Interview with a getaway driver

 The Drive has an interview with former jewelry store robber and driver Larry Lawton (who seems to have a YouTube channel).  Lawton explains how to choose an appropriate getaway car.

All were simply rented from a company like Hertz under somebody else's name with Lawton listed as the co-driver. They were picked up as normal and simply returned when the job was done. Lawton and his accomplices would pay for the car, case the store they planned to rob, and then use it in the actual robbery.

Convict escapes with tool dropped from drone

USA Today has an article about a criminal who escaped from prison using wire cutters dropped into the prison by a remote controlled drone.

via Slashdot

Caught rigging the lottery

BGR.com have an article about an insider who fixed the Multi-State Lottery.  The interesting part from our point of view is how he got caught.

In 2012, lottery officials in Iowa grew suspicious when a New York lawyer “representing a newly created trust” withdrew a claim for a $16.5 million jackpot after being asked to reveal who had initially purchased the ticket. Curious as to who in their right mind would turn down $16.5 million, video of the winning ticket purchase was eventually released to the public.

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.

Casino Extortion

Damn Interesting has a long post about a very interesting extortion attempt on a Lake Tahoe, Nevada casino in 1980.

Jewel Robbery at Cannes

The Atlantic Wire reports on a robbery in France during the Cannes Film Festival.  Someone left $1 million worth of jewellery in a hotel room safe and when they came home early in the morning the safe had been ripped off the wall and the contents stolen.

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.

Art Theft: Just Buy It

The Art Newspaper has an article about an interesting tactic in art theft.  Instead of stealing it, buy it at auction and then pay with a stolen credit card.

via Illicit Cultural Property

$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

Digging into a Cash Machine

The BBC reports that a gang of thieves in Manchester built a hundred foot long tunnel into an ATM machine.

The passageway was about 4ft (1.2m) tall and had been fitted with lighting and roof supports.
...
Officers believe the people responsible could have spent up to six months digging the passageway.

Unfortunately

However, the thieves only escaped with about £6,000 - because the machine had not been re-filled after the New Year bank holiday.

Yahoo also have an article.

Stealing Vegetables

The New York Times has an article about a gang that steals truck loads of produce.  The interesting thing is not what was stolen - a trailer of produce can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars - but the way it was done.  The thieves set up their own trucking company, got the contract to deliver the goods then drove away with it never to be seen again.

via Bruce Schneier

Beware of NYPD license plate readers

The New York Times has an article about the NYPD's license readers and how they have been used to solve a variety of crimes.

Breaking into cars through the door

Blackbag has an article about how thieves in the Netherlands have taken to cutting though the metal of the car door to disable both that alarm and locks.

The Amsterdam Diamond Heist

Wired has an excellent article about the $100 million Amsterdam diamond burglary. The article is long and fairly thorough and I'm sure that there is a lot to be learned from it.

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done.

Twins foil DNA tests

Der Spiegel has an article about two German twins who have been released by police because authorities can't determine which one of them was responsible for DNA found at a crime scene.

Prisoner escapes in box

The BBC has an article about a prisoner who escaped a German jail by mailing himself out in a box.

At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.

The chief warden of the jail told the BBC this was an embarrassing incident.