Word: heist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...floor Security Pacific National Bank headquarters in Los Angeles looks like a granite-and-glass fortress. Dark-suited guards roam the lobby. Hidden cameras photograph customers as they make deposits and withdrawals. Yet last month, this stronghold was the site of a $10.2 million heist, the largest bank robbery in U.S. history. There were no guns, no masks, no getaway cars; indeed, the FBI reports that the Stanley Mark Rifkin thief never touched the money. The robber was so clever that the bank did not realize it had been robbed until told so by the FBI eight days afterward. Last...
...tale of Stanley Rifkin and the incredible bank heist actually began in early October. According to the San Diego Union, he approached Lon Stein, a reputable diamond dealer in Los Angeles, and claimed to be representing a legitimate company named Coast Diamond Distributors. Rifkin wanted to buy millions of dollars worth of diamonds. Stein placed the order with Russalmaz, a firm founded by the Soviet Union in 1976 to sell its diamonds. On Oct. 14, Russalmaz's office in Geneva received a message from a man identified only as a Mr. Nelson of Security Pacific National Bank, confirming that Stein...
...class in high school, relied on a bizarre defense: he had stolen the money, but only to invest it in colonies in outer space as a way for earthlings to escape pollution and overpopulation. Moreover, he planned to pay the money back in 20 years or so, making the heist a forced loan rather than a robbery...
Police believed that "the great piggy-bank robbery," as Paris papers called the heist, was almost certainly an inside job. Whoever masterminded the theft first had to know that the Administration des Monnaies et Medailles, which mints French coins, frequently ships them as ordinary freight, on the theory that transporting cash anonymously is safer than using armed guards. Next he had to know how and when last week's consignment was due to be transferred from the administration's plant in Pessac, outside Bordeaux, to the Bank of France in Paris. That intelligence was even more strictly guarded...
National Passions. The heist was so professional that police suspect the thieves have ties to organized crime and may have little trouble fencing their take -although not at face value. Casinos, race tracks and other businesses that deal in large volumes of change should be able to absorb the coins (provided police informers don't spot them). Moreover, several national passions-ranging from tippling to the weekly tierce horse race-force cafes to keep large amounts of coins on hand. Last year two crooks who had stolen $80,000 in one-franc coins tried to convince police that...