How much would you charge to dig a 100 foot long tunnel, install supports and lighting throughout it and then break through more than a foot of concrete at the end? Surely more than the 6,000 pounds (about 10k USD) earned by these thieves in the UK.
The tunnel diggers did all their work to break into an ATM machine. Other criminals put similar levels of effort into robbing banks, with comparably meager results. The average bank robbery in the U.S. nets about $8,500. Compared to other types of robbery targets, banks have better security systems and more attention-getting power with law enforcement.
One of RBC’s criminologists might know why thieves stupidly go to such lengths to rob banks versus softer, richer targets. Are criminals being influenced by movies like the Bank Job, Heat, The Limey etc. into thinking that they will walk away from a bank robbery with millions of dollars?
The average lottery ticket in the U.S. pays about 50 cents “return on investment.”
“Average return” isn’t why people buy lottery tickets.
Maybe the bank robbers are being secretly subsidized by Wall Street to distract our attention.
It is the incentivizing magic of untaxed earnings.
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I don’t know if this holds across the population of bank robbers, but I went to high school with someone who robbed banks. He’s in prison now. As best I can reconstruct, having talked to people who stayed there (I moved away, and was never close to him), he was desparate once, and got away with it. This encouraged him to keep doing it, until he was caught.
This seems consistent with FBI statistics, that a majority of first-time bank robbers get away with it. Repeat performances are what gets you, and apparently the first-one’s-free sort of thing is hard to resist.
But yes, there are far better careers in theft to be had. Investment banking, for the overachievers from good schools, urban real estate for the ambitious from poorer places. Strivers of all backgrounds can get in on control fraud, if they work at it. That takes longer, though.
Add the recent Brazilian movie “Asalto al Banco Central” to the list. It’s based on a real-life heist in 2005 in Fortaleza. The thieves got away with 165 million reais (ca. $70m) in used banknotes destined for the shredder but still valid. If you want to be purist, it set the record for a real peacetime bank robbery; the 1987 Knightsbridge job was of a nonbank safe deposit, and the $900m taken by Qusay Hussein from the Iraqi Central Bank in 2003 should be seen as a last exercise of Saddam’s dictatorship.
please tell us more about these allegedly “softer, richer targets”. There seems to be some kind of unspoken premise at work here.
Keith, most bank robberies are fantastically low-rent affairs in which one person steps in to a bank with little or no planning and passes a note to a teller (often while unarmed). Planned multi-actor robberies are relatively rare, and the kind of heavy-lifting exercise you describe in the post is nearly unheard of. Banks are extremely prepared for the former: tellers give over the small amounts of money they directly control, the robber leaves - having been caught on cameras - often dye packs go off, and they’re frequently caught almost immediately. (Stupid-crook moves like writing the notes on the back of phone bills and such frequently help, too.) Jamie’s right, as well - some do get away with it, but repeat offenders don’t last long.
There are many better targets for the thinking robber. A check-cashing place, for example, will often have more cash available and doesn’t automatically become a federal crime, as bank robbery does.
Good points David. I probably should have specified that the oddness is when you have a group like this one who clearly are not impulsive and are also pretty smart, yet were stupid in the target they chose. If you are planful and tough, armored car robberies average far higher return than banks. Check-cashing places as you say are a good, soft target. I have known people who made a living knocking over crack houses; cowboy stuff, but lots of cash and the victim will not call the police (in California today marijuana dispensaries are probably also attractive). Maybe some of the smaller casinos in out of the way places are also better risk to reward ratio.
Dispensaries have dudes with guns protecting them. They are not in the business to get rolled.
The comparison is to banks not free money unguarded. And in any case there have been a number of robberies of dispensaries.
Keith,
Maybe it’s a combination of grossly imperfect information (which points to a rather obvious situational prevention measure: why don’t they put posters in bank branches informing about the low returns and high risks of bank robbery?), high impulsiveness (maybe driven by intoxication), and very low discount rates.
Best regards,
I’m not a criminologist, but I had a memorable dinner with one. He pointed out that most people think of criminals as rational people who plan their heists carefully, and weigh the risks and benefits before doing a crime, whereas most actual criminals are simply stupid and impulsive. This not only means that crime pays low wages (for those who aren’t caught the first time out). It means that enforcement efforts aimed at changing the risk/benefit analysis—longer sentences for a particular crime, for example—are largely ignored by the very people whose behavior they are intended to change.
There is a lot of evidence to support the contention that criminals in general are more impulsive and less intelligent than the average person. But that would not explain the behavior of this gang, who clearly were planful and resourceful yet still picked a well-guarded, low return target.
Your hypothesis that they watch too many movies is looking better and better.
The return from ATMs is highly variable. If you can hit a popular one shortly after reloading, the return could well exceed $100K or equivalent. And for people whose alternative is otherwise likely low-wage and demeaning work that could be a good bet.
The other thing about ATMs, as opposed to softer targets, is that there’s no person to kill or injure (or to be killed or injured by). If you care about that kind of thing, it’s a big deal. (Willie Sutton’s memoir has a remarkable passage about the turning point of his career when he switched from safecracking to armed robbery; apparently the steel in some safe was just too thick to cut overnight, even with a custom-made high-speed torch, so the gang was reduced to pulling a gun on the first clerk to arrive in the morning. And then they said, “Hey, this is much easier.”)
I almost have the feeling the project was its own reward. Not quite as cool as digging the tunnel, breaking through the 15 inches of concrete, and not stealing any money, though.