Burrowing Burglars Bilk Bank of Big Bucks
by Mary Beth Guard, Executive Editor
Patience is a virtue usually in short supply among those who live on the wrong side of the law, but a gang of South American bank burglars demonstrated perseverance and a willingness to take their time as they burrowed their way to a burglary of mammoth proportions. BankersOnline examines this caper and looks at measures to foil similar exploits.
Picture a tubular passage underground in the middle of a busy city:
13 feet deep;
28 inches high;
262 feet long (approximately the length of 2 city blocks);
lit with electricity
reinforced with wood panels and lined with plastic sheeting.
Threats from
Above and Below This isnt' the first time a financial institution has been infiltrated from underground. The most famous tunnel-based bank robbery involved a gang dubbed the "Sewer Rats" that entered the bank vault of Societe General Bank on the French Riviera from below and started popping open safe deposit boxes, looking for coins, jewelry, cash and other valuable items. The July, 1976 heist reportedly resulted in losses of $10 million.
More common are entries from above. Organized gangs have been known to target flat-roofed branches over 3-day weekends, cutting open the ceiling and lowering themselves into the bank via ropes. They typically use powerful torches or lasers to cut their way into the vault and take their time emptying it out. During the 90s, this type of crime was commonly associated with gangs dubbed YACS (so-named due to their Yugoslavian, Albanian, Croatian, Serbian members). Over the weekend of August 6, 2005, a gang of thieves finished a tunnel that had been three months in the making and emerged inside the vault of a regional branch of the Brazilian Central Bank, managing to avoid setting off motion detectors, alarms and cameras as they broke into boxes of banknotes that had been set aside for inspection and possible replacement. The crooks were long gone with the cash by the time the theft was discovered after the bank opened on Monday. Authorities set the amount taken at the equivalent of $65.2 million U.S., making it one of the largest bank heists in history.
Many individuals who steal from banks are so disorganized and ill-prepared that they forget to bring paper to write a note, or a container to hold the stolen funds. Not so with this group of bandits. They rented a house about two blocks away from the target institution, indicating they would be manufacturing artificial turf. A sign reportedly said it was a landscaping company selling plants and natural and artificial grass. Had anyone bothered to watch, they might have noticed that while six to ten people toiled at the location virtually every day, no customers ever came to purchase landscaping material. Every day, however, a truck left the premises, loaded up with dirt.
In the belly of the house, under cover of walls and roof, a passageway was slowly being dug. With the sounds of excavation masked by the hustle and bustle of the city of Fortaleza, the apparently well-organized crooks steadily burrowed toward the bank and, ultimately, through its thick, steel-reinforced concrete floor, escaping with cash and leaving behind electric chainsaws, a blowtorch, bolt cutter, drill, and questions. Lots of questions.
How did the thieves know the exact location of the vault?
Why didn't the motion sensors activate?
Why didn't the cameras work?
Did the gang have inside help?
Is this burglary related to a 2004 tunnel job that involved the theft of more than $1 million from a Sao Paolo, Brazil, company that transports money for banks? That job was reportedly masterminded by a guy who had escaped from prison by digging a tunnel three years earlier. (Have to stick with what you're good at, you know.)
With worldwide publicity about the huge amount the crooks were able to grab in the Brazilian job, you can bet there are a few knuckleheads out there with big dreams and few brains, pulling together a tunnel starter kit.
We spoke with John Pearce from the financial and banking division of ADT about this crime and the type of security measures that could help detect and defeat it. John noted that it's not uncommon for thieves to attempt to cut power lines and alarm lines. Depending upon how the security system is set up, this may simply trigger what appears to be a false alarm. Police arrive, the designated bank employee is dragged out of bed, only to find that the perimeter of the bank appears to be secure and there is no apparent evidence of a break-in. The doors are still locked, and no one goes inside to open the vault door. In fact, time locks may make it virtually impossible to open the vault before business hours, so with no apparent evidence of a break-in from the outside, the alarm activation is shrugged off as a probable bogus alert. Meanwhile, the thieves are inside, doing the macarena in your vault.
In one of the tunnel robberies we studied, the alarm lines weren't cut by the thieves. Instead, the alarm system was turned off by the bank after vibrations from the tunnel digging resulted in the alarm going off four times. Since the vault floor was intact at the time and nothing outside or inside the bank appeared to be disturbed, the bank assumed its security system had a glitch and turned it off until troubleshooting could take place. [Note to self: Not a good plan.]
John Pearce notes that there are a wide range of sensing devices that could be helpful. They may sense vibration, movement, air pressure, sounds or temperature.
Assuming the culprits can read, signage can also be an effective tool. "Vault protected by 24-hour video monitoring." Post the signs inside and outside of your vault.
Perhaps the most effective tool for foiling this type of burglary is interactive video. Interactive video is the combination of video surveillance equipment and look-in verification monitoring from a company like ADT. It's really a combination of video technology and monitoring service. ADT, for example, offers video monitoring that can either be active 24 hours a day or activated for video verification by a trigger of some sort. They can be monitored by in-house personnel or specially trained console operators at the company. These are also effective in detecting crimes directed at high-risk areas, such as ATM back room operations, currency processing facilities, and remote cash vaults.
With back-up power sources in place, if alarm lines are cut, or the power lines are cut, that can serve as a trigger for the person monitoring the video to look into the triggered vault area to see what activity may be taking place. Or, the cameras and monitoring could be triggered by an audio/video stimulus. With remote live look-in, the jig is up for the bad guys. And with the latest cameras, the size is so small that if they're mounted correctly with proper enclosures, camera tampering becomes unlikely. Even if the thieves attempt to sabotage the recording device, that act itself will trigger the person monitoring the video to call the local gendarmes.
One recommendation is to get video surveillance and video monitoring off dedicated phone lines and onto their IP networks. Customers are being urged to include IP sources.
If you feel yourself motivated to take a drive around your branch's surroundings tonight, looking for weird neighbors hauling away inexplicable amounts of dirt, take heart. The likelihood you will be targeted by this type of crime is not high. The reality, according to ADT's John Pearce, is, "Break-ins and bank robberies make the headlines. Bankers don't like bank robberies, but as difficult as they are, it's only one type of risk that bankers need to mitigate. Identity theft and fraud issues are huge, and, according to the FBI, amount to twenty times the level of loss from bank robberies." So, be aware, be prepared, take precautions. But don't overlook where the more real threats lie today.
Related Links:
print
share