Theft of Swedish Crown Jewels

According to an article in the Ottawa Citizen (also Yahoo News and the BBC ) thieves smashed the case of a display holding the Swedish crown jewels and then fled the area in a waiting speedboat.

On Tuesday, two thieves stole one 17th century golden orb and two crowns from a cathedral near Stockholm where they had been on display in an alarm-locked glass box, before escaping by speedboat into the Mälaren lake that spans 120 kilometres and is filled with hundreds of small islands.

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.

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

Hatton Garden ringleaders ordered to pay back

The BBC reports that the ringleaders of the gang that pulled the Hatton Garden heist have been ordered to repay GBP27.5m or spend more time in prison.

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 

Rare Book Heist

The Guardian has an article about a robbery of GBP3 million worth of rare books that were stolen by thieves who cut a hole in a warehouse roof and rappelled down to avoid sensors.

The gang are reported to have climbed on to the building’s roof and bored holes through the reinforced glass-fibre skylights before rappelling down 40ft of rope while avoiding motion-sensor alarms.
Scotland Yard confirmed that “a number of valuable books”, many from the 15th and 16th centuries, were stolen during the burglary in Feltham between 29 and 30 January.

Followup: Smithsonian.com has a post which links to  several other articles about the theft.  They also explain why the books were there:

The books were being temporarily stored in the warehouse on their way to the California Book Fair.