Is it still possible to get away with a heist?

Check out this Wikipedia summary:

>Named after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films, Pink Panthers is the name given by Interpol to an international jewel thief network, composed mainly of ethnic Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks, which is responsible for some of the most audacious thefts in criminal history.[2] They are responsible for what have been termed some of the most glamorous heists ever, and one criminologist even described their crimes as "artistry".[1] They have targeted several countries and continents, and include Japan's most successful robbery ever amongst their thefts. A film documentary based upon their thefts, Smash & Grab, was released in 2013.

>Some law enforcement agencies suspect that the group is responsible for over US$500 million in gold robberies in Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Monaco. Law enforcement authorities suspect their involvement in the robbery of the jewelry store Harry Winston in Paris, on 9 December 2008. The thieves escaped with more than €80 million worth of jewelry.

Fascinating!

Rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Panthers

So to answer that rhetorical question whether "it is still possible to get away with a heist"... well, yes, if you are are really, really good at it.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/19/how-the-us-lost-billions-over...

In 2013 , in France, we had the biggest jewerly heist of the country's last ten years ( http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/05).

It was in Cannes, a city known for it's movie festival. The place is pretty rich, as you can imagine, because of the stars handing around and the fact it's in the south of France, on a sunny beach.

On that day, there was a Jewelry gallery called "Extraordinary Diamond" at the Carlton hotel and some guy arrived ALONE, with only a mask and a gun. He took 103 millions euros worth of goods, then went away. Nobody heard of him since.

So yeah, it's still possible to get away with a heist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_burglary_at_Fort...

http://www.geek.com/news/thieves-hack-casino-cameras-pull-of...

I'd imagine that the guy who pulled it off must have been already rich, you can't quickly win that amount of money by betting tiny amounts (in Australia), you have to start off with something big. There have been no news since then so I assume they flew home and got away with it.

>Described by one source as a "whale" - a gambler who wins and loses huge amounts - he was hit with a withdrawal of licence notice, prohibiting him from entering the Southbank complex. It is believed he has since returned to his home country.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-t...

I think people constantly over estimate our generalized competence. Just because technology exists doesn't mean it is widely deployed or even used properly when done so. And even if it is, the humans behind it are often the weakest link and can be tricked or forced to defeat it.

So yes, there is a lot of room for heist in spite of technology. The hard part remains as it always is.. human element, political element for reaching "safety" or escaping easy identification/capture, etc.

That description doesn't match the bitcoin heists over the past few years. Mt Gox alone was $460M USD. I suspect some of the individual losses weren't uh, tiny.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...

I think it is bad form to state the British decline in 'heists' as absolute numbers and then the US decline as a percentage. It obscures the point.

Moreover, the headline article's calculated decline in US heists is 'fell by 60 per cent between 2004 and 2014'; however the article it references [1] states a reduction from 6822 to 3961, which I interpret as a 42% decline.

Or my reading comprehension skills are completely foobar'd this evening.

I don't know that it is entirely fair of me, but my tendency is to become more skeptical of the article overall when attention to smaller details like these are lacking.

[0] Headline Article [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/14/todays-bonnie-and-clydes-gett...

That said it is always interesting to see people do things like the smash and grab burglaries in Marseilles or the Riviera.

    The Hatton Garden raid was meticulous in its planning, dazzling 
    in its complexity – yet still the burglars were caught.

The people doing heists and getting away with it crack the security on a website and steal the database and sell the information in it. I think that electronic heists are easier to get away with than physical heists. Plus the company targeted will just use PR to try and cover up the fact that they got cracked or issue a warning to their users that someone accessed their information. Identity Theft is growing but the people who steal personal information sell it to others to raise the money they need so the people they sell it to get caught instead of themselves.

Obviously banks still need to keep some cash on hand, but I'd think that most smaller banks (which are presumably the easier ones to rob) would've abandoned keeping the classic "giant vault with stacks of cash". (the article brings this up briefly, but doesn't really quantify it). And as the number of places that do have big piles of cash decreases, the amount of resources that can be put into protecting each one increases, so you'd expect the difficulty of robbing them to increase faster then linerally with decreasing numbers sites.

Yes.

The security at Hatton Garden was poor. Over that Easter weekend the vault was left completely unattended. When the burglars did set off the alarm the security guard did not check the vault, he checked whether the front door had been unlocked and left it at that.

There was nobody watching CCTV from inside the vault although the main building had CCTV the vault wasn't exactly protected that way.

One of the burglars did turn up at the scene of the crime in his own car, this was a bit stupid!!! That gave the Flying Squad all the information they needed to start investigating the gang.

So, in response to the question, it is perfectly possible to steal poorly defended valuables where poorly defended means no CCTV etc.

As for whether it is possible to escape through a built up area with the stolen goods, the stolen goods part is irrelevant, is it possible to go missing in a city? Yes!

Also, how much of this is due to parallel construction resulting from the collaboration between the intel agencies and their investigative counterparts?

Big heists don't happen as much mainly due to benefit denial. Banks and armored cars don't carry the kinds of cash they used to, so robbing them isn't worth the risk, however it still is worth robbing an airport or shipping docks if you have inside help so that crime persists.

Here most advanced criminals just get into money laundering or counterfeiting, like that guy who served exactly zero time in prison for being caught with 100s of millions worth of phony USD http://www.gq.com/long-form/the-great-paper-caper

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39b67t/im_a_retired_ba...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery

I'm starting to be convinced of a genetic tie to how the Slavic peoples have a particular mental mutation that gives them +11 to intelligence/cunning in a wider offering than is generally distributed to the global population.

We have seen, consistently, over history their contributions and excelling behavior in whatever area...

There is something to say about this particular mutation that the Slavic DNA has.

Please do not equate what I am saying with any Arian bullshit that's not what I mean: I have met a TON of Slavic people that have prodigy level capabilities.

Tesla being my ultimate example of a Slavic person who has mental capacity beyond...

A best friend of mine has a five year old son who can speak three languages...

We need to determine how why this happens?

All peoples are awesome and amazing and beautiful, but the density of extreme-high-level-scientific contribution from a particular genetic group needs to be looked at.

I just find this to be statistically very weird and interesting!

Is this real or perceived?

The question of the authorities catching you is actually the least interesting part of the question. Suppose you weren't caught by the police following your heist:

How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own? How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do?

What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled. (Think all of the things that fall under forensic or other evidence!)

As a secondary consideration, your relations with other people would also be terrible. Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from? How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught? What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it.