How to rob a bank in the 21st century

Waving a gun around in a bank is SO 1980s. Bank robbers are having to use some high-tech tactics to get their hands on cash.

Jack Flanagan

Staff Writerhttp://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/6507/how-to-rob-a-bank-in-the-21st-century/

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Journalism was my second-choice for a career. In actual fact I wanted to be a bank robber. The guns, the one-liners, the money – I wanted it all. It wasn’t fear holding me back, as such, it was simply the fact that you couldn’t hold-up a bank these days the way they did back maybe 30, 40 – or even 20 years ago. But, like a concert pianist with stubby fingers, or a ballerina with a bum leg, I still pore over my childhood dream with obsession, crying late into the night over blueprints and plastic explosives.
I never told you any of this, mum.
Bank robbery, like suicide, is a romantic sort of crime. Just recently it has been featured as a massive plot point in the film ‘Now You See Me’ – about magicians who at the beginning of the movie steal more than $100 million and give it, Robin Hood style, to a crowd of Las Vegas punters. And then, of course, who hasn’t heard of thieves and slick-handed bank robbers like Robin Hood, John Dillinger, Willie Sutton and Patty Hearst (who I once thought was a brand of funeral vehicle)?
So who could blame my young self from wanting to go down the route of this particular brand of crime? Bank robberies – perhaps – speak to our desire for freedom. To feel less confined in a world where regulations are as ubiquitous as the air we breath. We’re a Thelma, admiring the guts and panache of a daring Louise. In the words of bank robber Criminal Sha “When everyone used to want the so-called bad guy to die, I wanted him to live, and when the cowboys fought the Indians, I rooted for the Indians.” A successful bank robber – however he or she is condemned – inspires the public into believing that the rules are not as hard-and-fast as they appear.
Look, I’m not encouraging you to rob a bank. But if you wanted to a rob a bank, if you wanted to inspire the people with your daring and libertarianism, I’m not going to be the guy that stops you. That’s all I can say. To you people who don’t want to rob a bank but are curious to know how it could work in this day and age, I’ve got your back: read on. It’ll be cathartic for me. And if you, potential bank-robber, should also read this piece? I really can’t stop you.
First of all, I’m gona be straight: you can’t rob banks with your classic: “stick ‘em up”, have the teller fill your bag and escape in your get-away vehicle. It’s just not going to happen. These days biometric technologies (eye/fingerprint scanning and the like), time-locked vaults, silent alarms, exploding dye packs – sometimes concealed within the money itself – will make a hash job of your heist.

An exploding dye pack inside a bundle of cash.

You’re not out of options: crafty criminals have adapted to new technologies almost as fast as banks have been installing them. Security has moved into a more digital era – yes – but its dangers are that they are now automated and that the people using them barely understand the technology. A criminal with a sound understanding of the fairly common-place technologies used in bank security is already fast on their way to understanding how the break open the bank… or better: ‘lift’ the ‘joint’.

Go where the money is

If you’re happy to get “stuck in” with the bank robbing process, there are quite a few options available. On a relatively small-scale, you can use clone debit cards, which can hack a bank from an ATM. For this to be effective, you’d need to disable the ATM’s withdrawal limit, which mean you could withdraw more than the allotted few hundred dollars a day. The key to a good heist is speed, if you’re slow you get caught. Hackers can disable withdrawal fees online – in the US at least. Alternatively, these intrepid individuals used oxyacetylene welders to bust open ATMs and just took the money, They kept portable acetylene tanks on-hand to perform the task over the course of a night.

The blowtorch gang breaking into an ATM.

A little more hardcore is the Brazilian bank heist that took place in 2005. A group of men bought a house in central Fortaleza, in the province of Ceará. They put up a sign calling themselves a landscaping company and over the course of three months tunneled beneath the house toward the vault of a Banco Central. They were meticulous – disabling the bank’s alarm system before the grab, and spreading burnt lime around the property to prevent finger prints. The money – 160 million real-dollars ($73.2 million, £45.6 million) – was unmarked, meaning tracing was impossible.

The tunnel used to break into the bank.

Brazil recovered less than R$9 million of that money, and 8 of a possible 25 perpetrators. But a word of caution: it wasn’t all plain sailing after their success. The head of the operation – Luis Ribeiro – was killed in a botched robbery of the money he’d made. Many others in the gang are thought to be victims of kidnapping in return for a ransom. Ultimately, the moral is: mum’s the word, both for the police and the people around you.
Alternatively, there are the “smart” methods – although to be fair tunneling under a bank isn’t exactly easy. In September of this year a group of thieves successful stole 1.3 million pounds ($2.1 million) from the British bank, Barclays. The “Barclays Gang” posed as IT workers and, during their “operation”, set a KVM (Keyboard-video-mouse) which allows someone to access the computer remotely. They then siphoned off the money – transferring it from customer accounts to their own bank accounts. This is apparently a “hot” technique – so get it while you can before the opportunity closes.

The KVM device used to steal money from Barclays bank accounts.

There are, of course, phishing scams to think of. We’ve all gotten the email – “Nigerian general”, “Llyods will close your account” etc. – but how effective are they? Apparently, annually about 0.5% of a bank’s customers will fall for phishing scams, and the money made could be very small, break-even amounts, to $10M. A scam set-up is said to cost in the region of $500. Not a direct bank robbery, but you get there in the end. More to the point, would Robin Hood go phishing? Probably not.
There’s a few things to remember about living your life afterward. If the money is “marked” i.e. if it is identifiable as stolen currency, you need to deposit abroad or look for “unscrupulous” individuals. Don’t flaunt your money, for goodness sake. If you had the patience to plan the heist, have the patience to spend it at an inauspicious rate. Alternatively, you could money launder Breaking Bad-style. I’m not recommending this course of action, just saying it exists.
Well, there’s some ideas to kick around on a rainy day. Crime can pay, if you’ve got the smarts, the right guys and a little seed money. The most important thing to remember is: do the unexpected. Be “the smartest guy in the room”. Don’t get caught. And whatever you do, do NOT take me seriously. I’m just joking. Jeez. Chill.