Slashdot Mirror
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.
Did anyone else picture the Beagle Boys doing this when you read the article?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
That sucks.
With proper baffling you can quiet down just about anything. Also depends on the area. In many cities there's pretty much constant road-work being done. If they could possibly park it beside the street I'd bet almost everyone would just assume it was construction equipment and wouldn't even question it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What sucks enough must blow.
after all like software that does p2p its the cause of them being able to steal cash....we need to regulate and make sure you have controls for the vacuums
That's 15 times already that they've connected to the intertubes to illegally download stuff. HADOPI should have sent out 5 cut-off orders already. Oh wait, they are actually stealing real stuff? Carry on then.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Plus, you really can't underestimate the ability of people to ignore things that don't immediately concern them.
The famous "Somebody else's problem" field
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
So your saying the store simply surrendered?
Perhaps it isn't hurting the supermarket enough.
:).
The thieves have taken 4 years to suck up 500000 euros. That's 125000 per year.
Monoprix have more than 300 stores. If it costs more than 500 euros per store per year to install, maintain and support the extra security measures, it'll cost them more than the thieves are taking.
Monoprix might just be hoping that the police would eventually catch the thieves, and nobody else will copy them.
Will be a different thing if they shot or hurt people (since customers might stop going to their stores).
Lastly if the team has 3 members, assuming equal shares, each is only getting an average of about 40K per year. Not peanuts but definitely not a good way to get rich
In contrast, those infamous investment bankers and friends have certainly taken more than 40k/year each...
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).
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
Yes, but unfortunately dogs can't call the police and since they are the only animal which believes the operation of a vacuum cleaner is a sinister act worth alerting authorities for the thieves plan is pretty foolproof.
I'd always imagined the trick there is to present your case in a, "It's $350 per store, one time, but it'll cost you $1000/yr, per store, in lost/broken equipment and wasted man hours if we don't".
I don't doubt your experience at all. I can see things going down that way, corporate culture and all being what it is.
But I still don't get it.
If a guy with a small store would have to expense similar tasks, (locks on cabinets, a labeling system, etc).. at his level of the economy. Why is the same a problem for a huge 1000+ store chain? I mean, they are that big because they are making money - right? And you'd think that the economy of scale would mae the installation of some of these things even cheaper proportionally than it would be for the small shop guy.
Huh?
Risk assessment. The guy with one store only has one store. If someone steals his server, he is tits up till he replaces it. If someone steals one of the servers out of one of the 1000 stores, there are still 999 making money for the company.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA