Warhol Art Stolen

 The BBC reports that two works of art by Andy Warhol have been stolen from a museum in the Netherlands.

LA: Bank Robbery Capital of the World

 CrimeReads.com has an article about a period in the 1980s and 90s when there was an average of one bank robbery every hour in Los Angeles.

Between 1985 and 1995 the approximately 3,500 retail bank branches in the region were hit 17,106 times. 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks.

Rédoine Faïd - French Escape Artist

 GQ magazine has a profile of Rédoine Faïd a French criminal and prison escapee who was inspired by crime movies.

A notorious thief—the architect of a flurry of dazzling heists and blockbuster robberies in the 1990s that targeted banks, jewelry stores, and armored cars—Faïd became more infamous still in 2013, when he blasted out of the Sequedin prison, near Lille, where he'd been serving time after a botched robbery, using smuggled explosives. 

Failed Texas Thieves Escape in Bayou Boat

 ABC13 reports that thieves tried to rob a museum in Royal Oaks, Texas.  After being discovered they fled in a bayou boat and then escaped into the city's storm drain system.

Followup: Illicit Cultural property also has a post on the failed heist with a few links to other articles.

via JRM

Armoured car attacked by diggers

Boing Boing has a post - mostly a series of tweets with pictures - about an armoured car in Italy that was stopped by thieves and then ripped open with two diggers.  They got away with over 2 million Euros.

$100 million painting on back of bedroom door

Illicit Cultural Property has an article about a $100 million painting that was recovered after the death of a couple from New Mexico.  The painting was stolen, by an unknown couple, in 1985.

Also mentioned on Kottke.org

Houston Armoured Car Robbers

Texas Monthly has an article about the ringleader of a gang of Houston based armoured car robbers.

The gang were caught after police received, and paid for, an anonymous tip which named the leader.  The police then spent months following the gang members waiting for them to strike.  I think this illustrates the downside of the gang's particularly nasty technique of deliberately shooting the armoured car worker carrying the bags of money.

Ex-SAS robber caught because of dog hair

The Telegraph has an article about an ex-SAS soldier who was arrested for armed robbery after one of his dog's hairs was found at the scene.  I can see how they might not have covered that in special ops school.

The former special operations soldier, who was named locally as Derek, was held by gendarmes after detectives traced all Britons in the area who owned a Jack Russell, Le Parisien newspaper reported.

Brazilian gang take $40 million in armed robbery

The Washington Post has an article about a very violent, large team robbery of $40 million from a transportation company in Paraguay.

Dozens of gunmen blocked highways, burned trucks and cars, sealing off the perimeter of their target for hundreds of yards. The assailants, who were wearing flak jackets and driving in armored vehicles, used explosives and .50 caliber guns to blow the facade off a transportation company office in Ciudad del Este, a town in Paraguay near the smugglers' haven in the border region with Brazil and Argentina. They killed a policeman, broke open the vault and then escaped -- apparently fleeing by motorboats up the Paraná River -- with millions of dollars.

via Boing Boing 

Blowing Up ATMs

Bloomberg.com has an article about a  gang in the UK that stole cash from ATMs by filling them with gas and then blowing them up.  Dangerous but effective - at least in 2014.

More on Belgian diamond heist

The New York Times has a follow up article on the Belgian airport diamond robbery.  It seems it may not have been as well planned as originally thought.

1990 Art Thieves IDed by FBI

According to ABC the FBI has identified, though not publicly, the people involved in a massive 1990 art theft in Boston. 

On the night of March 18, 1990, two thieves posed as Boston police officers. Once inside the museum, they tied up the guards and left with 13 masterpieces, including works by Degas and Rembrandt, valued at a total of $500 million.

The statute of limitations has since run out on the theft and officials have said naming the suspects would be "imprudent," given the continuing effort to recover the art work. DesLauriers said the announcement today, on the 23rd anniversary of the heist, was intended to increase public awareness, possibly leading to the artwork being found.

Brussels Airport Diamonds Heist

The Guardian has a report on a very smoothly executed robbery at the Brussels airport where thieves dressed as police stole $50 million worth of diamonds.

The men flashed machine guns but no shots were fired as they took 120 parcels from the plane's hold, stacking them in their vehicles. They fled at high speed through the hole in the security fence. The van believed to have been used in the raid was later found burnt out just outside Brussels.

Ine Van Wymersch, spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor, said: "They were well prepared. There were passengers on the plane but they saw nothing of what was going on."

Bank Robber Leaves Suspect Package

The DCist has an article about a bank robbery in Washington DC where the robber complicated things by leaving a suspicious package behind.  Whether this helped or not is unclear.

Gang get 24 years from ATM robberies

Yahoo has the story of a British gang who repeatedly robbed ATMs.

Wearing balaclavas to hide their faces, they smashed their way into supermarkets using axes and hammers before breaking into ATMs with saws normally used for cutting rail tracks.

The quartet also carried out burglaries in which high-performance cars, including a BMW M3 and Audi RS4, were targeted and used to escape the scene of their cash-point raids at speeds of up to 150mph.

 There is some information on how they were caught:

Investigators made a breakthrough when they spotted men acting suspiciously around an Audi RS4 at a lock-up in Harborne, on the outskirts of Birmingham.

The vehicle was followed to a garage where forensics experts lifted clues from its interior which identified the four men as suspects.

Simple Theft of Dali

The New York Times has the story about the very low tech theft of a Dali drawing from a New York City gallery.

The man who stole a drawing by the Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí on Tuesday wore only the most basic of disguises: that of an everyday gallery visitor, walking past the Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst works on display. And he brought only the most basic of tools for his heist: a black shopping bag.

Economics of Robbing Banks

Significance Magazine has an article (PDF warning) about the economics of robbing banks.  It turns out they aren't very good.

The average US bank robbery nets considerably less: some $43303, compared to an average of $1589 for all commercial robberies.  (There is a sector low of $769 for robberies from convenience stores.)

via FlowingData

$100 Million Painting Recovered

Al Jazeera has an article about the recovery of a Cezanne painting stolen in an armed robbery in 2008.

Art experts have suggested the robbers took advantage of low security at the Swiss museum without knowing about the paintings or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known stolen art works.

Followup: ARCA has a more detailed post with many links.

via JRM

Failed Armed Robbery in Paris

The BBC has a summary of a failed armed robbery at a safe deposit centre in Paris.  One guard was kill in an explosion when the gang, who were well armed and dressed like police, tried to blow their way into the facility.

The Sydney Morning Herald also has a story.

$3.2 Million Watch Theft

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a robbery in Tokyo where thieves broke through a wall and stole 200 luxury watches worth 300 million yen ($3.2 million).

via Bruce Schneier