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Comment by waterlesscloud | Hacker News Reader

For a year or so in college, I worked at night for a security firm. I spent several months working in a bank's operation center, watching the camera feeds from the branches overnight. Anyway, for some reason part of the training for that job mentioned that the average bank robbery at the time grossed only about $1500 (about $4000 now). Plus the robbers would almost certainly be on video and the FBI was automatically involved. And with dye packs (bundles of cash that explode with brightly colored dye) and other measures... Well, robbing a bank was a pretty stupid plan.

The other months of that job involved patrolling the HQ for a phone company, including the central computer rooms. One day we got a memo about a well-known hacker group that had dressed up in suits and just walked into the building because the daytime guards weren't checking IDs. Ha.

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When I worked at a fast food joint in a mall, our boss had us move the safe after the mall closed to bring it to a new location.

Picture two 19 year olds rolling a safe on a handtruck to a rental van parked in front of a the mall entrance at 11PM. The mall rent a cop came up to us and yells "What the hell do you think you are doing?"

My coworker snaps "WTF do you think? We've moving the safe -- get that door for us!". He did, and we rolled the safe into the van, then headed for our cars.

It is a well known social hack to simply put a good suit on, walk up to people like you belong there, make them feel important and then get them to do whatever it is you want.

You can go anywhere in life if you look serious and carry a clipboard

If you have a suit + high-vis vest + hard hat you can take over the world !

And a full size video camera. I've been issued temporary press passes at a Republican fundraiser by signing out a professional grade camera at the local cable company (after a four hour course), telling security we were with CCTV (they didn't blink), and CNN let us use some of their lights!

Not sure whether you were aware of this, but CCTV are a real network - it's China's state owned TV company, which also produces global and English language content - so saying you're from a global TV network is probably not that blink-worthy.

cue the theme music for "Burn Notice" ... :-)

Yes, this is known as "Management."

In the DC area a year or two ago, two bank robbers impersonated the armored car company and took money from two banks in the same day. People didn't recognize them, they said the other guy was off today. I don't think they were caught.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/01/13/bank-robber-dresses-up...

I think that there may just be easier targets. A few years back I spent a night in jail (don't ask), in the same cell there was a guy who was quite happy to talk about his M.O., he specialized in lifting the floor safes from small strip mall fast food joints (places like Subway). Apparently they don't keep much in them overnight, but because they close long after banks do, it's just easier to keep the till float and evening takings in the floor overnight. He gave a startlingly detailed description (he was in withdrawal and just wanted any distraction) of how quickly and easily he could get into the unit, find the safe, pull it out of the floor and be out of there in just a few minutes. He claimed between $1K and $3K was usually in there... at which point why bother with pulling over a bank.

In his own words he got caught because he was "too successful, I was taking so many drugs I got stupid, the cops pulled me over with safes and paraphernalia in the trunk"

This was really the opposite experience I had when I was a teller in a bank. The amounts were similar but the chance of getting caught was slim. We had a binder of local bank roberies that we updated when the person was caught. It was usually rare for a person to get caught unless they were really dumb about te roberery (told someone such as friend they thought they could trust or their license was recorded) or they got greedy and came back several times. The banks never pursued the robbers very hard because the money was all insured. If a robber was smart he would tell the teller to not put a dye pack in the money and we were always instructed to follow those kinds of orders ... There was no reason to be a hero. Also if you ever want to rob a bank don't threaten that you have a weapon ... Armed robbery is a much more severe punishment than unarmed.

The FBI says the modern bank robber walks in, gives the teller a note, takes the money and leaves within 90 seconds. He never carries a weapon and gets less than $2k, but if he's reasonably smart he can rob 30-40 banks before being caught.

That's terrible pay, when you think about it. You're always on the road, and you spend a couple days on each bank. You might as well sell insurance for a living.

The key here is that you would eventually get caught. Then what? Those years add up fast.

Oh, I agree. The point was even if you don't get caught you're not doing that much better than someone with a job.

At least some economists agree: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrat...

I think robbers know that, too. Bank robbing is old school. Robbing Gas pumps also has gotten too risky to be worth the trouble; they keep way less money around than they used to and they have video recorders everywhere. So, nowadays, your best bet is mom and pop shops, at least that is what I read in the papers :-)

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