
Graying Thieves Who Nearly Got Away with a Record Heist in London - pavornyoh
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/london-hatton-garden-heist.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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cstross
Key point: a chunk of the evidence against the thieves was collected via
wireless bugging devices.

Reading between the lines they'd also racked up an impressive stretch of
prison time, individually and collectively. So perhaps were behind the curve
in understanding just how modern intelligence-led policing and the
surveillance state have converged to make their former profession extremely
questionable.

(A supplementary point: the problem with criminology is that it's the study of
the criminal mind -- but the only criminal minds available for study are _the
ones who were stupid enough to get caught_. These guys got lucky (if the on-
site security guard had done his job and checked inside the premises properly,
they'd have walked into a police trap on their second attempt), but luck
wasn't enough. They were still running on a classic 1970s-80s London gangland
script, and were known to the Met as robbery suspects with prior form. By
_speaking aloud_ about what they'd done they basically handed the police
enough evidence to roll them up. Score: old-school bank robbers 0; modern
surveillance state: 1.)

~~~
bsder
> Key point: a chunk of the evidence against the thieves was collected via
> wireless bugging devices.

They continued to talk about it. Mistake, period. Just, no. If I ever do
something illegal, I will never talk about it after the fact.

I have even had conversations with friends when I was younger:

"Hey, how did you manage to get away from <place that got busted>?"

"<incredulous look on my face> Why would you even ask me to admit I did
something illegal that actually got busted by the police? And, even if I were
there, why would you expect me to be _stupid enough to answer_?"

~~~
marcoperaza
Two things:

1) You're saying this because you're intelligent. But because you're
intelligent, you're also less likely to turn to a life of crime. You can make
money honestly and you have a lot to lose if you get busted. Crooks tend to be
uneducated and ignorant.

2) It's easy to keep a secret that only you know. But there's usually more
than one person involved in a crime. Are all of your companions in crime going
to be as careful? People just can't resist talking. They want to brag. They
want to tell their friends and loved ones. And as time goes on, people let
their guard down.

~~~
mabbo
> Crooks tend to be uneducated and ignorant.

Only the ones you've _heard_ about.

Also: Wall Street is full of educated guys who are outright criminals.

~~~
rms_returns
> Also: Wall Street is full of educated guys who are outright criminals.

That is "white-collar crime" which is a different thing entirely. It revolves
around exploiting the loopholes around laws, rather than actually breaking
them. He is talking about "blue-collar crime" which is about outright breaking
the laws. In the white crimes, no statesman can punish you since there is no
legal evidence against you - the issues are with the legal framework.

~~~
marcoperaza
Your definition of white-collar crime is way off the mark. White-collar crime
is real crime. Fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering are not "loopholes
around laws", they are crimes just like murder, larceny, and rape. The
government brings prosecutions all the time, and there are plenty of white-
collar criminals in prison and paying hefty fines.

The absence of violence (murder, rape, assault, robbery, etc.) or physical
force against property (burglary, grand theft auto, etc.) is what defines a
white-collar crime. They involve abuses of trust. "White-collar" just refers
to the fact that people in white-collar professions are typically the ones
have enough power entrusted to them to be able to commit these crimes.

Of course, there's no perfect taxonomy and you can argue all day about whether
a particular crime is white-collar or blue-collar.

~~~
ectoplasm
One aspect of the difference is that the physical force and violence with
white collar crime are indirect / externalized, because the crimes involve
manipulation of intangibles.

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octoploid
There is a cool BBC documentary about this heist:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9thHKGgW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9thHKGgW4)

~~~
MichaelApproved
It's interesting how wrong the speculations were about robbers. Their experts
thought it was a Hollywood style "Reservoir Dogs" robbery with precision
planning, recruitment from the "dark web" and that the loot was likely already
out of the country (possibly hidden up a horses ass). One guy even speculated
that they tripped the alarm on purpose, to see what the response would be.

What turned out was pretty far from that. Still, it was worth the watch, for
the recreation of drilling through the wall, decent into the elevator shaft
and safe deposit box smashing.

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mstade
I must have walked past that pub at least a hundred times, and immediately
when I read this story it just felt very right for this particular
establishment to figure in it. Not just because, well, it's a London pub and
most of them would fit in to a story like this; but also because this
particular pub is placed on the corner of Baron St and Pentonville Rd.
Pentonville is also the name of a nearby prison – HMP Pentonville[1].

Poetic, in a way.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Pentonville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Pentonville)

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siliconc0w
Criminals seem to actually deal with a bit of a distributed trust problem.
They rely on a reputation consensus to determine trust but that seems to
require a culture of disclosing what you've done (bragging).

~~~
kijin
That seems to be an interesting problem for the crypto community to have fun
with.

Could a person prove that one has successfully stolen a large amount of money
in an unspecified series of heists, without actually incriminating oneself
with having been a participant in any given heist?

~~~
showerst
Is that a version of a Zero Knowledge Proof problem?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-
knowledge_proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof)

~~~
gruez
Yes, but it's not a version that has a known solution.

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MichaelApproved
A lot of the people were uninsured with tens of thousands of dollars in
assets, if not more. I'm guessing that it's because they didn't want to report
the assets to the government. Is that fair speculation?

~~~
justincormack
No, people assume safe deposit boxes are secure so they don't pay for
insurance. There are no taxes on assets, or requirement to report them to the
government.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I'm speculating that they earned money without reporting it and then used that
money to purchase those assets. The gov't doesn't tax the asset you own but it
would be interested in knowing if you reported the income that you used to
purchase the asset.

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MichaelApproved
The safe deposit box company website[1] looks like it's from the year 2000,
complete with a clock in the header of the page. I guess this business was
more likely to get customers through word of mouth than their website, so it
didn't matter too much.

[1]
[http://www.hattongardensafe.co.uk/index.html](http://www.hattongardensafe.co.uk/index.html)

~~~
toyg
A business like that relies on location and reputation. Advertising is
definitely secondary.

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TazeTSchnitzel
The Wikipedia article is rather neglected, it contains very little information
so far:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatton_Garden_safe_deposit_bur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatton_Garden_safe_deposit_burglary)

