Bank Heists - Another Profession That Technology Is Killing Off 131
HughPickens.com writes: In 1992 there were 847 bank robberies in the UK; by 2011 that had dropped to just 66. Now Lawrence Dobbs writes in the Telegraph about how technology is killing off this age old profession. "The development of more sophisticated alarm systems and CCTV, as well as supporting forensic developments such as DNA analysis and facial recognition software, all serve to assist police," says Jim Dickie, a former detective who spent more than 30 years with the Metropolitan Police. Those who do try are either feckless opportunists or "serial offenders" who have already served time and are easily found on police databases. "Hands-on heists are a dying art, because those who have a background in it are literally dying off."
In 2015 a gang of aging jewel thieves pulled off one last spectacular job. Using a diamond-tipped drill and a 10-ton hydraulic ram, they broke into the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd vault and made off with at least £14million in precious stones, gems, bullion and jewelry in the largest burglary in English history. But the Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera. According to David Kelly, it's CCTV which has changed things most. "It's now virtually impossible to travel through any public space in a major metropolitan area without being captured. They're everywhere, the image quality is better, and the ability to store images for longer has increased." Then there are your physical alarm devices: motion sensors, window monitors which detect glass shattering, or devices which trigger when a door is opened. "These devices can now be deployed wirelessly – in an older building, where you might not have wires in place," says Kelly. "There are also tools at the disposal of the private sector, in cooperation with the public sector, which are perhaps not matters of common knowledge, and there's a tactical advantage to our clients in them remaining that way." Add to this the various technologies used to protect or track the loot itself – dye packs hiding inside stacks of banknotes, which explode when they leave a certain range; GPS tracking on security vans and inside cash containers – and you can see why even a hardened criminal might prefer to stay in bed.
In 2015 a gang of aging jewel thieves pulled off one last spectacular job. Using a diamond-tipped drill and a 10-ton hydraulic ram, they broke into the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd vault and made off with at least £14million in precious stones, gems, bullion and jewelry in the largest burglary in English history. But the Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera. According to David Kelly, it's CCTV which has changed things most. "It's now virtually impossible to travel through any public space in a major metropolitan area without being captured. They're everywhere, the image quality is better, and the ability to store images for longer has increased." Then there are your physical alarm devices: motion sensors, window monitors which detect glass shattering, or devices which trigger when a door is opened. "These devices can now be deployed wirelessly – in an older building, where you might not have wires in place," says Kelly. "There are also tools at the disposal of the private sector, in cooperation with the public sector, which are perhaps not matters of common knowledge, and there's a tactical advantage to our clients in them remaining that way." Add to this the various technologies used to protect or track the loot itself – dye packs hiding inside stacks of banknotes, which explode when they leave a certain range; GPS tracking on security vans and inside cash containers – and you can see why even a hardened criminal might prefer to stay in bed.
Modernization (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Modernization (Score:5, Funny)
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They took our jobs! Dey turk err jurbs! Durker durr!
Re:Modernization (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Modernization (Score:5, Insightful)
Bank heists are for amateurs.
OWNING a bank is how you steal the big bucks.
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Re:Modernization (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.
-Unknown
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Thus ensuring the natural cycle of... wait, there's nothing natural about any of this.
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Money isn't natural.
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No but greed and exchanges of a valuable asset are natural. Hell, check the penguins and their pebble stashes, they'll straight up rob each other for a pebble. So, maybe the name money isn't natural but greed sure as fuck is.
Re:Modernization (Score:5, Insightful)
In a world where physical bank heists are rare, a PHB will cut back funding for the strong vault, motion sensors, glass break sensors, etc. They can save their chain with thousands of branches millions of dollars in this way. Why pay for all those security measures from non-existent threats?
Of course, once those security measures are compromised we will see an uptick in physical bank robberies again.
You're forgetting the one thing that would probably still stop them, which is the insurance company. They won't be inurable if they don't have that stuff, or the cost of the insurance that would cover them without those things will far-outstrip the savings for not having them.
Re:Modernization (Score:4, Insightful)
There is another reason why bank heists are down. The dollar value you get is pitiful. If you are extremely lucky you can get 20-30 thousand in cash from an American bank. Cash over 10,0000 grand is routinely(daily) transferred to more secure premises.
Banks like people aren't carring cash on hand as a result of debit and credit cards. I used at most $200 in cash last year. Usually at fairs and festivals. Everything else goes on my Amex card that has fraud protection
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yup
http://krebsonsecurity.com/201... [krebsonsecurity.com]
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That said, it's ultimately impractical. Some of the people that have discussed this after they were caught and served their time commented on how they had to be careful for everything from parking the car to confirming
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I often have large amounts of cash for a variety of reasons. I have to contact (well, they ask that I do) my credit union 72 hour (or so) in advance if I want to take out more than $20,000 in cash. They're used to it now, they even give me a suitcase like thing (no handcuff on it) and I bring it back when I'm done. I am stopped but I'm still sort of on wanderlust right now and I recently had a few folks from Slashdot over so I won't say how much or where I have it but I have a goodly stash of cash on me rig
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There is another reason why bank heists are down. The dollar value you get is pitiful. If you are extremely lucky you can get 20-30 thousand in cash from an American bank. Cash over 10,0000 grand is routinely(daily) transferred to more secure premises.
Banks like people aren't carring cash on hand as a result of debit and credit cards. I used at most $200 in cash last year. Usually at fairs and festivals. Everything else goes on my Amex card that has fraud protection
Ironically, your credit card is now more likely to result in stolen money than cash. Now a thief doesn't even need to stick a knife in your face to steal from you, they dont even need to handle your card these days as they can skim your card wirelessly.
I know your response will be "but I have fraud protection"... I have to point out two things:
1) Who is paying for it? Banks are profitable businesses, where is that money coming from?
2) "The bank has my back" is one of the silliest and most naive stateme
Re:Modernization (Score:5, Funny)
Law enforcement will still try to justify their existence by "catching" people for a crime they didn't commit.I remember back in 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for just such an offense. Those men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
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Law enforcement will still try to justify their existence by "catching" people for a crime they didn't commit.I remember back in 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for just such an offense. Those men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
You can only survive so long that way. After 5 years, they were eventually caught and court-marshaled for their crimes...
They eventually pled guilty and were executed for those crimes...
Or so we were led to believe... ;^)
Apparently they managed to escape execution and have plastic surgery and personality implants and resurfaced in Mexico in 2010. Overkill is underrated...
Yet rumor has it that one of more of them has had a sex reassignment operation [deadline.com].
After a while you wonder if siome crime against humanity w
Re:Modernization (Score:4, Insightful)
Why pay for all those security measures from non-existent threats?
Because your insurance requires it.
No bank really gives a shit about being robbed. They're fully insured for any damage done. The insurances, on the other hand, have a HUGE interest in the avoidance of bank heists.
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It is just a change of how criminals work. It used to be in the 1900s that there was a direct war with safe makers and safe crackers. Burglar alarms pretty much put a stop to that. Now, with cameras and GPS sensors being so small and cheap, it doesn't take much to have protection good enough to make it not worth a physical heist for almost anything.
Of course, crime hasn't stopped. It has moved to malvertising and ransomware, and what we are seeing now is barely scratching the surface of what the bad guy
More money stolen at banks then ever (Score:3)
Sure, there may be fewer heists, but boy are they whoppers! Something about derivatives and credit default swaps.
Cars, how retro! (Score:3)
But the Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera.
At least they're keeping it old school. These days people steal things using hoverboards [bbc.co.uk].
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But the Hatton Garden burglars were caught because they used one of their own cars within view of a security camera.
At least they're keeping it old school. These days people steal things using hoverboards [bbc.co.uk].
I want to smack whoever started calling those stupid things "hoverboards".
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I want to smack whoever decided we should put "smart" in front of everything because it has some software on it...
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As idiotic as the trend may be, "Smart" is still a valuable indicator of which products not to buy.
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Technology is killing jobs (Score:1)
I am yearning for the older days where there's practically a job guaranteed for anyone, without these new fangled computers replacing an honest man. /j
Re: Technology is killing jobs (Score:2, Funny)
I yearn for the day that technology finally replaces the oldest profession.
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/Ducks!
Re: Technology is killing jobs (Score:4, Funny)
The oldest profession does involve working a lot of wood...
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If you ever make it up to Maine, I'll let you play in my wood shop. It's a hobby. I do cabinets and furniture for friends and family. I do a lot of it with hand tools and am probably a little to proud of my joinery. If you give me a coping saw, a sharp chisel, and a pencil or scribe I can make a dove tail joint faster than you can set up your router jig and do it that way. Butcher's Bowling Alley Wax is a beautiful finish and if you want a beautiful stain, make a paste with instant coffee and warm water and
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without these new fangled computers replacing an honest man. /j
Except the article is about how computers are replacing dishonest men.
No money left to steal. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks to so-called "free trade" with substandard nations and "trickle-down economics", over the past 25 years the wealth and savings of most Americans have been drained away. A lot of Americans never even had a chance to accumulate any wealth in the first place. They have no need for making bank deposits or withdrawals. They can't deposit any real cash; they don't have any! They're often unemployed, so there's no money coming in to begin with. They can't withdraw any real cash; they don't have any! They just put any purchases on their credit cards, which are likely never to be paid off.
The purpose of bank branches today is not to store anything of value. There's nothing to store! Nobody makes any cash deposits, and nobody makes any cash withdrawals. The bank branches are merely there as an office for the paperwork of debt to be signed. It's where people enter into yet another credit card or mortgage agreement. Those are the main transactions performed on any given day at American bank branches.
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I have no doubt that the powers that be want to eliminate cash but not only for the reasons you give. The government might want to eliminate cash to track your movements but that is not the end of it, why do they want to track you? Some businesses and most banks want to see cash go away, but again why? Tracking your movement is part of this, that way they can know more about your wants, needs, and habits so that they can sell you want you want before someone else does. The ultimate reason anyone would w
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What's A Criminal To Do? (Score:4, Interesting)
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There is also the possibility that people can produce their own alcohol, tobacco, or whatever else they choose to consume medicinally or recreationally.
The materials to produce a wine, beer, or liquor are nearly impossible to distinguish from common home baking items. Even if someone was to buy a home brew kit from a grocery store, using their credit card and discount club card, there is no means by which someone can track the amount produced. This is especially true if someone uses things like apples fro
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I have a PhD in Applied Mathematics, retired 8 years ago, and am well within the 1% because I was fortunate enough to ride the crest of the wave that became traffic modeling. I do have reasonably good soft-skills but I find the assumption that I've an affinity for subterfuge to be borderline retarded. I do have some skewed morals but they're definitely skewed in the direction of not harming others as I consider that deplorable. I dare say, by your metrics or anyone's metrics, I'm quite successful. I'm well
If it hadn't been for those meddling kids... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather if it hadn't been for one of the robbers being particularly stupid and driven his own car in front of a camera its pretty likely they'd have got away with the Hatton Garden heist. They're plan was actually quite sophisticated and a lot of time and planning went into it. And it wasn't a 2 minute "hands up and give us the money" job - it took an entire weekend to drill through the wall!
So I think its fair to say their technical skills were good but their HR skills were poor and they hired an idiot that brought the whole thing down.
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Don't keep me safe. Keep me free. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm supposed to think this is a good thing?? I would rather double my insurance costs. People still think automated image recognition is a conspiracy theory. People freely give up every detail of their lives for the privilege of staying connected to their friends on social media. People pay hundreds of dollars for phones that track their location at every moment. What the actual fuck is wrong with 80% of society? I can't believe this massive divergence in values. Am I literally the only person left who cares about his privacy?
Re: Don't keep me safe. Keep me free. (Score:2)
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While you've never really had the expectation of privacy, the difference is now everyone is tracked, automatically, the information is stored for years, and you really have no idea who all has access to it. This simply wasn't possible years ago.
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You're not the only one; slashdot is disproportionately high in this regard in comparison to the rest of society, so you're in relatively good company. Having said that, tracking is much easier for people to agree to if they get something out of it, something that wasn't possible in the past. I've found that attitudes toward malware and attitudes toward tracking are strangely similar - users don't call until their computer is ridiculously slow, but if the malware spent only 25% of the CPU time mining bitcoi
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Here's a little tidbit that I can share with you. You know how they claim we are now, in the US, at a point where the majority live in urban areas? The Census folks changed the definition quietly. Urban used to be a matter of density per mile (I know, I worked in traffic modeling and you take that into account). Now, they call any town with more then 1500 people an urban area. Or a town with 2500 people - if that town has a residential institution like a jail, nursing home, assisted living center, or the li
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You and me, we're probably rich enough to be able to give a shit about our privacy. Many people don't have that luxury and pretty much have to give it up in exchange for what they actually need to continue their existence.
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It's now virtually impossible to travel through any public space in a major metropolitan area without being captured. They're everywhere, the image quality is better, and the ability to store images for longer has increased.
I'm supposed to think this is a good thing?? I would rather double my insurance costs. People still think automated image recognition is a conspiracy theory. People freely give up every detail of their lives for the privilege of staying connected to their friends on social media. People pay hundreds of dollars for phones that track their location at every moment. What the actual fuck is wrong with 80% of society? I can't believe this massive divergence in values. Am I literally the only person left who cares about his privacy?
The thing is, almost all the security cameras are private. Image recognition has been available to private businesses for some time and gets used in the pub/club industries. Walk into a casino in Vegas, you're getting taped from 3 different angles and having your face compared against a private database shared between casino owners.
Banks are still being robbed (Score:1)
They are robbed digitally, and from the inside, but bank robbery is on the increase, if anything.
From what I've heard, anecdotal as it is, ATMs are being hacked and ripped off left and right all around the world. PIN cards and account numbers are being ripped off at retail outlets on and offline.
Technology hasn't stopped anything, it's made it easier to both steal and cover your tracks afterwards.
times have changed (Score:1)
Heists still happen, using different tools. (Score:5, Interesting)
But now the bank heists have become inside jobs, white collar and legal. Banks "lend" money to questionable borrowers and sell the loan to some unsuspecting investors, pocket the commission. The bank robbers pay themselves huge bonuses. When the loans go bad, it is the re-insurance companies, investors and eventually the tax payers who pay for it. They risk a billion dollars in loans to get measly bonus of 1 million dollars.
The real owners of these banks, the shareholders are so widespread and their power to control the bank has become so diffuse, it is basically inmates running the asylum situation in banks and other financial institutions.
We need laws to stop banks from becoming too big to fail. US Banks claim they need to get big to compete with foreign banks. Foreign banks claim they need to get big to compete with US banks. The solution is an unilateral move by USA. All banks with assets more than 1% of GDP should pay a tax to insure against systemic risks. And they should keep larger reserves. We can use free market tools and gradually deflate the big banks. Or they will be deflated suddenly by peasants with pitchforks.
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As a libertarian I recognize your right to store as much gasoline as you want in your garage for any reason you want with any level of safety you feel comfortable. But you may not have the ability to pay for the damages to your neighbors should an accident happen. It is perfectly reasonable, proper and constitutional
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I don't agree. Some libertarians might be okay with requiring insurance for storing gasoline because the hazards of storing gasoline can affect bystanders. The hazards of bad security at a bank only affect the bank's customers. The gasoline has externalities.
You seem to think that the two situations are similar because the people who are affected don't own the gasoline or the bank. But "affects someone aside from the owners" isn't what an externality means. You have to voluntarily choose to use the ban
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Those are indirect effects. We require automobile owners to buy insurance against hitting third parties, but we don't require automobile owners to buy insurance against the possibility that their car fails, and they can't get to work, and their employer has to pay the expense of hiring and training another person, and the employer needs to be reimbursed by the insurance for this.
The Hatton Gardens Heist (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll introduce you to the phrase "wombat thick old cunt" if nothing else.
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One less than formal news site I read had the quote: "Collins, described as a 'wombat thick old cunt', drove his own distinctive white Mercedes to the scene allowing police to crack the case"
Bullshit. (Score:1)
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When I looked awhile back one of the best years on record for the FBI was merely identifying 50% of the suspects in bank robberies. Despite the hype it would seem the chances of getting caught aren't all that high if one is semi competent. The big downside though is that it really doesn't pay all that well. It is far and away safer to just get a normal job.
Higher risk, less rewards? (Score:2)
Surely this is some type of bad joke. (Score:3)
There was a bank robbed in Eufaula, Oklahoma just yesterday.
High Speed chase shootings shootouts hostages and all.
http://www.newson6.com/story/3... [newson6.com]
The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One (Score:2)
William K. Black wrote a book with that title.
This is the introduction from his TEDx talk about bank fraud: [youtube.com]
"So today's class is on how to rob a bank, and it's clear the general public needs guidance because the average the average bank robbery nets only 7,500 dollars. Rank amateurs who know nothing about how to cook the books. The folks who know run our largest banks, and in our last go-round, they cost us over 11 trillion dollars. They cost us over 10 million jobs as well. So our task is to educate ourselv
10-ton hydraulic ram (Score:2)
If you think 10-ton hydraulic ram is impressive, it costs less than $100 and weighs about 20 pounds.
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No, it's double-plus good it is!
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We need to stop "too big to fail" and as far as banks are concerned scale back the FDIC to $10,000.
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Interesting numbers you are pulling out your arse there as the UK has a population of approx 60 million. so for there to be 11 per person there would have to be over 600 million CCTVs.
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Now 0.11 per person I can quite easily imagine :)