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Comment by seph-reed | Hacker News Reader

I was watching point break last week, and temporarily felt bad that bank robberies can't really happen anymore. If for no other reason, because they make a good story line.

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Over three thousand banks were robbed in 2018 in the US alone.

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/bank-crime-statistics-20...

I was in the Quad Cities (Iowa/Illinois interface) in the spring and there was a bank robbery pretty much every other week. Turned out to be the same guy each time, but as an East-coaster who's not too familiar with the Midwest there was a couple of months I was convinced that bank-robbing simply never died out in the heartland.

Bank robberies rarely ever happened like Point Break to begin with. The average bank robbery is a quiet affair conducted with a slipped note and the implication of a gun.

I interviewed a family friend who had then recently retired from chasing bank robbers in the FBI for a school project a decade and change ago. The biggest take-a-way was his assertion that, at least at that time, anyone could get away with robbing a bank once. It's not getting away with the crime itself that's hard: it's not leaving a pattern on the next one.

Have also heard this from someone in law enforcement. He said it's the easiest crime to get away with, as long as you only do it once and don't particularly care about the money. The dye packs make it hard to spend.

I've heard it claimed that bank tellers won't risk giving a bank robber dye packs if the robber specifically demands no dye packs. But I'm pretty skeptical of this..

They still happen, including a ‘Heat’-esque one in Brazil the other day [0].

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55155377

If your interested in a semi modern bank robbery. Evil Genius on netflix is a strange and winding story that begins with one.

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