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Thieves Use Vacuum To Siphon Cash From Safes
Tootech writes "A gang of thieves armed with a powerful vacuum cleaner that sucks cash from supermarket safes has struck for the fifteenth time in France. The burglars broke into their latest store near Paris and drilled a hole in the pneumatic tube that siphons money from the checkout to the strong-room. They then sucked rolls of cash totaling £60,000 from the safe without even having to break its lock. Police said the gang — dubbed the Vacuum Burglars — always raid Monoprix supermarkets and have hit 15 of the stores branches around Paris in the past four years. A spokesman added: 'They spotted a weakness in the company's security system and have been exploiting it ever since.'"
Sounds like someone has been watching "How To Beat The High Co$t Of Living". Anyone remember that movie? Similar plot, only it was a big bubble holding $1 million in cash in the middle of a shopping mall.
Thieves have attempted this approach for as long as this type of cash delivery system has existed, and consequently there are numerous security measures to prevent it. The ceiling space that contains the tubes is usually protected by motion sensors, the cash delivery system usually has some form of intrusion countermeasure that would detect a change in pressure, and the most simple method is a timer system that detects whether the money is received in the strong room N seconds after it's sent by the cashier, triggering an alarm if not.
It seems that for whatever reason this chain of stores hadn't implemented the basic security measures, or they were ineffective, probably due to human error (i.e. forgetting to set the alarm in the roofspace).
You are smart enough to use 'faux' to describe this news, but not to google on the French words: 'voleurs paris aspirateur'... For example the first link I found.
;-)
Other than that: Nice try, It's good to check for faux news, but be sure not to make a faux pas youself.
Or the ability of people to assume that weird activity is normal because the guy was wearing overalls and a cap and looked like a maintenance worker.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I have worked for a large retail chain, and I can whole-heartedly confirm this logic. They have a chain of over 1000 stores, and some of the costing that was done blew your mind.
Want to put a lock on the IT cabinet in each store? $100 per cabinet (buy the lock, pay the service guy to go in, train the store people to use the key/make duplicates). *1000 stores, and you're suddenly looking at a non-trivial amount of money for something that should be a simple, no brainer.
We saw similar things when we wanted to put a shelf in each cabinet to help organize the various little device that went in the cabinet. $200 per store ... forget it. Print labels to put on each piece of equipment to help the store identify it? $50 per store. Forget it.
It was a good experience ... we learned how to think in massive scale for every project, every little idea we had, but we also found it incredibly stifling. And thats why I *used* to work there.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Because at that scale, it's enough money to notice.
When I worked at a small 10-employee company, the owner would always get really good coffee for the break room. Cost a few $ more, but wasn't a big deal.
When I moved to a 20,000-employee company, the good coffee didn't last long, because $(peanuts * 20,000) is enough savings to be noticed (and increase the bonus of some executive, so he's not going to leave it on the table for the next guy).