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Speaker 1: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you

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Speaker 1: with one of our favorite subjects of discussion. Heist. Did

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Speaker 1: you guys hear recently guy got arrested in the United

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Speaker 1: Kingdom for stealing three hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: worth of cheddar.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, we love a wacky heist. There was the

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Speaker 2: one where someone like stole like change, I.

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Speaker 3: Think, or it was like pennies. I believe there's just

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Speaker 3: some week books.

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Speaker 2: Yeah well wait, well that's right, the Bluey coins.

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Speaker 1: Maple syrup cartel. We've got an episode about why maple

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Speaker 1: syrup heist are surprisingly profitable. Back in twenty nineteen, we

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Speaker 1: started exploring the biggest heist in history, actual criminal conspiracies,

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Speaker 1: you know, the kind of stuff that's cinematic and I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you guys remember this one, but it

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Speaker 1: was a rollicking good time. It was was one of

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Speaker 1: those episodes where we had to take breath off air

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Speaker 1: and remind ourselves that sometimes people did get shot, sometimes

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Speaker 1: people did die.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know the one that we haven't covered

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Speaker 3: that would be great for this is the one that

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Speaker 3: Fight Night was based on. Right, wasn't that a kind

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Speaker 3: of a heist.

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Speaker 2: Or a million dollar Well, it was a stick up

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Speaker 2: at like a poker game that took place during the

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Speaker 2: big Muhammad Ali comeback fight. But it was it was

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Speaker 2: a heist of a type for sure.

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Speaker 1: It counts. Shaking something you're not supposed to take is

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Speaker 1: a heist. Hey, I mean even if it's extra candy

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Speaker 1: from the bowl at your dermatologist.

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Speaker 3: Oh, don't do that.

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Speaker 1: They'll get you. They always remember. Here we go from

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Speaker 1: UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled

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Speaker 1: with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn

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Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know. A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeart Radios House Stuff Works.

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Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt

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Speaker 3: Nol is not with us today.

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Speaker 1: Noel the bag Man Brown is indeed on adventures. They

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Speaker 1: call me Ben. We are joined as always without our

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Speaker 1: super producer, Paul, Mission Control DEC and AKA the Coordinator.

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Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that

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Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt

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Speaker 1: off Air, You and Paul and I have been talking

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Speaker 1: about some of our favorite things.

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Speaker 3: Heist, right, yeah, heist movies, heist, heist and fiction. I

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Speaker 3: think are one of my favorite things.

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Speaker 1: Not in reality, right, it's there's this cool team up

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Speaker 1: moment in a lot of heist films, right. And we

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Speaker 1: we spoke about which we would ideally or realistically play

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Speaker 1: in a heist, and Paul loved. I loved when Paul

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Speaker 1: immediately replied, well, I guess I would be the coordinator

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Speaker 1: in a heist. And if you go on places like

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Speaker 1: TV tropes, you will see the various categories, the common

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Speaker 1: positions and roles in a lot of heist Paul, I

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Speaker 1: have to be honest. I feel like maybe you chose

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Speaker 1: the coordinator just because it also the category also says

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Speaker 1: the coordinator functions as mission control.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. He found that and he went, that's it. That's

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Speaker 3: what I'm doing.

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Speaker 1: You read the whole article, and Matt, you had some

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Speaker 1: interesting choices. You had two that spoke to you. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I'm mostly thinking about it in context of this show.

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Speaker 3: So I would go with the partner in crime. So

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Speaker 3: not the master because I think we all know who

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Speaker 3: the mastermind would be, especially in the context of our

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Speaker 3: crew and show Ben. But I would be the partner

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Speaker 3: in crime. I would be the person who is second

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Speaker 3: in command, who assists and maybe the only one. This

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Speaker 3: is a quote, maybe the only one besides the mastermind

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Speaker 3: who actually knows what's going on.

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Speaker 1: You know, that's that's flattering to to imply that mastermind position.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I always I always thought I would,

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Speaker 1: I would function as a face, at least in my

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Speaker 1: past experience. I tend to do this work a lot.

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Speaker 1: But what we found was that we constructed the four

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Speaker 1: of us a fairly solid again fictional heist crew. And

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Speaker 1: today we're we're looking at heist. You know, heist when

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Speaker 1: you think about it, their conspiracies. People are conspiring to

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Speaker 1: do something nefarious.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly, And a lot of the examples we're going

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Speaker 3: to get to today involve inside jobs with all things

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Speaker 3: within that conspiracy.

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Speaker 1: Loaded term loaded term there. But who does not love

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Speaker 1: a good heist film?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 1: The formula is pretty solid at this point. A team

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Speaker 1: of specialists with some dubious gifts and specializations and no

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Speaker 1: small amount of internal tension band together.

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Speaker 3: For I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's the big one, capital B, capital O. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: it's one last job before we go straight, you know,

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Speaker 1: or before we retire to some remote destination. There is

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Speaker 1: one rule that always applies to any heist film, no

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Speaker 1: matter which country, culture, or time period it comes from,

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Speaker 1: and that one rule, that one ever constant, ubiquitous rule,

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Speaker 1: is things go wrong.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the perfect plan isn't quite so perfect. But you know,

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Speaker 3: a lot of these movies are based on actual heists,

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Speaker 3: actual or at least loosely based on actual heights.

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Speaker 1: Inspired by true events.

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Speaker 3: Because all the time there are people and groups of

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Speaker 3: people conspiring to rob banks and armored cars and various

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Speaker 3: institutions and jewelry stores and everything museums. Yes, they're true

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Speaker 3: and they're real, but the big question today is how

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Speaker 3: do they work? How do they function in reality outside

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Speaker 3: of those fictional worlds?

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Speaker 1: Right? How do real heist actually work? Here are the facts,

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Speaker 1: and let's call this why you shouldn't rob a bank.

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Speaker 1: Some of this research comes from an older and older

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Speaker 1: piece that Paul and I did for a show called

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Speaker 1: brain stuff. Oh I remember this, Yeah, which is available

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Speaker 1: on YouTube. Yeah, I was nuts on this one. If

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Speaker 1: we want to get a handle on real life heist,

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Speaker 1: we can look at the numbers, and the numbers may

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Speaker 1: surprise some of us. In twenty eleven in the United States,

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Speaker 1: let's focus on the US just for this part. In

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Speaker 1: twenty eleven in the US, there were over five thousand

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Speaker 1: bank robberies fourteen documented once. Most of these, oddly enough,

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Speaker 1: happened during the day while the bank was open at

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Speaker 1: some point.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there are when there is a teller or a

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Speaker 3: bank manager or someone on the scene.

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Speaker 1: Also multiple witnesses. People who just came to make a

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Speaker 1: depositor get a money order and we're probably thinking about

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Speaker 1: grabbing Chipotle after they were not planning for this. Also,

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Speaker 1: the all the data shows that they there are two

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Speaker 1: favorite days for bank robbers. Those days are Tuesdays and Fridays.

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Speaker 1: Despite what feature films might have us believe, the majority

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Speaker 1: of robbers are not experts. They are not professional bank robbers.

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Speaker 1: They are rank amateurs. Eighty percent of individual bank robbers

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Speaker 1: have never been convicted of a bank robbery before. It's

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Speaker 1: their first time out.

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Speaker 3: And may probably the numbers will show us the first

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Speaker 3: time getting caught.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, that is true. The criminals also, contrary

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Speaker 1: to what heist and fiction would have us believe, are

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Speaker 1: not teaming up in some super swanky, awesome oceans eleven

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Speaker 1: Avengers Voltron esque kind of thing. Instead, eighty percent operate alone.

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Speaker 1: And they also use predictable patterns. They tend to if

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Speaker 1: they survive the first one, if they escape the first one,

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Speaker 1: they tend to do the same things, sort of franchise

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Speaker 1: and repeat it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, or you know, they're not experienced in how to

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Speaker 3: manage the money and the spoils once they've attained them, right,

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Speaker 3: and then that will lead them to be to being caught.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. According to

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Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, the FBI's clearance rate for bank

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Speaker 1: robbery is a little under sixty percent of those cleared robberies.

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Speaker 1: Of the crimes that are solved, about half of those

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Speaker 1: are solved within thirty days. And people will bank robbers,

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Speaker 1: I mean will get caught sometimes not for anything directly

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Speaker 1: related to the bank robbery, as you said, Matt, they

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Speaker 1: will get caught after the heist using you know, bills

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Speaker 1: with sequential serial numbers, using something that can be traced.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: There was a Yeah, there's this excellent vice video called

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Speaker 1: rap Monument, which has it's just a cavalcade of mostly

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Speaker 1: amazing MC's And there's a line in one of these,

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Speaker 1: in one of the verses where they say the bank

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Speaker 1: vaults don't talk, but the numbers read, and that is

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Speaker 1: that is directly alluding to the way that serial numbers

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Speaker 1: on bills, especially larger bills, can be traced. So if you,

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Speaker 1: if you happen to be sitting on a stack of

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Speaker 1: ill gotten cash, please be very aware that someone somewhere

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Speaker 1: knows the numbers of those bills and they're kind of

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Speaker 1: waiting for you to use them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, or especially to use them to make a

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Speaker 3: large purchase of an expensive thing, especially if you do

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Speaker 3: it sequentially several times of a large purchase such as

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Speaker 3: a oh, I don't know if Ferrari or a mansion,

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Speaker 3: or a Wendy's.

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Speaker 1: Franchise, A Wendy's franchise. Sure, I mean, that's when you've

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Speaker 1: really made it, right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking a lot about how people get caught

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Speaker 1: using the money they've stolen, but we haven't talked about

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Speaker 1: how much money professional or lucky robbers actually make. It

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Speaker 1: is surprising conspiracy realists. We often hear about millions of

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Speaker 1: dollars billions of dollars in some cases disappearing, but life

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Speaker 1: for the average bank robber is pretty hard scrabble and

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Speaker 1: hard won. There was a study by several British economists

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Speaker 1: that examined just the nuts and bolts math this. So

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Speaker 1: what they found is the average return on a bank

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Speaker 1: heist in the United Kingdom is nineteen thousand, seven hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars per person per heist. In the US it's way worse.

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Speaker 1: It's only a little bit over four thousand dollars per mist.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of that, you know, if you're

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Speaker 3: looking at it on average, you're talking about the loan

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Speaker 3: actors that walk into a bank hand a piece of

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Speaker 3: paper over that says empty the register, give me everything

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Speaker 3: you have, I have a gun, and then they walk

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Speaker 3: out and that's it. They don't go for the vault,

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Speaker 3: they don't go for any of the big ticket items,

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Speaker 3: they don't go to the security deposit boxes. They just

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Speaker 3: go in, get that money and then leave. So that's

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Speaker 3: definitely swaying numbers there, right, And you're also talking about

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Speaker 3: the UK where weapons are like firearms are much more

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Speaker 3: difficult to come by, so it's its whole other thing.

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Speaker 3: Like if you walk into a bank just wielding a

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Speaker 3: knife or something, change the calculus a little bit about

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Speaker 3: what can go down and what you can get.

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Speaker 1: Right. Also, the UK is one of the most closely

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Speaker 1: surveilled areas of the world. We did mention this in

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Speaker 1: a previous episode, just the density of cameras.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the interesting thing that these people also found,

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Speaker 3: these economists that are looking at the numbers, they found

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Speaker 3: that if you increase the number of people in your crew,

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Speaker 3: you actually can move those numbers a little bit.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, every additional member of a heist gang

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Speaker 1: raises the value of the robbery or the takeaway by

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Speaker 1: in the UK it's a little over nine thirty three pounds.

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Speaker 1: That translates to a bit over fifteen grand, So that

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Speaker 1: feels like a valuable contribution. But we have to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind the per person hall diminishes with every new

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Speaker 1: member added to the gang, and of course the likelihood

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Speaker 1: of something going wrong, someone squealing, someone making a rookie

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Speaker 1: mistake that rises exponentially.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but it definitely gets into that thing where

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Speaker 3: if you have if you have a crew like we

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Speaker 3: were talking about in the beginning, of people who are

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Speaker 3: managing things, who have a specific task, who are going

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Speaker 3: to go in and get the money and take the

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Speaker 3: money and do all that, you can see it working

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Speaker 3: in there.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, So, how does this work out if any of

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Speaker 1: our fellow listeners were professional bank robbers, what would they

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Speaker 1: have to do to make it a genuine living right

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Speaker 1: to not have to constantly be hungry, homeless, et cetera,

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Speaker 1: just to meet their basic needs.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So let's look at just in the United States,

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Speaker 3: the poverty line and where these how these numbers match up.

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Speaker 3: So in twenty thirteen, the poverty threshold at least would

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Speaker 3: be an annual income of eleven four and ninety dollars

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Speaker 3: per per So for one single person, eleven and a

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Speaker 3: half thousand dollars a year, that'd be your income, right,

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Speaker 3: And this means that on average, if you were just

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Speaker 3: a professional bank robber or just all by your loansome,

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Speaker 3: you'd have to rob three banks a year, and you'd

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Speaker 3: have to keep all the loot and not do anything

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Speaker 3: with it necessarily, or at least, I don't know, you'd

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Speaker 3: have to invest smartly or launder it correctly and smartly

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Speaker 3: just to stay out of the poorhouse, I guess.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And the most recent number we can find

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Speaker 1: for the poverty threshold is from twenty sixteen. Yeah, two

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Speaker 1: and eighty six dollars, So that still hasn't moved very much.

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Speaker 1: But making a living as a bank robber has become

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Speaker 1: increasingly difficult.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but hey, think about it this way. That's only

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Speaker 3: three maybe four jobs a year, and that's it. That's

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Speaker 3: all you gotta do.

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Speaker 1: I imagine there's a lot of pre production that goes

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Speaker 1: into that. Maybe, or who knows, maybe there's yeah, maybe

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Speaker 1: there there are just some people who impulsively rob banks

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Speaker 1: and keep getting away. There are so many stories of daring,

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Speaker 1: ambitious heist not just related to banks. Banks we tend

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Speaker 1: to have more information about because they're one of the

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Speaker 1: most common forms of this sort of crime. But here's

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Speaker 1: the thing, not all heists are created equal. Some high

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Speaker 1: screws didn't just conspire to, you know, rob a vault

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Speaker 1: at a bank. They conspire to move massive, gargantuan amounts

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Speaker 1: of loot, some things that are objectively priceless works of

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Speaker 1: art that cannot have a value assigned, and so on.

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Speaker 1: And the most bizarre thing about it is some of

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Speaker 1: these crews got away. So let's let's explore this. Let's

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Speaker 1: look at some of the world's biggest heist Let's look

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Speaker 1: at some of the folks who were caught, and let's

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Speaker 1: look at some of the folks who are still out

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Speaker 1: there today.

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Speaker 3: And we'll do that right after a word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, Matt, what do you say

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Speaker 1: do you want to do? You want to start off

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Speaker 1: with some heist where the perpetrators were ultimately apprehended.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, And let's okay, let's first jump to

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Speaker 3: September twelfth, nineteen ninety seven. This is a story about

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Speaker 3: a bank robbery that feels like several major emotion pictures

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Speaker 3: that I have seen or at least heard about. The

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Speaker 3: target or let's just say, the title of it is

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Speaker 3: the Dunbar Armored Robbery. That's like what we're going to

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Speaker 3: call it here. And the target was Dunbar Armored Incorporated.

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Speaker 3: And they are an armored truck company. So what they

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Speaker 3: do is they move cash and valuables from one place

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Speaker 3: to another in a vehicle that is generally you know,

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Speaker 3: has a crew of people who are there to protect

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Speaker 3: the money, and they're all armed. It seems like an

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Speaker 3: extremely dangerous thing to attempt to rob, at least on

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Speaker 3: the surface, right. But in Los Angeles, California, a group

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Speaker 3: of people, including a man named Alan Pace the Third,

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Speaker 3: got together and conspired to rob the Dunbar Armored Inc. Company,

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Speaker 3: So instead of robbing a single one of these cars,

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Speaker 3: they went to the source of where the cars go

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Speaker 3: back to the depot basically right. And this guy, Alan

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Speaker 3: Pace the third was working at Dunbar and he knew

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Speaker 3: the ins and outs of the place. It was in

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Speaker 3: fact an inside job, and he had a crew of

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Speaker 3: people that came with him. They tied up some security guards,

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Speaker 3: they made off with a whole bunch of money, and

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Speaker 3: they also destroyed all of the security tapes. They didn't

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Speaker 3: they didn't destroy the cameras or anything. They took the

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Speaker 3: actual tapes, so there was no real evidence. And it's

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Speaker 3: kind of a weird thing because for a long time

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Speaker 3: they couldn't figure out exactly what happened. But they realized

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Speaker 3: it must have been an inside job because somebody knew

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Speaker 3: entirely too much about the security where the cameras were,

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Speaker 3: how those cameras were recording, and where that stuff would be,

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Speaker 3: and how much money would be where at what time. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: it's a really fascinating thing to look at.

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Speaker 1: It's also, I believe, still the largest cash robbery to

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Speaker 1: have occurred in the US. Right.

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Speaker 3: I think it's been estimated to be that because it

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Speaker 3: was around eighteen. It was around nineteen million dollars in cash.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, which would make it closer to

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Speaker 1: thirty million dollars today. Yeah, this story is amazing, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't end happily for mister Pace.

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Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, he got caught as well as

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Speaker 3: several other people. Alan Pace the third was considered the mastermind,

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Speaker 3: you know, if we're going to use those terms. He

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Speaker 3: was the guy who came up with the idea because

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Speaker 3: he was the inside man. He knew the ins and outs.

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Speaker 3: But he also had some people working with him, like

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Speaker 3: Eric Damon Boyd, one of the accomplices. There were several

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Speaker 3: people working with him that ended up going to jail

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Speaker 3: and getting arrested and you know, going to trial and

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Speaker 3: ended up in the slammer.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Eugene Lamar Hill, I think was the was the

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Speaker 1: weak link there, or at least at first.

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Speaker 3: The slip up is Lamar Hill, the guy that was

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Speaker 3: was trying to he got caught with the sequential bills

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Speaker 3: with the original rapper and everything.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: That tells you how much this stack of money is worth.

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Speaker 1: That's the thing. Because this gang attempted to be pretty

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Speaker 1: smart and pretty strategic about how they would seem to

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Speaker 1: legitimately have created such wealth. They were buying real estate,

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Speaker 1: and then I believe they were also starting business fronts,

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Speaker 1: you know, right, like like a PO Box Corporation or

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Speaker 1: LLC stuff like that. But Eugene was talking to a

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Speaker 1: real estate broker and he I guess he felt too

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Speaker 1: comfortable or he got a little lax and he literally

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Speaker 1: handed this guy that stack of bills, like you said,

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Speaker 1: that could have just come from an armor t rock

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Speaker 1: and his associate, He's often referred to as Hill's friend,

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Speaker 1: but I would say maybe acquaintance is a better term,

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Speaker 1: because his real estate buddy notices this strap of cash

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Speaker 1: and he goes immediately to the police. And once Eugene

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Speaker 1: Lamar Hill is arrested, he confesses and he names all

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Speaker 1: the members of the crew.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and they also connected Hill up to this

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Speaker 3: U haul that the crew had rented, because they were

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Speaker 3: bringing that in to load all of the cash into

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Speaker 3: this U haul and it was Hill who actually had

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Speaker 3: rented it. And then I think there was a broken

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Speaker 3: taillight or something that was found on the scene of

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Speaker 3: the robbery. They connected that up to that specific U

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Speaker 3: haul they found Hill. They like they connected all those

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Speaker 3: pieces together and that's how they get most of the

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Speaker 3: rest of the crew with that confession.

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Speaker 1: So justice is served mostly. Unfortunately, the law enforcement agents

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Speaker 1: were not able to recover all of the money, some

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Speaker 1: of which remains missing today.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they only recovered about five million of that. You

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Speaker 3: know at the time was nineteen million, so you know

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Speaker 3: that a lot of that just went into stuff those

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Speaker 3: those front companies in the real estate and all that

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Speaker 3: other stuff. But they probably were able to get back

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Speaker 3: some of that real estate because you could actually tie

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Speaker 3: it to the being used by that money. Really really

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Speaker 3: cool case. I mean, it's messed up. Those guys saw

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Speaker 3: justice or experience justice, are experiencing it. But again, I

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Speaker 3: think a pretty good example of one of these highly

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Speaker 3: coordinated events.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's this is fascinating to me because these

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Speaker 1: people went to prison, right, Yeah, but how how does

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Speaker 1: a person feel if they are in prison for a

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Speaker 1: crime they definitely committed, and they know that they will

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Speaker 1: not only get out at some point, but they also

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Speaker 1: know the money that they stole is somewhere and they

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Speaker 1: may be able to access it. It's got to be

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Speaker 1: pretty intense.

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Speaker 3: You know, we're going to get into a similar thing

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Speaker 3: to that a little bit later in the episode, where

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Speaker 3: you just you're biding your time in jail because you

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Speaker 3: know where the rest of it is.

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Speaker 1: Let's go across the pond for the next one, the

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Speaker 1: Securitas Depot heist.

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Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so this one jumps us forward to February

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Speaker 3: twenty first, two thousand and six. This time we're in Kent,

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Speaker 3: southeast of London. If you're looking at a map and

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Speaker 3: secure TOAs just like the old Dunbar group, they guess what,

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Speaker 3: transferring tons of money and valuables in armored cars, And

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Speaker 3: this time we're at a Securitas depot instead of a

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Speaker 3: dumbbar depot. Same very very similar kind of thing, and

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Speaker 3: this one went down similarly with a couple of twists.

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Speaker 3: The first big twist is that these guys realized that

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Speaker 3: in order to be successful they were going to need

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Speaker 3: some leverage. They went to the home of Colin Dixon,

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Speaker 3: who was the manager of this depot, and he and

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Speaker 3: his family were kidnapped at gunpoint, and a crew or

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Speaker 3: at least one or two people stayed behind with that

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Speaker 3: family while Colin basically brought all of these robbers of

401
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Speaker 3: this crew of people to the depot let them in.

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Speaker 3: Those guys then essentially kidnapped all of the workers who

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Speaker 3: were at the depot and they tied them all up

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Speaker 3: and they took just giant basically cages and pallets of

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Speaker 3: cash and valuables. They loaded him onto a giant truck

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Speaker 3: and took off and they ended up making away with

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Speaker 3: fifty three million British pounds.

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Speaker 1: Which makes this the largest cash robbery in UK history. Again,

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Speaker 1: this is ruthless work, but they do end up getting caught,

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Speaker 1: right they I do want to stay just for a

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Speaker 1: second on their process here. Yeah, because the way that

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Speaker 1: they got Colin Dixon was pretty devious.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: They impersonated police officers.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. They pulled him over and he was basically like, okay,

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Speaker 3: well this is fine, I'm gonna work all this stuff out.

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Speaker 3: And then they said, well, sir, we need you get

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Speaker 3: out of your car. They took him to the back

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Speaker 3: of the car, basically locked him in the back of

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Speaker 3: the car, and then asked him a bunch of questions

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Speaker 3: that police officers generally wouldn't ask, and they put a

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Speaker 3: gun in his face.

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Speaker 1: So after the robbery, Dixon and his family survive Thankfully,

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Speaker 1: after the robbery secured, US offers a reward of two

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Speaker 1: million pounds, no real questions asked, Just give us information

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Speaker 1: that will lead to the arrest of these assailants. And

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Speaker 1: it works out because on February twenty third, two days later,

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Speaker 1: police have already arrested two people and charged them with

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Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit robbery.

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Speaker 3: But they're just people who were on the crew, right right,

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Speaker 3: because some of the main people that were involved with this,

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Speaker 3: or at least that were thought to be the masterminds,

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Speaker 3: had actually fled to Morocco smartly I think on their

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Speaker 3: part there, but they fled and they were I believe.

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Speaker 3: They're justcribed in several places as cage fighters or former

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Speaker 3: cage fighters. There's a guy named Paul Allen and another

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00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 3: one named Lee Murray or Murray m r Ay. So

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Speaker 3: after these guys are arrested, you're talking about ben two guys,

439
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 3: and then it ends up being five guys that get arrested.

440
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 3: It's basically the whole crew except for the masterminds and

441
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 3: these guys in Morocco. Then finally Paul Allen gets extradited

442
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 3: from Morocco. He gets charged, but he keeps telling everybody well, no,

443
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:34,159
Speaker 3: I wasn't the mastermind. I was just doing what I

444
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 3: was told. I was working for this guy Lee Murra

445
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 3: or Murray, and Lee is already incarcerated in Morocco. So

446
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 3: it's like, I guess he was kind of using Lee

447
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 3: as the fall guy perhaps, Yeah.

448
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because while they were in Morocco they did a

449
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 1: number of things, some of which were very clever, some

450
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: of which are understandable, and some of which are you know,

451
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: sort of not thought through. They went on a spending spree,

452
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: as reported in The Guardian by Matthew Weaver and his associates.

453
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: They went on a spending spree. They were making it

454
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: rain in Morocco. They bought property. They bought jewelry, which

455
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: is you know, very very popular. We'll get to the

456
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: loose diamonds, don't worry, holds its value, one of the

457
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: sketchiest things people can have. They also bought illegal things

458
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: like drugs, and this is something smart that they did.

459
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: They invested thousands of dollars or pounds rather in plastic

460
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: surgery for their associates. I've always been curious about whether

461
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: that kind of tactic works. If someone is attempting to

462
00:29:55,640 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: disappear you know, we hear about despots having plastics. Yeah,

463
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: we hear about you know, people in drug cartels getting

464
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. The thing, the thing about it is not

465
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: to quote Donald Rumswell directly, but it's it's an unknown

466
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: unknown right. If someone successfully has has used plastic surgery

467
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: to evade the long arm of the law, we'll never

468
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: know about it. Yeah, so maybe we only know about

469
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 1: the people who got caught with a bad nosed job

470
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: or something.

471
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just got to look for all those tremendously

472
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 3: rich people with lots and lots of work done, start

473
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 3: asking questions.

474
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: I'm sure we may be conflating populations there.

475
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 3: Don't do that.

476
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: So what we see here is that they're they're caught because,

477
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: despite their best intentions, they went to a country that

478
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: has an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. And in

479
00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: our earlier conversations about pseudoside, we've learned right that the

480
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 1: only way people can fake their death and profit from it,

481
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: or the only way people can commit a huge crime

482
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: like this and survive without going to jail, is essentially

483
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 1: to relocate to someplace that does not extradite.

484
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really the only way. And in the end,

485
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 3: they were covered about twenty four million I think, I

486
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 3: think twenty four million pounds of the fifty something fifty.

487
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: Four Yeah, I wonder what happened to that, right, because

488
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: what we see here, maybe it's a little bit misleading, folks,

489
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: because in both of the heightst we just talked about

490
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: the people got caught, but the money didn't get caught.

491
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, not necessarily, it got moved around in the market.

492
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: Right. There we go, There we go. We have another

493
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: example from the United Kingdom that has even higher stakes.

494
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 3: Oh this one, we're going back before either of the

495
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 3: previous two, back to nineteen eighty July.

496
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: Twelfth, great year for bank robberies.

497
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is in Knightsbridge, London. This

498
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 3: is or it's a part of London's in the UK.

499
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 3: It's in the city of Westminster, I believe. And the

500
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 3: target here is a thing, a place called Knightsbridge Safe

501
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 3: Deposit Center, so less of a bank, more of a

502
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 3: giant repository of safety deposit boxes, a giant a collection

503
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 3: of safety deposit boxes. And there was a small crew

504
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 3: of people that went into there, including this gentleman named

505
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 3: Valerio Viiccei Vishay via Viccha. I don't know how to

506
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 3: say it, but Valerio, let's call him. They walked in

507
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 3: pretending like they were just going to get a safety

508
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 3: deposit box, and as soon as they got into the

509
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 3: secure area where the deposit boxes were, they pulled out

510
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 3: his crew pulled out pistol, held everybody up. Then they

511
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 3: put a closed temporarily closed sign on the front of

512
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 3: the safety deposit center. Then they invited a couple other

513
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 3: people in who were part of their.

514
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 1: Crew, dressed as security guards.

515
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 3: Yes, and they began basically just busting open all of

516
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 3: these safety deposit boxes and they got away with a ton.

517
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: Of money, A huge amount of money, right, wasn't it

518
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: around sixty million pounds? It was over sixty million pounds

519
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: I believe.

520
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 3: Yes, But again that's not cash, right, it's it's valuables,

521
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 3: mostly valuables, some cash, probably bonds and all these other things.

522
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 3: But the safety deposit boxes were owned by millionaires in London,

523
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 3: owned by famous people like sports. They're just famous peoples

524
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 3: of all.

525
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: Ilk aristocrats, yes, money royalty. Right. They forced open one

526
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:01,680
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen boxes, I think, yes, what around two hours,

527
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: so they were in the room for a while.

528
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, but one hundred and fourteen box is full of

529
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 3: whatever it was, and uh, they're yeah, thinking about sixty

530
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 3: million British pounds. But then, okay, so these guys make

531
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 3: off with all this, they are they are successful with

532
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 3: these past three. The robbery itself goes off pretty well, right,

533
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 3: right in all three of these, right, they get in,

534
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,719
Speaker 3: they get the spoils, and then they leave. The problems

535
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 3: are given enough time, you have enough people involved, somebody

536
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,959
Speaker 3: slips up, and this is what occurred. There were several

537
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 3: several accomplices of Valerio who ended up getting caught. Yeah.

538
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's let's spend a little bit of time

539
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: on Valerio because he is anomalous in the world of robberies.

540
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: Remember we said earlier at the top that eighty percent

541
00:34:55,400 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: are loaners, eighty percent are first time amate two with

542
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: this not your buddy Valario. He came to England from Italy,

543
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 1: where he was already wanted on charges for something like

544
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 1: fifty armed robberies. Yeah so maybe not necessarily banks, but

545
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 1: this guy was no stranger to the hustle.

546
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 3: No, he wasn't. He also wasn't the kind of guy

547
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:25,399
Speaker 3: that liked to lay low after he's done a job

548
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:27,440
Speaker 3: or something and not spend a lot of money, not

549
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 3: have a lot of visibility. He liked to be out

550
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 3: there living as is described by several websites. We looked

551
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 3: at lavishly. That's how he did his.

552
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: Thing, living Levita Loca. Yeah.

553
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and then that leads him down a pathway

554
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 3: because he ends up, Oh where did he go? He

555
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:46,839
Speaker 3: skipped the.

556
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: Country to South America.

557
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:51,800
Speaker 3: He went to South America right after this large robbery,

558
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 3: and he was doing really well, you know, spending a

559
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 3: ton of money. He's got a ton of money now.

560
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 3: But he ends up wanting to get a ferrari I

561
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 3: think a tester rosa. I believe that's what it was.

562
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 3: And he goes back to the United Kingdom just temporarily

563
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 3: flies back over there just to oversee the shipping of

564
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:15,760
Speaker 3: this ferrari back to where he's living in South America,

565
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 3: and the authorities, of course somehow notice that he's there.

566
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 3: You can only assume he's using a passport that's not his.

567
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, he was not aware that he

568
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:33,720
Speaker 1: was already directly tied to this crime because of a

569
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 1: single fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. Oh wow, that belonged to him,

570
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: though was found on the scene. Also, I know we

571
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: just mentioned blood, but we should say no one was killed, right, Oh, yes,

572
00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: of course, right. So he goes This guy is such

573
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:57,479
Speaker 1: a pill. He he goes back to England, as you said,

574
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: to get his testosa ship to South America. Not the

575
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: smartest move. And people who saw him thought he was

576
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: not an impressive person. They thought he was a show off.

577
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 1: They thought he was flexing too hard, like he wanted

578
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: people to see his rolex and he wanted to talk

579
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: about how his love of exotic cars. He was doing

580
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: his best to not blend in. So the cops set

581
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 1: up a roadblock. That's how they get him. They literally

582
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: know where he's coming from and where he's going, set

583
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: up a roadblock. They take him out of his car.

584
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they smash a windshield of his Ferrari, right.

585
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: Which I think was sort of them proving a point.

586
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: You know, that's their version of showing off their rolex.

587
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.

588
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:57,400
Speaker 1: And he is sentenced to twenty two years in prison,

589
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 1: but I believe being extradited to Italy.

590
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:07,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes back to Italy after a little bit

591
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:10,720
Speaker 3: of jail time, ends up spending more jail time in Italy,

592
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:12,720
Speaker 3: but he ends him this thing that's called a day prison,

593
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 3: or he's got like day privileges while he's at prison,

594
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:19,280
Speaker 3: so he can actually leave for a certain amount of time.

595
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 3: He's got a company that he's running, and he ends

596
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:27,919
Speaker 3: up getting into some dastardly stuff. Again, I think he's

597
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 3: he's spotted by like a patrol vehicle or something, just

598
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:35,960
Speaker 3: kind of your standard police patrol vehicle in Italy, and

599
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 3: he's doing something weird. He ends up getting in a

600
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 3: shootout with an officer and dying.

601
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: Right, So let's connect some dots here, because he's in

602
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: a shootout, which means he has a firearm in Italy

603
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 1: while he is technically in prison. Right. I think he's released,

604
00:38:57,440 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 1: as you said, during the day, and he has to

605
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: be back in his cell at ten thirty or something

606
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:07,840
Speaker 1: like that, and he's acting suspiciously quote unquote acting suspiciously?

607
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: What does that mean? You know what I mean? In

608
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 1: this country, there are a lot of innocent people who

609
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:20,319
Speaker 1: have been fatally shot for quote unquote acting suspiciously. In

610
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:24,760
Speaker 1: this guy's case, I gotta say I believe law enforcement.

611
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it appears that he may have been waiting

612
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 3: for literally an armored truck or I mean again, there's

613
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 3: some rumors that I was reading about on there, but

614
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 3: who knows. In the end of this huge heist, the

615
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:40,240
Speaker 3: sixty million pounds worth of stuff, authorities got ten million

616
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 3: or they were covered roughly ten million pounds worth of

617
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 3: stuff and valuables, but the rest of it was either

618
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 3: spent or can't be found. So there you go, kind

619
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 3: of the same ending there.

620
00:39:55,160 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he also he wasn't a good person. Any

621
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 1: loss of human life is a tragedy. I don't want

622
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: to make light of the fact that this guy died.

623
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: He was also by acting suspiciously. In his case, he

624
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: was sitting in a stolen car, that's what it was,

625
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: while he was waiting for the van. I would say

626
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 1: that is suspicious. Yeah, I was like, just because a

627
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 1: person is in a stolen car does not necessarily mean

628
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,240
Speaker 1: they stole it. But it doesn't look good.

629
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should at least check it out. And if

630
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 3: they have a weapon and they, you know, fire shots

631
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 3: at you as a police officer, I think that's how

632
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:40,319
Speaker 3: things are going to go.

633
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 1: There was a quote from his time in court when

634
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,880
Speaker 1: it was originally sentenced for the Knightsbridge robbery. I just

635
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: want to see what you think about this. I want

636
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:54,399
Speaker 1: to hear your reaction to this. So one detective said

637
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: this guy wanted to be known as the mastermind of

638
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: the world's biggest robbery, and then continuing to say he

639
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 1: had an ego the size of the Old Bailey. And

640
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:07,280
Speaker 1: then at the trial. At the trial, this dude says

641
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 1: to the judge, maybe I'm a romantic lunatic, but money

642
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 1: was the last thing on my mind, you know, which

643
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: is a very strange way to plead your case. It's like, look,

644
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: I just it's.

645
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 3: Just the excitement.

646
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not about the money. It's loading a message.

647
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll send a message. Well, yeah, I mean, this

648
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 3: is the kind of guy who watched He reportedly watched

649
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 3: Scarface almost sixty times and that was just his favorite

650
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 3: movie and he wanted to be Scarface. He had a

651
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 3: ring or something that Yeah, he had a key ring

652
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 3: that was golden and it was a shotgun. Yeah. Anyway,

653
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:50,880
Speaker 3: I'm done talking about this Valerio guy. Let's take a

654
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 3: quick break from our sponsor and we'll come back and

655
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:56,240
Speaker 3: talk about some of the heists that went really well

656
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 3: for the people who perpetrated them, or at least it

657
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 3: didn't go well for the authorities chasing down the perpetrators.

658
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: And we're back. Let's talk about some of the heists

659
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: where the perpetrators got away asterisk asterisk caveat at all. So,

660
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: just to be clear about this kind of situation we're

661
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:37,240
Speaker 1: talking about, there are quite a few, a surprisingly vast

662
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: number of enormous cases. I don't necessarily want to call

663
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 1: them heist cases where we know money disappeared and we

664
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,839
Speaker 1: know where it was last scene, but we don't know

665
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: what happened to it. The breadcrumb trail has disappeared, right,

666
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:01,880
Speaker 1: So we can laundry lists some of those, but some

667
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 1: of them deserved their own episodes. We decided to start

668
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:12,960
Speaker 1: with a couple of cases where we do know the

669
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of the crew and we know a

670
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: little bit about how it worked.

671
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, we at least know the best assumptions, according to authorities,

672
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 3: about perhaps the groups that were involved here. So let's

673
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 3: jump to January twentieth, nineteen seventy six, and let's go

674
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 3: to Lebanon, specifically Beirut, and there's let's see the target

675
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 3: here is the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut,

676
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 3: and what occurred here on this day is it's believed

677
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 3: that some crew of people officially unknown crew of about

678
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 3: eight soldiers as well as a separate team of individuals

679
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 3: who were safe crackers, they gained access to the vault

680
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 3: of this bank, the British Bank of the Middle East

681
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 3: in Beirut, and they were able to empty the entire

682
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 3: contents of that vault and it's estimated to be somewhere

683
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 3: between twenty million US and fifty million US worth of gold, bars,

684
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 3: Lebanese and other foreign currencies, as well as stocks, jewels,

685
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:22,760
Speaker 3: and other valuables. And that money was worth about sixty million,

686
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:25,719
Speaker 3: somewhere between sixty million to one hundred and fifty million

687
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:29,400
Speaker 3: in twenty ten. So a really big takeaway.

688
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this also touches on something that I think

689
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: we were all somewhat anticipating when we talked about successful heist,

690
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent successful heist, there was a state

691
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 1: actor involved. These weren't just some random amateurs. They were

692
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: a group associated with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization

693
00:44:54,719 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: under Yasara Arafat. Because at the time Lebanon is in

694
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: the grips of a civil war exactly. They're able to

695
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 1: break into this otherwise fairly fortified bank, right.

696
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, while the chaos is going on, while there's so

697
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 3: much confusion and violence occurring, they were just able to

698
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 3: use that opportunity essentially as cover to go in and

699
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:19,720
Speaker 3: take this place.

700
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: Yet and no one, not only has no one involved

701
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: in this hest been caught, no one has been charged

702
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: with the crime. You know what I mean. This is

703
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: not this is not a situation where someone decides to

704
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: skidaddle off to a country that won't extradite. Instead, they disappear,

705
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: they pull akizer.

706
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 3: So say, yeah, just to give you an idea of

707
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 3: what it looks like, you're if you think about it

708
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 3: this way, there are people with large, high powered rifles

709
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 3: that have grenade launchers attached to them, that are wearing

710
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 3: military fatigues that are unmarked, so it's not that you're

711
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 3: officially associated with any military. They roll up with their

712
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 3: grenade launchers, and it's pretty crazy the way they did this,

713
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 3: I mean, and that must have been a very up

714
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 3: like opposing force just to see it coming. You know,

715
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 3: it's just very very strange because again it became a

716
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:25,359
Speaker 3: war zone there at that bank. It wasn't like they

717
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:28,320
Speaker 3: just walked in and took the money. There was firing,

718
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 3: you know, there was weapons being fired and assuming grenades

719
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:34,359
Speaker 3: being launched. It's a pretty intense thing.

720
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and this loot was not just cash, right, We're

721
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: talking gold, jewelry stocks. And oddly enough these guys ended

722
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: up famous and anonymous because the Guinness Book of World

723
00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: Records was inspired to cite this as the quote biggest

724
00:46:55,520 --> 00:47:00,040
Speaker 1: bank robbery in the world. The crazy thing about this

725
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: is that it is quite possible someone listening to this

726
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 1: episode today along with you, may have been involved. They

727
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:15,760
Speaker 1: would be elderly now right, or maybe they would be

728
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: a family member, like a sibling or a child of

729
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: one of the what which we call them, well, we

730
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: should call them criminals, but I like histers. Yeah, and

731
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,879
Speaker 1: let's remember that part. To me, the most crucial part

732
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: about this is that they were very likely involved with

733
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 1: a state actor.

734
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, they used They used C four, the plastic explosive

735
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 3: to gain access to the vault, which you know, it

736
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 3: generally doesn't occur if you are a group of citizens

737
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 3: getting your hands on C four. While it may not

738
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 3: be as difficult as the world's authorities would like it

739
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 3: to be, but it is certainly not easy.

740
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: No, no, it's not something ideally, it's not something we

741
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: want people to be able to order from Amazon or eBay.

742
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know grenade launcher is attached to your sixteens.

743
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:19,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's military hardware. So let's fast forward to two

744
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: thousand and four, a few days before Christmas. Here we

745
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:26,520
Speaker 1: are in jolly old Ireland.

746
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:31,480
Speaker 3: Yes, to Belfast. So let's talk about the target here.

747
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 3: It's a place called Belfast, Northern Bank. And before we

748
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 3: even get into who it is or what occurred or

749
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 3: anything like that, let's just hit that number. Around twenty

750
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:45,799
Speaker 3: six and a half million British pounds, as well as

751
00:48:45,840 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 3: other additional foreign currencies were taken.

752
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: Yeah. According to The Guardian, in total, as of two

753
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, ten people have been arrested have been

754
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: charged for being somehow involved with the conspiracy here. But

755
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: they're all charged with being somehow involved.

756
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 3: Well, but also they've never officially been like.

757
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,360
Speaker 1: Charged with actually yeah, yeah.

758
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:23,279
Speaker 3: It's like it's hard to even wrap your head around

759
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 3: the thing. They they were connected, right, but they weren't

760
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:27,919
Speaker 3: the people they're doing the thing.

761
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the other currencies involved were us dollars

762
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: and euros, right.

763
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 3: Can we just talk about the significance of this robbery.

764
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 3: So we're in Belfast. Uh, there's a peace process going

765
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 3: on because of the tensions you know in Northern Ireland

766
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 3: as well as other parts of Ireland. The IRA and

767
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 3: a couple other groups that were involved in tensions over

768
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:55,880
Speaker 3: the years.

769
00:49:56,160 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 1: Again similar to state actors.

770
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're very you're in a precarious position, they're

771
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 3: already and then to have a violent act like this

772
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 3: occur where millions and millions of dollars are stolen of

773
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 3: all the people's money in the area. I mean that's

774
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 3: people's money. That's not just the bank sitting there. Although

775
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 3: you know insurance through various state programs and everything. Still

776
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 3: it's a symbolic act.

777
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: Sure, that's that's the idea, and it almost crippled the

778
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: ongoing peace process because there was a lot of finger pointing.

779
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 1: The police of Northern Ireland, as well as the British

780
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:39,320
Speaker 1: and Irish governments said that the IRA had a hand

781
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 1: in this. However, the IRA said, no, why would we

782
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,760
Speaker 1: do that. What on earth are you talking about? That's

783
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:50,319
Speaker 1: the last thing we want.

784
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Now let's talk about a little bit of

785
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:57,719
Speaker 3: what happened, so similarly to what we saw with one

786
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:02,279
Speaker 3: of the previous the Securitas heist, some masked what they're

787
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 3: being referred to in the Guardian as masked gang, masked

788
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:11,320
Speaker 3: and armed gang members. These guys show up at two homes,

789
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 3: two separate homes of two separate bank managers there who

790
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 3: work at the Northern Bank, right, and they hold people hostage,

791
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 3: specifically their families, at gunpoint. Then they get moved around

792
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 3: a little bit. They you know, they take some of

793
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 3: the family members to like a forest. Apparently they're really

794
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 3: spreading these people out. They're extremely organized on what they're

795
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 3: gonna do. Then they get one of these guys, one

796
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 3: of these bank managers, to go to work like it's

797
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 3: just a regular old day, pretend nothing's wrong, but he

798
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:43,600
Speaker 3: because he knows that his family's at risk.

799
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:43,879
Speaker 1: Right.

800
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,800
Speaker 3: But then when the banks close that evening, the bank,

801
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 3: these gang members actually like were let in by this manager,

802
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,400
Speaker 3: let into the vaults and then they just loaded up

803
00:51:56,440 --> 00:51:59,040
Speaker 3: a van with all of the contents.

804
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: And got away. That's the craziest thing. Again, the people

805
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 1: who were arrested, the people who were charged, were not

806
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:14,839
Speaker 1: charged with actually carrying this out. I believe currently as

807
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen, one person has been convicted. They were

808
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 1: convicted of money laundering.

809
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, so after the fact, just using it.

810
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 1: Right, And the authorities consider this case ongoing, so they

811
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:34,240
Speaker 1: haven't they haven't closed it. It remains unsolved. Again, given

812
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 1: the time frame here, it's even more likely that someone

813
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:43,520
Speaker 1: involved is listening to this show. Now. When I say

814
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: more likely, I still don't mean it's probable. Yes, but

815
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: if you're listening, No, we can't even say that, Matt.

816
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: You can say someone might be listening. And that's about

817
00:52:57,800 --> 00:52:59,959
Speaker 1: where we have to draw the line. I believe legal

818
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: is that correct?

819
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we at this point we do know a

820
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 3: very small portion of this money that was stolen has

821
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:11,439
Speaker 3: been recovered, A very very small portion. I think two

822
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 3: million out of the two million, out of the sixty

823
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 3: pounds I guess in banknotes were discovered. And then there's

824
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 3: another like one hundred k and US banknotes and listen

825
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 3: to this. According to the Guardian, these US banknotes were

826
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 3: found in the toilet of the Police Athletics Association's New

827
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:34,439
Speaker 3: Forge country club. One hundred thousand dollars of the money

828
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 3: that was still in there was found in the police

829
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 3: country club.

830
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 1: Interesting, so this definitely has the This definitely has the

831
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: aroma of an inside job, you know what I mean?

832
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, but the I think the the authority

833
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 3: is there. The official word was like, oh no, this

834
00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 3: money was just planted there as a distraction. It wasn't actually,

835
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 3: you know, nobody involved with the police did anything to

836
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:01,919
Speaker 3: do with that money. It was just put there.

837
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:08,239
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, all right, wink, yeah, this let's continue to

838
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,000
Speaker 1: build on this. Let's let's look at just a few

839
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: quick laundry lists, okay, sure of unsolved conspiracies. One thing

840
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:19,839
Speaker 1: that I believe stands out for a lot of US

841
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:23,799
Speaker 1: residents and a lot of residents of the Middle East

842
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: would be the massive allegations of stolen money in the

843
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: course of the US's involvement in Iraq, in the course

844
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:42,480
Speaker 1: of the US's involvement in Afghanistan. So if we look

845
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:48,640
Speaker 1: at this, what we find will be almost a thousand,

846
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: almost a thousand cases of alleged fraud committed not not

847
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: by you know, not by local militias or terrorists, but

848
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:04,360
Speaker 1: committed by contractors working from Uncle Sam. As we know,

849
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 1: you know, war is a war is very fertile soil

850
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:14,880
Speaker 1: for corruption, for profiteering. In this case, a US audit

851
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:22,480
Speaker 1: found that the occupying force in Iraq during the Iraq

852
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: War lost track of something around like nine billion dollars

853
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 1: with a B.

854
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:35,520
Speaker 3: Yeah that's insane and right there by the way, Remember

855
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 3: we're talking about several associations, several groups, but one of

856
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 3: the main ones is our old pals Blackwater aka XE

857
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 3: I think aaka Academi. Well, which is our old pals,

858
00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 3: Eric Prince.

859
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's a fascinating article about

860
00:55:57,160 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: this that I would recommend called BBC uncovers Law Iraq

861
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: Billions by a journalist named Jane Corbin, and this came

862
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:09,399
Speaker 1: out in June of two thousand and eight. So this

863
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: is old news. This is over ten years old now,

864
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:19,239
Speaker 1: but it's fascinating to get to get this glimpse. I

865
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:21,719
Speaker 1: just want to share some parts of this. So an

866
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:27,280
Speaker 1: investigation by the BBC found that not just nine billion

867
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:31,720
Speaker 1: that's the US audit, The BBC found twenty three billion

868
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: had been lost, stolen or just maybe put in the

869
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 1: wrong accounting line, which I thought was very generous of

870
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:44,600
Speaker 1: them to phrase it that way. Wow, let me read

871
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:49,880
Speaker 1: this part too. So the BBC used US and Iraqi

872
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: government sources to research how much some private contractors have

873
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: profited from the conflict in Iraq and the subsequent rebuilding.

874
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:05,640
Speaker 1: A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

875
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: What the order applies to seventy court cases against some

876
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 1: of the top US companies.

877
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 3: WHOA, that feels like a whole episode, right, Yeah, I

878
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 3: think we need to do that.

879
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree completely. When Henry Waxman commented on

880
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: this during his time as Chairman of the US House

881
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:32,920
Speaker 1: of Reps, he said, the money that's gone into waste, fraud,

882
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:37,320
Speaker 1: and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous. He

883
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 1: noted at the time that it may turn out to

884
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:44,920
Speaker 1: be the largest case of war profiteering in history, not

885
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: in US history, in human history. Holy crap, that's a

886
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: little hyperbolic. If we're being honest, you know, it's it's

887
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 1: tough to rank these things with accuracy when we're talking

888
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: about just how much money goes missing. But we we

889
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 1: have to admit billions of dollars vanished.

890
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 3: Yeah they did. Oh man, I'll never forget. Was it Rumsfeld?

891
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:13,080
Speaker 3: He was like, yeah, we don't know, just billions of

892
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 3: dollars that we can't account for in the budgets. But

893
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 3: you know, it speaks to the fog of war, like

894
00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 3: we're talking about the cover that you get when there's

895
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 3: conflict like that. Because if we think about or if

896
00:58:25,680 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 3: we take ourselves back to two thousand and three when

897
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 3: the United States was invading Iraq again, and I believe

898
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 3: Saddam at least the story goes that Saddam Hussein ordered

899
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 3: his son and a bunch of other men in trucks

900
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:48,040
Speaker 3: to go to one of the largest Baghdad banks and

901
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 3: take out a billion dollars or as close to a

902
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 3: billion dollars as he could to basically procure it and say,

903
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:56,000
Speaker 3: you know, we're about to be under attack, we're at war.

904
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,920
Speaker 3: We need to make sure this money isn't stolen by

905
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:03,280
Speaker 3: the opposing for horses, right, But they in turn essentially

906
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:06,840
Speaker 3: stole a billion dollars out of the bank. Because it's

907
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's just such an odd thing to

908
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 3: think about it that way, and it makes you wonder

909
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 3: how often that kind of thing occurs, where moneies that

910
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 3: are accrued from all these various places, but you know,

911
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 3: are thought to be the state's money. Depending on when

912
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:26,440
Speaker 3: a conflict is occurring and how it's occurring, I don't know.

913
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 3: It makes me wonder about Fort Knox.

914
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:31,880
Speaker 1: A little bit. Right again, what we see here, the

915
00:59:32,640 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 1: clear trend is that the most successful heist, in terms

916
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: of escaping arrest and in terms of escaping arrest with

917
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: the money or with the loot, whatever that may be,

918
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 1: those successful heist tend to have state actors somehow involved.

919
00:59:54,520 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 1: Those are the inside jobs that carry the most weight

920
00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:05,120
Speaker 1: in highest chance of success. In Afghanistan, we've got what

921
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 1: an estimated forty five billion dollars that went missing. There's

922
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 1: a report from the Fiscal Times in twenty fifteen that

923
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:17,640
Speaker 1: talks about how this came to be. And the big

924
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 1: question is whether these missing dollars vanished due to a purposeful,

925
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: intentional heist or whether it's just flawed accounting on the

926
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: part of the Pentagon, which has, for the entirety of

927
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:35,880
Speaker 1: most people's lives listening to this show, always had a

928
01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:36,920
Speaker 1: problem with accounting.

929
01:00:37,080 --> 01:00:41,360
Speaker 3: Always. It's so weird. Those black budgets, they just don't

930
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 3: match up with the money that doesn't exist.

931
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:49,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, As of twenty fifteen, the Pentagon had data for

932
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: about fifty seven percent of the almost eight hundred million

933
01:00:56,240 --> 01:01:00,760
Speaker 1: that they spent on one program in this country between

934
01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:04,720
Speaker 1: two thousand and two and twenty thirteen. Again, that's not

935
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:08,000
Speaker 1: the whole pie. It's just something called the commander's Emergency

936
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: Response Program. And this is something the Fiscal Times rightly

937
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: criticizes because it's very difficult to see where the money.

938
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 1: You can see where the money comes from, but you

939
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:24,320
Speaker 1: can't see where it goes. It is a black bag,

940
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:28,320
Speaker 1: it's a black budget. It's a mystery box, you know.

941
01:01:29,200 --> 01:01:32,600
Speaker 3: And such as the nature of military conflicts.

942
01:01:32,600 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, well, here just for a peak behind

943
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 1: the current without getting too into the weeds on it.

944
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: Under the Emergency Response program, here commanders could spend money

945
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 1: to respond to sudden catastrophes, immediate needs, you know, fires, floods, earthquakes.

946
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:54,200
Speaker 1: Theoretically that kind of stuff, and any money they spend

947
01:01:54,960 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 1: under half a million dollars isn't treated as a defense

948
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:03,120
Speaker 1: contract and it doesn't have to bear up to the

949
01:02:03,160 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 1: same scrutiny or documentation. So question, I don't know the

950
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: answer to this, but question how often or how rarely

951
01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:20,439
Speaker 1: did someone request fourth one hundred ninety nine thousand.

952
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:23,400
Speaker 3: Dollars seriously or just four hundred and fifty thousand.

953
01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you don't want to be you don't want

954
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:27,120
Speaker 1: to show off. You don't need to test EUROSA.

955
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:32,520
Speaker 3: Man. That sounds like petty cash in a way, but

956
01:02:32,720 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 3: up to you know, a couple under grand Wow, that's

957
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:36,640
Speaker 3: that's insane.

958
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:41,919
Speaker 1: Now to be fair to Uncle Sam at this at

959
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: this point, currently they have discontinued that ambiguous process and

960
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:56,360
Speaker 1: that kind of workflow for accounting. But I but I

961
01:02:56,400 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 1: don't know. There's just so much money on the table

962
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:04,280
Speaker 1: there that it feels almost certain corruption must exist. Maybe

963
01:03:04,320 --> 01:03:07,680
Speaker 1: it's mitigated, maybe it's tamped down, but it has to

964
01:03:07,720 --> 01:03:09,920
Speaker 1: be there. We have a lot of people listening today

965
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:18,280
Speaker 1: who are active or former military members, and I am

966
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: certain that some of us have seen really dodgy things

967
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: happen in the field, you know, really dodgy financial things. Yeah,

968
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:37,200
Speaker 1: and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't

969
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:38,920
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. It's right, let us know

970
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:39,680
Speaker 1: what you think. You can reach.

971
01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:42,080
Speaker 2: You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on

972
01:03:42,120 --> 01:03:46,960
Speaker 2: Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy.

973
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:48,560
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974
01:03:48,720 --> 01:03:53,720
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975
01:03:53,760 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 3: got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname and let

976
01:03:56,480 --> 01:03:58,200
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977
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 3: on the air. If you've got more to say they

978
01:04:00,360 --> 01:04:02,960
Speaker 3: can fit in that voicemail, why not instead send us

979
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:04,440
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980
01:04:04,680 --> 01:04:07,560
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981
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 4: correspondence we receive.

982
01:04:09,440 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 1: Be aware, yet not afraid.

983
01:04:11,480 --> 01:04:34,440
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

984
01:04:34,600 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

985
01:04:36,760 --> 01:04:41,320
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

986
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:44,600
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