of that vault and it's estimated to be somewhere
between twenty million US and fifty million US worth of gold, bars,
Lebanese and other foreign currencies, as well as stocks, jewels,
and other valuables. And that money was worth about sixty million,
somewhere between sixty million to one hundred and fifty million
(44:25):
in twenty ten. So a really big takeaway.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, And this also touches on something that I think
we were all somewhat anticipating when we talked about successful heist,
like one hundred percent successful heist, there was a state
actor involved. These weren't just some random amateurs. They were
a group associated with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization
(44:54):
under Yasara Arafat. Because at the time Lebanon is in
the grips of a civil war exactly. They're able to
break into this otherwise fairly fortified bank, right.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, while the chaos is going on, while there's so
much confusion and violence occurring, they were just able to
use that opportunity essentially as cover to go in and
take this place.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yet and no one, not only has no one involved
in this hest been caught, no one has been charged
with the crime. You know what I mean. This is
not this is not a situation where someone decides to
skidaddle off to a country that won't extradite. Instead, they disappear,
(45:40):
they pull akizer.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
So say, yeah, just to give you an idea of
what it looks like, you're if you think about it
this way, there are people with large, high powered rifles
that have grenade launchers attached to them, that are wearing
military fatigues that are unmarked, so it's not that you're
officially associated with any military. They roll up with their
(46:05):
grenade launchers, and it's pretty crazy the way they did this,
I mean, and that must have been a very up
like opposing force just to see it coming. You know,
it's just very very strange because again it became a
war zone there at that bank. It wasn't like they
(46:25):
just walked in and took the money. There was firing,
you know, there was weapons being fired and assuming grenades
being launched. It's a pretty intense thing.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Absolutely, and this loot was not just cash, right, We're
talking gold, jewelry stocks. And oddly enough these guys ended
up famous and anonymous because the Guinness Book of World
Records was inspired to cite this as the quote biggest
(46:55):
bank robbery in the world. The crazy thing about this
is that it is quite possible someone listening to this
episode today along with you, may have been involved. They
would be elderly now right, or maybe they would be
(47:15):
a family member, like a sibling or a child of
one of the what which we call them, well, we
should call them criminals, but I like histers. Yeah, and
let's remember that part. To me, the most crucial part
about this is that they were very likely involved with
(47:38):
a state actor.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, they used They used C four, the plastic explosive
to gain access to the vault, which you know, it
generally doesn't occur if you are a group of citizens
getting your hands on C four. While it may not
be as difficult as the world's authorities would like it
(47:59):
to be, but it is certainly not easy.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
No, no, it's not something ideally, it's not something we
want people to be able to order from Amazon or eBay.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah, and you know grenade launcher is attached to your sixteens.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, that's military hardware. So let's fast forward to two
thousand and four, a few days before Christmas. Here we
are in jolly old Ireland.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yes, to Belfast. So let's talk about the target here.
It's a place called Belfast, Northern Bank. And before we
even get into who it is or what occurred or
anything like that, let's just hit that number. Around twenty
six and a half million British pounds, as well as
other additional foreign currencies were taken.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah. According to The Guardian, in total, as of two
thousand and eight, ten people have been arrested have been
charged for being somehow involved with the conspiracy here. But
they're all charged with being somehow involved.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Well, but also they've never officially been like.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Charged with actually yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
It's like it's hard to even wrap your head around
the thing. They they were connected, right, but they weren't
the people they're doing the thing.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So the other currencies involved were us dollars
and euros, right.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Can we just talk about the significance of this robbery.
So we're in Belfast. Uh, there's a peace process going
on because of the tensions you know in Northern Ireland
as well as other parts of Ireland. The IRA and
a couple other groups that were involved in tensions over
the years.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Again similar to state actors.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yeah, so they're very you're in a precarious position, they're
already and then to have a violent act like this
occur where millions and millions of dollars are stolen of
all the people's money in the area. I mean that's
people's money. That's not just the bank sitting there. Although
you know insurance through various state programs and everything. Still
(50:21):
it's a symbolic act.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Sure, that's that's the idea, and it almost crippled the
ongoing peace process because there was a lot of finger pointing.
The police of Northern Ireland, as well as the British
and Irish governments said that the IRA had a hand
in this. However, the IRA said, no, why would we
(50:44):
do that. What on earth are you talking about? That's
the last thing we want.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
Yeah, exactly. Now let's talk about a little bit of
what happened, so similarly to what we saw with one
of the previous the Securitas heist, some masked what they're
being referred to in the Guardian as masked gang, masked
and armed gang members. These guys show up at two homes,
(51:12):
two separate homes of two separate bank managers there who
work at the Northern Bank, right, and they hold people hostage,
specifically their families, at gunpoint. Then they get moved around
a little bit. They you know, they take some of
the family members to like a forest. Apparently they're really
spreading these people out. They're extremely organized on what they're
(51:33):
gonna do. Then they get one of these guys, one
of these bank managers, to go to work like it's
just a regular old day, pretend nothing's wrong, but he
because he knows that his family's at risk.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
But then when the banks close that evening, the bank,
these gang members actually like were let in by this manager,
let into the vaults and then they just loaded up
a van with all of the contents.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
And got away. That's the craziest thing. Again, the people
who were arrested, the people who were charged, were not
charged with actually carrying this out. I believe currently as
of twenty nineteen, one person has been convicted. They were
convicted of money laundering.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yeah, so after the fact, just using it.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Right, And the authorities consider this case ongoing, so they
haven't they haven't closed it. It remains unsolved. Again, given
the time frame here, it's even more likely that someone
involved is listening to this show. Now. When I say
more likely, I still don't mean it's probable. Yes, but
(52:48):
if you're listening, No, we can't even say that, Matt.
You can say someone might be listening. And that's about
where we have to draw the line. I believe legal
is that correct?
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, And we at this point we do know a
very small portion of this money that was stolen has
been recovered, A very very small portion. I think two
million out of the two million, out of the sixty
pounds I guess in banknotes were discovered. And then there's
another like one hundred k and US banknotes and listen
(53:22):
to this. According to the Guardian, these US banknotes were
found in the toilet of the Police Athletics Association's New
Forge country club. One hundred thousand dollars of the money
that was still in there was found in the police
country club.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Interesting, so this definitely has the This definitely has the
aroma of an inside job, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, but the I think the the authority
is there. The official word was like, oh no, this
money was just planted there as a distraction. It wasn't actually,
you know, nobody involved with the police did anything to
do with that money. It was just put there.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Okay, sure, all right, wink, yeah, this let's continue to
build on this. Let's let's look at just a few
quick laundry lists, okay, sure of unsolved conspiracies. One thing
that I believe stands out for a lot of US
residents and a lot of residents of the Middle East
(54:24):
would be the massive allegations of stolen money in the
course of the US's involvement in Iraq, in the course
of the US's involvement in Afghanistan. So if we look
at this, what we find will be almost a thousand,
(54:49):
almost a thousand cases of alleged fraud committed not not
by you know, not by local militias or terrorists, but
committed by contractors working from Uncle Sam. As we know,
you know, war is a war is very fertile soil
for corruption, for profiteering. In this case, a US audit
(55:15):
found that the occupying force in Iraq during the Iraq
War lost track of something around like nine billion dollars
with a B.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah that's insane and right there by the way, Remember
we're talking about several associations, several groups, but one of
the main ones is our old pals Blackwater aka XE
I think aaka Academi. Well, which is our old pals,
Eric Prince.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's a fascinating article about
this that I would recommend called BBC uncovers Law Iraq
Billions by a journalist named Jane Corbin, and this came
out in June of two thousand and eight. So this
is old news. This is over ten years old now,
(56:13):
but it's fascinating to get to get this glimpse. I
just want to share some parts of this. So an
investigation by the BBC found that not just nine billion
that's the US audit, The BBC found twenty three billion
had been lost, stolen or just maybe put in the
(56:37):
wrong accounting line, which I thought was very generous of
them to phrase it that way. Wow, let me read
this part too. So the BBC used US and Iraqi
government sources to research how much some private contractors have
profited from the conflict in Iraq and the subsequent rebuilding.
(56:59):
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
What the order applies to seventy court cases against some
of the top US companies.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
WHOA, that feels like a whole episode, right, Yeah, I
think we need to do that.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
I agree, I agree completely. When Henry Waxman commented on
this during his time as Chairman of the US House
of Reps, he said, the money that's gone into waste, fraud,
and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous. He
noted at the time that it may turn out to
be the largest case of war profiteering in history, not
(57:44):
in US history, in human history. Holy crap, that's a
little hyperbolic. If we're being honest, you know, it's it's
tough to rank these things with accuracy when we're talking
about just how much money goes missing. But we we
have to admit billions of dollars vanished.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
Yeah they did. Oh man, I'll never forget. Was it Rumsfeld?
He was like, yeah, we don't know, just billions of
dollars that we can't account for in the budgets. But
you know, it speaks to the fog of war, like
we're talking about the cover that you get when there's
conflict like that. Because if we think about or if
we take ourselves back to two thousand and three when
(58:28):
the United States was invading Iraq again, and I believe
Saddam at least the story goes that Saddam Hussein ordered
his son and a bunch of other men in trucks
to go to one of the largest Baghdad banks and
take out a billion dollars or as close to a
(58:50):
billion dollars as he could to basically procure it and say,
you know, we're about to be under attack, we're at war.
We need to make sure this money isn't stolen by
the opposing for horses, right, But they in turn essentially
stole a billion dollars out of the bank. Because it's
I don't know, it's just such an odd thing to
think about it that way, and it makes you wonder
(59:11):
how often that kind of thing occurs, where moneies that
are accrued from all these various places, but you know,
are thought to be the state's money. Depending on when
a conflict is occurring and how it's occurring, I don't know.
It makes me wonder about Fort Knox.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
A little bit. Right again, what we see here, the
clear trend is that the most successful heist, in terms
of escaping arrest and in terms of escaping arrest with
the money or with the loot, whatever that may be,
those successful heist tend to have state actors somehow involved.
(59:54):
Those are the inside jobs that carry the most weight
in highest chance of success. In Afghanistan, we've got what
an estimated forty five billion dollars that went missing. There's
a report from the Fiscal Times in twenty fifteen that
talks about how this came to be. And the big
(01:00:17):
question is whether these missing dollars vanished due to a purposeful,
intentional heist or whether it's just flawed accounting on the
part of the Pentagon, which has, for the entirety of
most people's lives listening to this show, always had a
problem with accounting.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Always. It's so weird. Those black budgets, they just don't
match up with the money that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah, As of twenty fifteen, the Pentagon had data for
about fifty seven percent of the almost eight hundred million
that they spent on one program in this country between
two thousand and two and twenty thirteen. Again, that's not
(01:01:04):
the whole pie. It's just something called the commander's Emergency
Response Program. And this is something the Fiscal Times rightly
criticizes because it's very difficult to see where the money.
You can see where the money comes from, but you
can't see where it goes. It is a black bag,
it's a black budget. It's a mystery box, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
And such as the nature of military conflicts.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I guess, yeah, well, here just for a peak behind
the current without getting too into the weeds on it.
Under the Emergency Response program, here commanders could spend money
to respond to sudden catastrophes, immediate needs, you know, fires, floods, earthquakes.
Theoretically that kind of stuff, and any money they spend
(01:01:54):
under half a million dollars isn't treated as a defense
contract and it doesn't have to bear up to the
same scrutiny or documentation. So question, I don't know the
answer to this, but question how often or how rarely
(01:02:15):
did someone request fourth one hundred ninety nine thousand.
Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Dollars seriously or just four hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah, yeah, you don't want to be you don't want
to show off. You don't need to test EUROSA.
Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Man. That sounds like petty cash in a way, but
up to you know, a couple under grand Wow, that's
that's insane.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Now to be fair to Uncle Sam at this at
this point, currently they have discontinued that ambiguous process and
that kind of workflow for accounting. But I but I
don't know. There's just so much money on the table
(01:02:59):
there that it feels almost certain corruption must exist. Maybe
it's mitigated, maybe it's tamped down, but it has to
be there. We have a lot of people listening today
who are active or former military members, and I am
certain that some of us have seen really dodgy things
(01:03:24):
happen in the field, you know, really dodgy financial things. Yeah,
and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts. It's right, let us know
what you think. You can reach.
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you
with one of our favorite subjects of discussion. Heist. Did
you guys hear recently guy got arrested in the United
Kingdom for stealing three hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars
worth of cheddar.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh man, we love a wacky heist. There was the
one where someone like stole like change, I.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Think, or it was like pennies. I believe there's just
some week books.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah well wait, well that's right, the Bluey coins.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Maple syrup cartel. We've got an episode about why maple
syrup heist are surprisingly profitable. Back in twenty nineteen, we
started exploring the biggest heist in history, actual criminal conspiracies,
you know, the kind of stuff that's cinematic and I
(00:53):
don't know if you guys remember this one, but it
was a rollicking good time. It was was one of
those episodes where we had to take breath off air
and remind ourselves that sometimes people did get shot, sometimes
people did die.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Oh yeah, you know the one that we haven't covered
that would be great for this is the one that
Fight Night was based on. Right, wasn't that a kind
of a heist.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Or a million dollar Well, it was a stick up
at like a poker game that took place during the
big Muhammad Ali comeback fight. But it was it was
a heist of a type for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
It counts. Shaking something you're not supposed to take is
a heist. Hey, I mean even if it's extra candy
from the bowl at your dermatologist.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh, don't do that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
They'll get you. They always remember. Here we go from
UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know. A production
of iHeart Radios House Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Nol is not with us today.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Noel the bag Man Brown is indeed on adventures. They
call me Ben. We are joined as always without our
super producer, Paul, Mission Control DEC and AKA the Coordinator.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt
off Air, You and Paul and I have been talking
(02:36):
about some of our favorite things.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Heist, right, yeah, heist movies, heist, heist and fiction. I
think are one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Not in reality, right, it's there's this cool team up
moment in a lot of heist films, right. And we
we spoke about which we would ideally or realistically play
in a heist, and Paul loved. I loved when Paul
(03:11):
immediately replied, well, I guess I would be the coordinator
in a heist. And if you go on places like
TV tropes, you will see the various categories, the common
positions and roles in a lot of heist Paul, I
have to be honest. I feel like maybe you chose
(03:34):
the coordinator just because it also the category also says
the coordinator functions as mission control.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah. He found that and he went, that's it. That's
what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You read the whole article, and Matt, you had some
interesting choices. You had two that spoke to you. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I'm mostly thinking about it in context of this show.
So I would go with the partner in crime. So
not the master because I think we all know who
the mastermind would be, especially in the context of our
crew and show Ben. But I would be the partner
in crime. I would be the person who is second
in command, who assists and maybe the only one. This
(04:16):
is a quote, maybe the only one besides the mastermind
who actually knows what's going on.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You know, that's that's flattering to to imply that mastermind position.
I don't know, man, I always I always thought I would,
I would function as a face, at least in my
past experience. I tend to do this work a lot.
(04:42):
But what we found was that we constructed the four
of us a fairly solid again fictional heist crew. And
today we're we're looking at heist. You know, heist when
you think about it, their conspiracies. People are conspiring to
(05:07):
do something nefarious.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, certainly, And a lot of the examples we're going
to get to today involve inside jobs with all things
within that conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Loaded term loaded term there. But who does not love
a good heist film?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You know?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
The formula is pretty solid at this point. A team
of specialists with some dubious gifts and specializations and no
small amount of internal tension band together.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
For I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Sometimes it's the big one, capital B, capital O. Sometimes
it's one last job before we go straight, you know,
or before we retire to some remote destination. There is
one rule that always applies to any heist film, no
matter which country, culture, or time period it comes from,
(06:04):
and that one rule, that one ever constant, ubiquitous rule,
is things go wrong.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, the perfect plan isn't quite so perfect. But you know,
a lot of these movies are based on actual heists,
actual or at least loosely based on actual heights.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Inspired by true events.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Because all the time there are people and groups of
people conspiring to rob banks and armored cars and various
institutions and jewelry stores and everything museums. Yes, they're true
and they're real, but the big question today is how
do they work? How do they function in reality outside
of those fictional worlds?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Right? How do real heist actually work? Here are the facts,
and let's call this why you shouldn't rob a bank.
Some of this research comes from an older and older
piece that Paul and I did for a show called
brain stuff. Oh I remember this, Yeah, which is available
(07:06):
on YouTube. Yeah, I was nuts on this one. If
we want to get a handle on real life heist,
we can look at the numbers, and the numbers may
surprise some of us. In twenty eleven in the United States,
let's focus on the US just for this part. In
twenty eleven in the US, there were over five thousand
(07:28):
bank robberies fourteen documented once. Most of these, oddly enough,
happened during the day while the bank was open at
some point.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, there are when there is a teller or a
bank manager or someone on the scene.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Also multiple witnesses. People who just came to make a
depositor get a money order and we're probably thinking about
grabbing Chipotle after they were not planning for this. Also,
the all the data shows that they there are two
favorite days for bank robbers. Those days are Tuesdays and Fridays.
(08:07):
Despite what feature films might have us believe, the majority
of robbers are not experts. They are not professional bank robbers.
They are rank amateurs. Eighty percent of individual bank robbers
have never been convicted of a bank robbery before. It's
their first time out.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And may probably the numbers will show us the first
time getting caught.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, yes, yes, that is true. The criminals also, contrary
to what heist and fiction would have us believe, are
not teaming up in some super swanky, awesome oceans eleven
Avengers Voltron esque kind of thing. Instead, eighty percent operate alone.
(08:55):
And they also use predictable patterns. They tend to if
they survive the first one, if they escape the first one,
they tend to do the same things, sort of franchise
and repeat it.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, or you know, they're not experienced in how to
manage the money and the spoils once they've attained them, right,
and then that will lead them to be to being caught.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. According to
the Department of Justice, the FBI's clearance rate for bank
robbery is a little under sixty percent of those cleared robberies.
Of the crimes that are solved, about half of those
are solved within thirty days. And people will bank robbers,
(09:43):
I mean will get caught sometimes not for anything directly
related to the bank robbery, as you said, Matt, they
will get caught after the heist using you know, bills
with sequential serial numbers, using something that can be traced.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
There was a Yeah, there's this excellent vice video called
rap Monument, which has it's just a cavalcade of mostly
amazing MC's And there's a line in one of these,
in one of the verses where they say the bank
vaults don't talk, but the numbers read, and that is
(10:26):
that is directly alluding to the way that serial numbers
on bills, especially larger bills, can be traced. So if you,
if you happen to be sitting on a stack of
ill gotten cash, please be very aware that someone somewhere
(10:48):
knows the numbers of those bills and they're kind of
waiting for you to use them.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, absolutely, or especially to use them to make a
large purchase of an expensive thing, especially if you do
it sequentially several times of a large purchase such as
a oh, I don't know if Ferrari or a mansion,
or a Wendy's.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Franchise, A Wendy's franchise. Sure, I mean, that's when you've
really made it, right.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So we're talking a lot about how people get caught
using the money they've stolen, but we haven't talked about
how much money professional or lucky robbers actually make. It
is surprising conspiracy realists. We often hear about millions of
(11:42):
dollars billions of dollars in some cases disappearing, but life
for the average bank robber is pretty hard scrabble and
hard won. There was a study by several British economists
that examined just the nuts and bolts math this. So
what they found is the average return on a bank
(12:04):
heist in the United Kingdom is nineteen thousand, seven hundred
dollars per person per heist. In the US it's way worse.
It's only a little bit over four thousand dollars per mist.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, and a lot of that, you know, if you're
looking at it on average, you're talking about the loan
actors that walk into a bank hand a piece of
paper over that says empty the register, give me everything
you have, I have a gun, and then they walk
out and that's it. They don't go for the vault,
they don't go for any of the big ticket items,
they don't go to the security deposit boxes. They just
(12:44):
go in, get that money and then leave. So that's
definitely swaying numbers there, right, And you're also talking about
the UK where weapons are like firearms are much more
difficult to come by, so it's its whole other thing.
Like if you walk into a bank just wielding a
knife or something, change the calculus a little bit about
what can go down and what you can get.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Right. Also, the UK is one of the most closely
surveilled areas of the world. We did mention this in
a previous episode, just the density of cameras.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing that these people also found,
these economists that are looking at the numbers, they found
that if you increase the number of people in your crew,
you actually can move those numbers a little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That's right. Yeah, every additional member of a heist gang
raises the value of the robbery or the takeaway by
in the UK it's a little over nine thirty three pounds.
That translates to a bit over fifteen grand, So that
feels like a valuable contribution. But we have to keep
(13:52):
in mind the per person hall diminishes with every new
member added to the gang, and of course the likelihood
of something going wrong, someone squealing, someone making a rookie
mistake that rises exponentially.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Oh yeah, but it definitely gets into that thing where
if you have if you have a crew like we
were talking about in the beginning, of people who are
managing things, who have a specific task, who are going
to go in and get the money and take the
money and do all that, you can see it working
in there.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Absolutely, So, how does this work out if any of
our fellow listeners were professional bank robbers, what would they
have to do to make it a genuine living right
to not have to constantly be hungry, homeless, et cetera,
just to meet their basic needs.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Oh yeah, So let's look at just in the United States,
the poverty line and where these how these numbers match up.
So in twenty thirteen, the poverty threshold at least would
be an annual income of eleven four and ninety dollars
per per So for one single person, eleven and a
(15:03):
half thousand dollars a year, that'd be your income, right,
And this means that on average, if you were just
a professional bank robber or just all by your loansome,
you'd have to rob three banks a year, and you'd
have to keep all the loot and not do anything
with it necessarily, or at least, I don't know, you'd
have to invest smartly or launder it correctly and smartly
(15:28):
just to stay out of the poorhouse, I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And the most recent number we can find
for the poverty threshold is from twenty sixteen. Yeah, two
and eighty six dollars, So that still hasn't moved very much.
But making a living as a bank robber has become
increasingly difficult.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, but hey, think about it this way. That's only
three maybe four jobs a year, and that's it. That's
all you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
I imagine there's a lot of pre production that goes
into that. Maybe, or who knows, maybe there's yeah, maybe
there there are just some people who impulsively rob banks
and keep getting away. There are so many stories of daring,
ambitious heist not just related to banks. Banks we tend
(16:22):
to have more information about because they're one of the
most common forms of this sort of crime. But here's
the thing, not all heists are created equal. Some high
screws didn't just conspire to, you know, rob a vault
at a bank. They conspire to move massive, gargantuan amounts
(16:44):
of loot, some things that are objectively priceless works of
art that cannot have a value assigned, and so on.
And the most bizarre thing about it is some of
these crews got away. So let's let's explore this. Let's
look at some of the world's biggest heist Let's look
(17:07):
at some of the folks who were caught, and let's
look at some of the folks who are still out
there today.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And we'll do that right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Here's where it gets crazy, Matt, what do you say
do you want to do? You want to start off
with some heist where the perpetrators were ultimately apprehended.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Oh yeah, absolutely, And let's okay, let's first jump to
September twelfth, nineteen ninety seven. This is a story about
a bank robbery that feels like several major emotion pictures
that I have seen or at least heard about. The
(17:54):
target or let's just say, the title of it is
the Dunbar Armored Robbery. That's like what we're going to
call it here. And the target was Dunbar Armored Incorporated.
And they are an armored truck company. So what they
do is they move cash and valuables from one place
to another in a vehicle that is generally you know,
has a crew of people who are there to protect
(18:14):
the money, and they're all armed. It seems like an
extremely dangerous thing to attempt to rob, at least on
the surface, right. But in Los Angeles, California, a group
of people, including a man named Alan Pace the Third,
got together and conspired to rob the Dunbar Armored Inc. Company,
(18:38):
So instead of robbing a single one of these cars,
they went to the source of where the cars go
back to the depot basically right. And this guy, Alan
Pace the third was working at Dunbar and he knew
the ins and outs of the place. It was in
fact an inside job, and he had a crew of
(19:00):
people that came with him. They tied up some security guards,
they made off with a whole bunch of money, and
they also destroyed all of the security tapes. They didn't
they didn't destroy the cameras or anything. They took the
actual tapes, so there was no real evidence. And it's
kind of a weird thing because for a long time
(19:21):
they couldn't figure out exactly what happened. But they realized
it must have been an inside job because somebody knew
entirely too much about the security where the cameras were,
how those cameras were recording, and where that stuff would be,
and how much money would be where at what time. Anyway,
it's a really fascinating thing to look at.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's also, I believe, still the largest cash robbery to
have occurred in the US. Right.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I think it's been estimated to be that because it
was around eighteen. It was around nineteen million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
In nineteen ninety seven, which would make it closer to
thirty million dollars today. Yeah, this story is amazing, but
it doesn't end happily for mister Pace.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Oh no, no, no, he got caught as well as
several other people. Alan Pace the third was considered the mastermind,
you know, if we're going to use those terms. He
was the guy who came up with the idea because
he was the inside man. He knew the ins and outs.
But he also had some people working with him, like
Eric Damon Boyd, one of the accomplices. There were several
(20:38):
people working with him that ended up going to jail
and getting arrested and you know, going to trial and
ended up in the slammer.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah. Eugene Lamar Hill, I think was the was the
weak link there, or at least at first.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
The slip up is Lamar Hill, the guy that was
was trying to he got caught with the sequential bills
with the original rapper and everything.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That tells you how much this stack of money is worth.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
That's the thing. Because this gang attempted to be pretty
smart and pretty strategic about how they would seem to
legitimately have created such wealth. They were buying real estate,
and then I believe they were also starting business fronts,
(21:29):
you know, right, like like a PO Box Corporation or
LLC stuff like that. But Eugene was talking to a
real estate broker and he I guess he felt too
comfortable or he got a little lax and he literally
(21:52):
handed this guy that stack of bills, like you said,
that could have just come from an armor t rock
and his associate, He's often referred to as Hill's friend,
but I would say maybe acquaintance is a better term,
because his real estate buddy notices this strap of cash
(22:18):
and he goes immediately to the police. And once Eugene
Lamar Hill is arrested, he confesses and he names all
the members of the crew.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Well, yeah, and they also connected Hill up to this
U haul that the crew had rented, because they were
bringing that in to load all of the cash into
this U haul and it was Hill who actually had
rented it. And then I think there was a broken
taillight or something that was found on the scene of
the robbery. They connected that up to that specific U
haul they found Hill. They like they connected all those
(22:51):
pieces together and that's how they get most of the
rest of the crew with that confession.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So justice is served mostly. Unfortunately, the law enforcement agents
were not able to recover all of the money, some
of which remains missing today.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, they only recovered about five million of that. You
know at the time was nineteen million, so you know
that a lot of that just went into stuff those
those front companies in the real estate and all that
other stuff. But they probably were able to get back
some of that real estate because you could actually tie
it to the being used by that money. Really really
(23:32):
cool case. I mean, it's messed up. Those guys saw
justice or experience justice, are experiencing it. But again, I
think a pretty good example of one of these highly
coordinated events.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, and that's this is fascinating to me because these
people went to prison, right, Yeah, but how how does
a person feel if they are in prison for a
crime they definitely committed, and they know that they will
(24:09):
not only get out at some point, but they also
know the money that they stole is somewhere and they
may be able to access it. It's got to be
pretty intense.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
You know, we're going to get into a similar thing
to that a little bit later in the episode, where
you just you're biding your time in jail because you
know where the rest of it is.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Let's go across the pond for the next one, the
Securitas Depot heist.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yes, okay, so this one jumps us forward to February
twenty first, two thousand and six. This time we're in Kent,
southeast of London. If you're looking at a map and
secure TOAs just like the old Dunbar group, they guess what,
(25:01):
transferring tons of money and valuables in armored cars, And
this time we're at a Securitas depot instead of a
dumbbar depot. Same very very similar kind of thing, and
this one went down similarly with a couple of twists.
The first big twist is that these guys realized that
(25:23):
in order to be successful they were going to need
some leverage. They went to the home of Colin Dixon,
who was the manager of this depot, and he and
his family were kidnapped at gunpoint, and a crew or
at least one or two people stayed behind with that
family while Colin basically brought all of these robbers of
(25:44):
this crew of people to the depot let them in.
Those guys then essentially kidnapped all of the workers who
were at the depot and they tied them all up
and they took just giant basically cages and pallets of
cash and valuables. They loaded him onto a giant truck
(26:05):
and took off and they ended up making away with
fifty three million British pounds.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Which makes this the largest cash robbery in UK history. Again,
this is ruthless work, but they do end up getting caught,
right they I do want to stay just for a
second on their process here. Yeah, because the way that
(26:33):
they got Colin Dixon was pretty devious.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
They impersonated police officers.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah. They pulled him over and he was basically like, okay,
well this is fine, I'm gonna work all this stuff out.
And then they said, well, sir, we need you get
out of your car. They took him to the back
of the car, basically locked him in the back of
the car, and then asked him a bunch of questions
that police officers generally wouldn't ask, and they put a
gun in his face.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So after the robbery, Dixon and his family survive Thankfully,
after the robbery secured, US offers a reward of two
million pounds, no real questions asked, Just give us information
that will lead to the arrest of these assailants. And
(27:23):
it works out because on February twenty third, two days later,
police have already arrested two people and charged them with
conspiracy to commit robbery.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
But they're just people who were on the crew, right right,
because some of the main people that were involved with this,
or at least that were thought to be the masterminds,
had actually fled to Morocco smartly I think on their
part there, but they fled and they were I believe.
They're justcribed in several places as cage fighters or former
(28:03):
cage fighters. There's a guy named Paul Allen and another
one named Lee Murray or Murray m r Ay. So
after these guys are arrested, you're talking about ben two guys,
and then it ends up being five guys that get arrested.
It's basically the whole crew except for the masterminds and
these guys in Morocco. Then finally Paul Allen gets extradited
(28:27):
from Morocco. He gets charged, but he keeps telling everybody well, no,
I wasn't the mastermind. I was just doing what I
was told. I was working for this guy Lee Murra
or Murray, and Lee is already incarcerated in Morocco. So
it's like, I guess he was kind of using Lee
as the fall guy perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, Because while they were in Morocco they did a
number of things, some of which were very clever, some
of which are understandable, and some of which are you know,
sort of not thought through. They went on a spending spree,
as reported in The Guardian by Matthew Weaver and his associates.
(29:10):
They went on a spending spree. They were making it
rain in Morocco. They bought property. They bought jewelry, which
is you know, very very popular. We'll get to the
loose diamonds, don't worry, holds its value, one of the
sketchiest things people can have. They also bought illegal things
(29:32):
like drugs, and this is something smart that they did.
They invested thousands of dollars or pounds rather in plastic
surgery for their associates. I've always been curious about whether
that kind of tactic works. If someone is attempting to
(29:55):
disappear you know, we hear about despots having plastics. Yeah,
we hear about you know, people in drug cartels getting
plastic surgery. The thing, the thing about it is not
to quote Donald Rumswell directly, but it's it's an unknown
unknown right. If someone successfully has has used plastic surgery
(30:18):
to evade the long arm of the law, we'll never
know about it. Yeah, so maybe we only know about
the people who got caught with a bad nosed job
or something.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah, I just got to look for all those tremendously
rich people with lots and lots of work done, start
asking questions.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I'm sure we may be conflating populations there.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Don't do that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
So what we see here is that they're they're caught because,
despite their best intentions, they went to a country that
has an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. And in
our earlier conversations about pseudoside, we've learned right that the
(31:02):
only way people can fake their death and profit from it,
or the only way people can commit a huge crime
like this and survive without going to jail, is essentially
to relocate to someplace that does not extradite.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, that's really the only way. And in the end,
they were covered about twenty four million I think, I
think twenty four million pounds of the fifty something fifty.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Four Yeah, I wonder what happened to that, right, because
what we see here, maybe it's a little bit misleading, folks,
because in both of the heightst we just talked about
the people got caught, but the money didn't get caught.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah, not necessarily, it got moved around in the market.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Right. There we go, There we go. We have another
example from the United Kingdom that has even higher stakes.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Oh this one, we're going back before either of the
previous two, back to nineteen eighty July.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Twelfth, great year for bank robberies.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is in Knightsbridge, London. This
is or it's a part of London's in the UK.
It's in the city of Westminster, I believe. And the
target here is a thing, a place called Knightsbridge Safe
Deposit Center, so less of a bank, more of a
giant repository of safety deposit boxes, a giant a collection
(32:27):
of safety deposit boxes. And there was a small crew
of people that went into there, including this gentleman named
Valerio Viiccei Vishay via Viccha. I don't know how to
say it, but Valerio, let's call him. They walked in
(32:48):
pretending like they were just going to get a safety
deposit box, and as soon as they got into the
secure area where the deposit boxes were, they pulled out
his crew pulled out pistol, held everybody up. Then they
put a closed temporarily closed sign on the front of
the safety deposit center. Then they invited a couple other
(33:08):
people in who were part of their.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Crew, dressed as security guards.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yes, and they began basically just busting open all of
these safety deposit boxes and they got away with a ton.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Of money, A huge amount of money, right, wasn't it
around sixty million pounds? It was over sixty million pounds
I believe.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, But again that's not cash, right, it's it's valuables,
mostly valuables, some cash, probably bonds and all these other things.
But the safety deposit boxes were owned by millionaires in London,
owned by famous people like sports. They're just famous peoples
of all.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Ilk aristocrats, yes, money royalty. Right. They forced open one
hundred and fourteen boxes, I think, yes, what around two hours,
so they were in the room for a while.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, but one hundred and fourteen box is full of
whatever it was, and uh, they're yeah, thinking about sixty
million British pounds. But then, okay, so these guys make
off with all this, they are they are successful with
these past three. The robbery itself goes off pretty well, right,
right in all three of these, right, they get in,
(34:25):
they get the spoils, and then they leave. The problems
are given enough time, you have enough people involved, somebody
slips up, and this is what occurred. There were several
several accomplices of Valerio who ended up getting caught. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, and let's let's spend a little bit of time
on Valerio because he is anomalous in the world of robberies.
Remember we said earlier at the top that eighty percent
are loaners, eighty percent are first time amate two with
this not your buddy Valario. He came to England from Italy,
(35:07):
where he was already wanted on charges for something like
fifty armed robberies. Yeah so maybe not necessarily banks, but
this guy was no stranger to the hustle.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
No, he wasn't. He also wasn't the kind of guy
that liked to lay low after he's done a job
or something and not spend a lot of money, not
have a lot of visibility. He liked to be out
there living as is described by several websites. We looked
at lavishly. That's how he did his.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Thing, living Levita Loca. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, Well, and then that leads him down a pathway
because he ends up, Oh where did he go? He
skipped the.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Country to South America.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
He went to South America right after this large robbery,
and he was doing really well, you know, spending a
ton of money. He's got a ton of money now.
But he ends up wanting to get a ferrari I
think a tester rosa. I believe that's what it was.
And he goes back to the United Kingdom just temporarily
(36:09):
flies back over there just to oversee the shipping of
this ferrari back to where he's living in South America,
and the authorities, of course somehow notice that he's there.
You can only assume he's using a passport that's not his.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, here's the thing, he was not aware that he
was already directly tied to this crime because of a
single fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. Oh wow, that belonged to him,
though was found on the scene. Also, I know we
just mentioned blood, but we should say no one was killed, right, Oh, yes,
(36:47):
of course, right. So he goes This guy is such
a pill. He he goes back to England, as you said,
to get his testosa ship to South America. Not the
smartest move. And people who saw him thought he was
(37:08):
not an impressive person. They thought he was a show off.
They thought he was flexing too hard, like he wanted
people to see his rolex and he wanted to talk
about how his love of exotic cars. He was doing
his best to not blend in. So the cops set
(37:29):
up a roadblock. That's how they get him. They literally
know where he's coming from and where he's going, set
up a roadblock. They take him out of his car.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Yeah, because they smash a windshield of his Ferrari, right.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Which I think was sort of them proving a point.
You know, that's their version of showing off their rolex.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
And he is sentenced to twenty two years in prison,
but I believe being extradited to Italy.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, he goes back to Italy after a little bit
of jail time, ends up spending more jail time in Italy,
but he ends him this thing that's called a day prison,
or he's got like day privileges while he's at prison,
so he can actually leave for a certain amount of time.
He's got a company that he's running, and he ends
up getting into some dastardly stuff. Again, I think he's
(38:28):
he's spotted by like a patrol vehicle or something, just
kind of your standard police patrol vehicle in Italy, and
he's doing something weird. He ends up getting in a
shootout with an officer and dying.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Right, So let's connect some dots here, because he's in
a shootout, which means he has a firearm in Italy
while he is technically in prison. Right. I think he's released,
as you said, during the day, and he has to
be back in his cell at ten thirty or something
(39:02):
like that, and he's acting suspiciously quote unquote acting suspiciously?
What does that mean? You know what I mean? In
this country, there are a lot of innocent people who
have been fatally shot for quote unquote acting suspiciously. In
this guy's case, I gotta say I believe law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Well, yeah, it appears that he may have been waiting
for literally an armored truck or I mean again, there's
some rumors that I was reading about on there, but
who knows. In the end of this huge heist, the
sixty million pounds worth of stuff, authorities got ten million
or they were covered roughly ten million pounds worth of
stuff and valuables, but the rest of it was either
(39:47):
spent or can't be found. So there you go, kind
of the same ending there.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, he also he wasn't a good person. Any
loss of human life is a tragedy. I don't want
to make light of the fact that this guy died.
He was also by acting suspiciously. In his case, he
was sitting in a stolen car, that's what it was,
(40:17):
while he was waiting for the van. I would say
that is suspicious. Yeah, I was like, just because a
person is in a stolen car does not necessarily mean
they stole it. But it doesn't look good.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, you should at least check it out. And if
they have a weapon and they, you know, fire shots
at you as a police officer, I think that's how
things are going to go.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
There was a quote from his time in court when
it was originally sentenced for the Knightsbridge robbery. I just
want to see what you think about this. I want
to hear your reaction to this. So one detective said
this guy wanted to be known as the mastermind of
the world's biggest robbery, and then continuing to say he
(41:01):
had an ego the size of the Old Bailey. And
then at the trial. At the trial, this dude says
to the judge, maybe I'm a romantic lunatic, but money
was the last thing on my mind, you know, which
is a very strange way to plead your case. It's like, look,
I just it's.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Just the excitement.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, it's not about the money. It's loading a message.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, you'll send a message. Well, yeah, I mean, this
is the kind of guy who watched He reportedly watched
Scarface almost sixty times and that was just his favorite
movie and he wanted to be Scarface. He had a
ring or something that Yeah, he had a key ring
that was golden and it was a shotgun. Yeah. Anyway,
(41:47):
I'm done talking about this Valerio guy. Let's take a
quick break from our sponsor and we'll come back and
talk about some of the heists that went really well
for the people who perpetrated them, or at least it
didn't go well for the authorities chasing down the perpetrators.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And we're back. Let's talk about some of the heists
where the perpetrators got away asterisk asterisk caveat at all. So,
just to be clear about this kind of situation we're
(42:31):
talking about, there are quite a few, a surprisingly vast
number of enormous cases. I don't necessarily want to call
them heist cases where we know money disappeared and we
know where it was last scene, but we don't know
(42:52):
what happened to it. The breadcrumb trail has disappeared, right,
So we can laundry lists some of those, but some
of them deserved their own episodes. We decided to start
with a couple of cases where we do know the
(43:13):
nuts and bolts of the crew and we know a
little bit about how it worked.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, we at least know the best assumptions, according to authorities,
about perhaps the groups that were involved here. So let's
jump to January twentieth, nineteen seventy six, and let's go
to Lebanon, specifically Beirut, and there's let's see the target
here is the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut,
(43:42):
and what occurred here on this day is it's believed
that some crew of people officially unknown crew of about
eight soldiers as well as a separate team of individuals
who were safe crackers, they gained access to the vault
of this bank, the British Bank of the Middle East
in Beirut, and they were able to empty the entire
(44:05):
contents of that vault and it's estimated to be somewhere
between twenty million US and fifty million US worth of gold, bars,
Lebanese and other foreign currencies, as well as stocks, jewels,
and other valuables. And that money was worth about sixty million,
somewhere between sixty million to one hundred and fifty million
(44:25):
in twenty ten. So a really big takeaway.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, And this also touches on something that I think
we were all somewhat anticipating when we talked about successful heist,
like one hundred percent successful heist, there was a state
actor involved. These weren't just some random amateurs. They were
a group associated with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization
(44:54):
under Yasara Arafat. Because at the time Lebanon is in
the grips of a civil war exactly. They're able to
break into this otherwise fairly fortified bank, right.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, while the chaos is going on, while there's so
much confusion and violence occurring, they were just able to
use that opportunity essentially as cover to go in and
take this place.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yet and no one, not only has no one involved
in this hest been caught, no one has been charged
with the crime. You know what I mean. This is
not this is not a situation where someone decides to
skidaddle off to a country that won't extradite. Instead, they disappear,
(45:40):
they pull akizer.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
So say, yeah, just to give you an idea of
what it looks like, you're if you think about it
this way, there are people with large, high powered rifles
that have grenade launchers attached to them, that are wearing
military fatigues that are unmarked, so it's not that you're
officially associated with any military. They roll up with their
(46:05):
grenade launchers, and it's pretty crazy the way they did this,
I mean, and that must have been a very up
like opposing force just to see it coming. You know,
it's just very very strange because again it became a
war zone there at that bank. It wasn't like they
(46:25):
just walked in and took the money. There was firing,
you know, there was weapons being fired and assuming grenades
being launched. It's a pretty intense thing.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Absolutely, and this loot was not just cash, right, We're
talking gold, jewelry stocks. And oddly enough these guys ended
up famous and anonymous because the Guinness Book of World
Records was inspired to cite this as the quote biggest
(46:55):
bank robbery in the world. The crazy thing about this
is that it is quite possible someone listening to this
episode today along with you, may have been involved. They
would be elderly now right, or maybe they would be
(47:15):
a family member, like a sibling or a child of
one of the what which we call them, well, we
should call them criminals, but I like histers. Yeah, and
let's remember that part. To me, the most crucial part
about this is that they were very likely involved with
(47:38):
a state actor.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, they used They used C four, the plastic explosive
to gain access to the vault, which you know, it
generally doesn't occur if you are a group of citizens
getting your hands on C four. While it may not
be as difficult as the world's authorities would like it
(47:59):
to be, but it is certainly not easy.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
No, no, it's not something ideally, it's not something we
want people to be able to order from Amazon or eBay.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah, and you know grenade launcher is attached to your sixteens.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, that's military hardware. So let's fast forward to two
thousand and four, a few days before Christmas. Here we
are in jolly old Ireland.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yes, to Belfast. So let's talk about the target here.
It's a place called Belfast, Northern Bank. And before we
even get into who it is or what occurred or
anything like that, let's just hit that number. Around twenty
six and a half million British pounds, as well as
other additional foreign currencies were taken.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah. According to The Guardian, in total, as of two
thousand and eight, ten people have been arrested have been
charged for being somehow involved with the conspiracy here. But
they're all charged with being somehow involved.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Well, but also they've never officially been like.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Charged with actually yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
It's like it's hard to even wrap your head around
the thing. They they were connected, right, but they weren't
the people they're doing the thing.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So the other currencies involved were us dollars
and euros, right.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Can we just talk about the significance of this robbery.
So we're in Belfast. Uh, there's a peace process going
on because of the tensions you know in Northern Ireland
as well as other parts of Ireland. The IRA and
a couple other groups that were involved in tensions over
the years.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Again similar to state actors.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yeah, so they're very you're in a precarious position, they're
already and then to have a violent act like this
occur where millions and millions of dollars are stolen of
all the people's money in the area. I mean that's
people's money. That's not just the bank sitting there. Although
you know insurance through various state programs and everything. Still
(50:21):
it's a symbolic act.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Sure, that's that's the idea, and it almost crippled the
ongoing peace process because there was a lot of finger pointing.
The police of Northern Ireland, as well as the British
and Irish governments said that the IRA had a hand
in this. However, the IRA said, no, why would we
(50:44):
do that. What on earth are you talking about? That's
the last thing we want.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
Yeah, exactly. Now let's talk about a little bit of
what happened, so similarly to what we saw with one
of the previous the Securitas heist, some masked what they're
being referred to in the Guardian as masked gang, masked
and armed gang members. These guys show up at two homes,
(51:12):
two separate homes of two separate bank managers there who
work at the Northern Bank, right, and they hold people hostage,
specifically their families, at gunpoint. Then they get moved around
a little bit. They you know, they take some of
the family members to like a forest. Apparently they're really
spreading these people out. They're extremely organized on what they're
(51:33):
gonna do. Then they get one of these guys, one
of these bank managers, to go to work like it's
just a regular old day, pretend nothing's wrong, but he
because he knows that his family's at risk.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
But then when the banks close that evening, the bank,
these gang members actually like were let in by this manager,
let into the vaults and then they just loaded up
a van with all of the contents.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
And got away. That's the craziest thing. Again, the people
who were arrested, the people who were charged, were not
charged with actually carrying this out. I believe currently as
of twenty nineteen, one person has been convicted. They were
convicted of money laundering.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yeah, so after the fact, just using it.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Right, And the authorities consider this case ongoing, so they
haven't they haven't closed it. It remains unsolved. Again, given
the time frame here, it's even more likely that someone
involved is listening to this show. Now. When I say
more likely, I still don't mean it's probable. Yes, but
(52:48):
if you're listening, No, we can't even say that, Matt.
You can say someone might be listening. And that's about
where we have to draw the line. I believe legal
is that correct?
Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yeah, And we at this point we do know a
very small portion of this money that was stolen has
been recovered, A very very small portion. I think two
million out of the two million, out of the sixty
pounds I guess in banknotes were discovered. And then there's
another like one hundred k and US banknotes and listen
(53:22):
to this. According to the Guardian, these US banknotes were
found in the toilet of the Police Athletics Association's New
Forge country club. One hundred thousand dollars of the money
that was still in there was found in the police
country club.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Interesting, so this definitely has the This definitely has the
aroma of an inside job, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, but the I think the the authority
is there. The official word was like, oh no, this
money was just planted there as a distraction. It wasn't actually,
you know, nobody involved with the police did anything to
do with that money. It was just put there.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Okay, sure, all right, wink, yeah, this let's continue to
build on this. Let's let's look at just a few
quick laundry lists, okay, sure of unsolved conspiracies. One thing
that I believe stands out for a lot of US
residents and a lot of residents of the Middle East
(54:24):
would be the massive allegations of stolen money in the
course of the US's involvement in Iraq, in the course
of the US's involvement in Afghanistan. So if we look
at this, what we find will be almost a thousand,
(54:49):
almost a thousand cases of alleged fraud committed not not
by you know, not by local militias or terrorists, but
committed by contractors working from Uncle Sam. As we know,
you know, war is a war is very fertile soil
for corruption, for profiteering. In this case, a US audit
(55:15):
found that the occupying force in Iraq during the Iraq
War lost track of something around like nine billion dollars
with a B.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah that's insane and right there by the way, Remember
we're talking about several associations, several groups, but one of
the main ones is our old pals Blackwater aka XE
I think aaka Academi. Well, which is our old pals,
Eric Prince.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's a fascinating article about
this that I would recommend called BBC uncovers Law Iraq
Billions by a journalist named Jane Corbin, and this came
out in June of two thousand and eight. So this
is old news. This is over ten years old now,
(56:13):
but it's fascinating to get to get this glimpse. I
just want to share some parts of this. So an
investigation by the BBC found that not just nine billion
that's the US audit, The BBC found twenty three billion
had been lost, stolen or just maybe put in the
(56:37):
wrong accounting line, which I thought was very generous of
them to phrase it that way. Wow, let me read
this part too. So the BBC used US and Iraqi
government sources to research how much some private contractors have
profited from the conflict in Iraq and the subsequent rebuilding.
(56:59):
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
What the order applies to seventy court cases against some
of the top US companies.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
WHOA, that feels like a whole episode, right, Yeah, I
think we need to do that.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
I agree, I agree completely. When Henry Waxman commented on
this during his time as Chairman of the US House
of Reps, he said, the money that's gone into waste, fraud,
and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous. He
noted at the time that it may turn out to
be the largest case of war profiteering in history, not
(57:44):
in US history, in human history. Holy crap, that's a
little hyperbolic. If we're being honest, you know, it's it's
tough to rank these things with accuracy when we're talking
about just how much money goes missing. But we we
have to admit billions of dollars vanished.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
Yeah they did. Oh man, I'll never forget. Was it Rumsfeld?
He was like, yeah, we don't know, just billions of
dollars that we can't account for in the budgets. But
you know, it speaks to the fog of war, like
we're talking about the cover that you get when there's
conflict like that. Because if we think about or if
we take ourselves back to two thousand and three when
(58:28):
the United States was invading Iraq again, and I believe
Saddam at least the story goes that Saddam Hussein ordered
his son and a bunch of other men in trucks
to go to one of the largest Baghdad banks and
take out a billion dollars or as close to a
(58:50):
billion dollars as he could to basically procure it and say,
you know, we're about to be under attack, we're at war.
We need to make sure this money isn't stolen by
the opposing for horses, right, But they in turn essentially
stole a billion dollars out of the bank. Because it's
I don't know, it's just such an odd thing to
think about it that way, and it makes you wonder
(59:11):
how often that kind of thing occurs, where moneies that
are accrued from all these various places, but you know,
are thought to be the state's money. Depending on when
a conflict is occurring and how it's occurring, I don't know.
It makes me wonder about Fort Knox.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
A little bit. Right again, what we see here, the
clear trend is that the most successful heist, in terms
of escaping arrest and in terms of escaping arrest with
the money or with the loot, whatever that may be,
those successful heist tend to have state actors somehow involved.
(59:54):
Those are the inside jobs that carry the most weight
in highest chance of success. In Afghanistan, we've got what
an estimated forty five billion dollars that went missing. There's
a report from the Fiscal Times in twenty fifteen that
talks about how this came to be. And the big
(01:00:17):
question is whether these missing dollars vanished due to a purposeful,
intentional heist or whether it's just flawed accounting on the
part of the Pentagon, which has, for the entirety of
most people's lives listening to this show, always had a
problem with accounting.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Always. It's so weird. Those black budgets, they just don't
match up with the money that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah, As of twenty fifteen, the Pentagon had data for
about fifty seven percent of the almost eight hundred million
that they spent on one program in this country between
two thousand and two and twenty thirteen. Again, that's not
(01:01:04):
the whole pie. It's just something called the commander's Emergency
Response Program. And this is something the Fiscal Times rightly
criticizes because it's very difficult to see where the money.
You can see where the money comes from, but you
can't see where it goes. It is a black bag,
it's a black budget. It's a mystery box, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
And such as the nature of military conflicts.
Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I guess, yeah, well, here just for a peak behind
the current without getting too into the weeds on it.
Under the Emergency Response program, here commanders could spend money
to respond to sudden catastrophes, immediate needs, you know, fires, floods, earthquakes.
Theoretically that kind of stuff, and any money they spend
(01:01:54):
under half a million dollars isn't treated as a defense
contract and it doesn't have to bear up to the
same scrutiny or documentation. So question, I don't know the
answer to this, but question how often or how rarely
(01:02:15):
did someone request fourth one hundred ninety nine thousand.
Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Dollars seriously or just four hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah, yeah, you don't want to be you don't want
to show off. You don't need to test EUROSA.
Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Man. That sounds like petty cash in a way, but
up to you know, a couple under grand Wow, that's
that's insane.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Now to be fair to Uncle Sam at this at
this point, currently they have discontinued that ambiguous process and
that kind of workflow for accounting. But I but I
don't know. There's just so much money on the table
(01:02:59):
there that it feels almost certain corruption must exist. Maybe
it's mitigated, maybe it's tamped down, but it has to
be there. We have a lot of people listening today
who are active or former military members, and I am
certain that some of us have seen really dodgy things
(01:03:24):
happen in the field, you know, really dodgy financial things. Yeah,
and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts. It's right, let us know
what you think. You can reach.
Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
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Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
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Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
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Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Be aware, yet not afraid.
Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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