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Bank Heists - Another Profession That Technology Is Killing Off
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.
Classic, physical bank heists may be dying out, but people are still robbing banks - they're just doing it online now instead. Why go physically, when you can steal millions from the other side of the world, where as long as you keep current to the bribes to your local crooked cops in the Former East Nowhere SSR, you don't even have to worry about getting caught. At least, not until you take a trip somewhere...
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.
Summation 2
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
And it can be done from anywhere in the world.
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.
Banks rob you!
They stay in bed and do these things instead.
The fact that they do not rob banks anymore does not mean there is no theft anymore. Just that it is done differently now.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Crime is no longer a lifestyle that one can choose to follow all through life. Now one had best be highly educated and born with a high IQ or take up honest work as you will be caught. But soon, detection of white collar crimes will become far more common as well as easy. Computers and software will make all the difference. It is becoming possible to look at bank accounts, charge cards, debit cards and money transfers, quickly and easily. A deep look at many people will show that they are spending more than they claim that they earn. Insurance fraud, tax fraud and other white collar crime will suddenly be revealed. A simple example is taking out insurance and claiming that you do not smoke or drink. Thanks to modern technology we might be able to discover exactly how much tobacco and alcohol you purchase in a years time. Gotcha!
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.
"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."
It's good to see that some forms of crime are alive and well in contexts where they can't be picked up by CCTV.
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?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
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.
No, it's double-plus good it is!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's no longer about sawn-offs and balaclavas, its about constant probing, ddos, threat testing, malware, social engineering etc. The cat and mouse game continues but its now done with faceless teams from far away countries.
Yes, the crooks were caught because everyone is seen as a crook and therefore monitored. The fact that bank robberies have diminished is the smallest difference with the past. In the past, the police was meant to protect civilians, not to stalk them. They did not visit your house if you used your freedom of expression. And the banks were at least not openly robbing the taxpayer. A lot has changed.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
We are breeding them.
But it's not the oldest profession...
These people are not "staying in bed," they're moving on to modern financial crimes like stealing credit card numbers and online banking passwords.
So you want to "rob a bank" big time? ...
Simplest and most profitable way is to be a bank owner. Rob the people by giving them "cheap loans" and they will throw you the "protection money" sorry i mean the percentages and annual fees on the "loaned money".
And if you want more money, pribe politicians to get a "good bank legislation". Make it so, that nobody can do business to business transactions without a bank transfer (no paper money). Make it so, that the companies and businesses must put the employee salaries to bank account and make it criminal (or really hard) to give it in cash.
Afterwards you can fake a "world monetary collapse", rob all the saving in the bank, tell people "becouse of the monetary collapse and economic disaster the bank is going to collapse", and let the pribed politicians give you more and more public money to "help banks". Pocket that money and live like a true king of the earth
And right below this story is one about "cyber-scammers" stealing €50M from a bank account. Show me the last time an in-person bank robbery netted that much. Why rob banks of a few tens or hundreds of thousands when you can make off with €50,000,000 without getting up from your computer desk?
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
there was some way to stop the banks from robbing the people.
How does the bank "openly" rob the "taxpayer"?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
That number is wildly inaccurate. It was based on an approximate count of the number of cameras on a busy London shopping street, extrapolated to assume the number was consistent for all businesses, and guessing the number for government organisations.
Can I suggest anyone not familiar with the Hatton Gardens heist please go and read up on it. You won't be disappointed. It's the court case that keeps on giving.
It'll introduce you to the phrase "wombat thick old cunt" if nothing else.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Like so many other things, old-style stick-em-up heists with masked hoodlums in crowded banks methodology migrates to the so-called Third World (aka "developing countries" for the politically correct), where all the fancy hi-tech gizmos lag behind.
And so, the rich get richer and the poor get robbed.
Actually, robbing a bank does not carry the ROI it once did. Most banks don't carry enough in the way of cash and unless its a major heist of greater than $30 million its probably just not worth it once split many ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery
There are far easier ways to wrongly acquire millions or billions of dollars. Security is only as good as its weakest link.
Stupidest sentence of the day?
Hardened criminals simply aren't doing "heists." Maybe they're not stealing from banks anymore (though they probably are, even if not on "heist form"), but they're still around. And some of the crimes might be legal.
As the inputs change, the optimization function is just going to find a new point.
banks heist people.
This article reads like a shill piece trying to defend the use of city-wide CCTV cameras.
It's literally Orwellian surveillance, and people have become so used to it that they praise the camera system for helping prevent thefts that aren't worth committing, anymore.
Only a handful of thieves steal for the "rush." Most steal because it's easier than working for the money.
As everyone has said, in-person bank heists are going down because the thieves are primarily crackers, now.
CCTV is still a dangerous tool that can be exploited by anyone in a position of power with ill intent.
What if a U.K. version of the Donald Trump gets elected? Crazier men have already been elected mayor in Washington, D.C., U.S. and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
How will you feel about UK Visas and Immigration watching your every move when some Tory nutter decides that you're no longer legally allowed in the UK?
There were 3 bank robberies in my area in the last 5 years that remain unsolved.
These days, apart from the ATMs, they pretty much do not have any cash to steal. At least, not in the UK.
People call it a "bail-out".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Apart from the fact you'll be on about 2 dozen cameras going in, I imagine most banks don't carry anywhere near as much cash these days as people don't use it much. I don't think I've had more than a tenner in my pocket in the last 20 years. Cards or wristbands pay for everything from a pint of milk to a new TV.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
"Welcome to Hatton Gardens.
Lots of people store very valuable possessions here - we publicize that widely!
Please rob us, it'll be worth the effort!"
Bing News headline today: 2 people reported dead after eastern Oklahoma bank robbery
More like governments have cornered the market on it.
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.
Now 0.11 per person I can quite easily imagine :)
OK. I agree completely with that. But that's a bit different than the general statement put forth by the OP.
We need to stop "too big to fail" and as far as banks are concerned scale back the FDIC to $10,000.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Sure, there may be fewer heists, but boy are they whoppers! Something about derivatives and credit default swaps.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The best bank thieves are internal to the bank. The current technology and lack of enforcement is allowing current white collar criminals to steal millions and walk away. So, while technology may be harming smash and grab operators and blue-collar criminals, it is likely enabling a different kind of criminal entirely.
There was a bank robbed in Eufaula, Oklahoma just yesterday.
High Speed chase shootings shootouts hostages and all.
http://www.newson6.com/story/3...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
William K. Black wrote a book with that title.
This is the introduction from his TEDx talk about bank fraud:
"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 ourselves so we can understand why we have these recurrent intensifying financial crises and how we can prevent them in the future. And the answer to that is that we have to stop epidemics of control fraud. Control fraud is what happens when the people who control, typically a CEO, a seemingly legitimate entity, use it as a weapon to defraud."
If you think 10-ton hydraulic ram is impressive, it costs less than $100 and weighs about 20 pounds.