Word: heisted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...clockwork heist that lasted just two minutes. In that brief time, the four stickup men netted what was probably the biggest holdup haul in French history: $3,540,000. But the question that bedeviled Frenchmen last week was what in the world the culprits thought they could do with their loot. The bandits had made off with newly minted, neatly packaged, bronze-colored ten-franc coins-1,770,000 of them, to be exact-that weighed 17.7 tons and would require nearly 30 cu. yds. of space merely to store. If the four bandits each spend...
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...
...Mafia, for once, was not involved. The masterminds who pulled off Italy's ripest heist of the year are just greedy cheese merchants who smelled a good thing. When the Italian government last spring auctioned off 19,000 tons of Parmesan cheese that it had bought to support falling prices, a few wholesalers snapped up practically the whole lot-in effect, cornering the market. Ever since, the speculators have released their hoard of the golden, crumbly protein-rich cheese only when supplies were scarce...