Speaker 1: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you
Speaker 1: with one of our favorite subjects of discussion. Heist. Did
Speaker 1: you guys hear recently guy got arrested in the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom for stealing three hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of cheddar.
Speaker 2: Oh man, we love a wacky heist. There was the
Speaker 2: one where someone like stole like change, I.
Speaker 3: Think, or it was like pennies. I believe there's just
Speaker 3: some week books.
Speaker 2: Yeah well wait, well that's right, the Bluey coins.
Speaker 1: Maple syrup cartel. We've got an episode about why maple
Speaker 1: syrup heist are surprisingly profitable. Back in twenty nineteen, we
Speaker 1: started exploring the biggest heist in history, actual criminal conspiracies,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of stuff that's cinematic and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys remember this one, but it
Speaker 1: was a rollicking good time. It was was one of
Speaker 1: those episodes where we had to take breath off air
Speaker 1: and remind ourselves that sometimes people did get shot, sometimes
Speaker 1: people did die.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know the one that we haven't covered
Speaker 3: that would be great for this is the one that
Speaker 3: Fight Night was based on. Right, wasn't that a kind
Speaker 3: of a heist.
Speaker 2: Or a million dollar Well, it was a stick up
Speaker 2: at like a poker game that took place during the
Speaker 2: big Muhammad Ali comeback fight. But it was it was
Speaker 2: a heist of a type for sure.
Speaker 1: It counts. Shaking something you're not supposed to take is
Speaker 1: a heist. Hey, I mean even if it's extra candy
Speaker 1: from the bowl at your dermatologist.
Speaker 3: Oh, don't do that.
Speaker 1: They'll get you. They always remember. Here we go from
Speaker 1: UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
Speaker 1: with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know. A production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radios House Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Speaker 3: Nol is not with us today.
Speaker 1: Noel the bag Man Brown is indeed on adventures. They
Speaker 1: call me Ben. We are joined as always without our
Speaker 1: super producer, Paul, Mission Control DEC and AKA the Coordinator.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt
Speaker 1: off Air, You and Paul and I have been talking
Speaker 1: about some of our favorite things.
Speaker 3: Heist, right, yeah, heist movies, heist, heist and fiction. I
Speaker 3: think are one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: Not in reality, right, it's there's this cool team up
Speaker 1: moment in a lot of heist films, right. And we
Speaker 1: we spoke about which we would ideally or realistically play
Speaker 1: in a heist, and Paul loved. I loved when Paul
Speaker 1: immediately replied, well, I guess I would be the coordinator
Speaker 1: in a heist. And if you go on places like
Speaker 1: TV tropes, you will see the various categories, the common
Speaker 1: positions and roles in a lot of heist Paul, I
Speaker 1: have to be honest. I feel like maybe you chose
Speaker 1: the coordinator just because it also the category also says
Speaker 1: the coordinator functions as mission control.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He found that and he went, that's it. That's
Speaker 3: what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: You read the whole article, and Matt, you had some
Speaker 1: interesting choices. You had two that spoke to you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm mostly thinking about it in context of this show.
Speaker 3: So I would go with the partner in crime. So
Speaker 3: not the master because I think we all know who
Speaker 3: the mastermind would be, especially in the context of our
Speaker 3: crew and show Ben. But I would be the partner
Speaker 3: in crime. I would be the person who is second
Speaker 3: in command, who assists and maybe the only one. This
Speaker 3: is a quote, maybe the only one besides the mastermind
Speaker 3: who actually knows what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's flattering to to imply that mastermind position.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I always I always thought I would,
Speaker 1: I would function as a face, at least in my
Speaker 1: past experience. I tend to do this work a lot.
Speaker 1: But what we found was that we constructed the four
Speaker 1: of us a fairly solid again fictional heist crew. And
Speaker 1: today we're we're looking at heist. You know, heist when
Speaker 1: you think about it, their conspiracies. People are conspiring to
Speaker 1: do something nefarious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly, And a lot of the examples we're going
Speaker 3: to get to today involve inside jobs with all things
Speaker 3: within that conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Loaded term loaded term there. But who does not love
Speaker 1: a good heist film?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: The formula is pretty solid at this point. A team
Speaker 1: of specialists with some dubious gifts and specializations and no
Speaker 1: small amount of internal tension band together.
Speaker 3: For I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's the big one, capital B, capital O. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's one last job before we go straight, you know,
Speaker 1: or before we retire to some remote destination. There is
Speaker 1: one rule that always applies to any heist film, no
Speaker 1: matter which country, culture, or time period it comes from,
Speaker 1: and that one rule, that one ever constant, ubiquitous rule,
Speaker 1: is things go wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the perfect plan isn't quite so perfect. But you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of these movies are based on actual heists,
Speaker 3: actual or at least loosely based on actual heights.
Speaker 1: Inspired by true events.
Speaker 3: Because all the time there are people and groups of
Speaker 3: people conspiring to rob banks and armored cars and various
Speaker 3: institutions and jewelry stores and everything museums. Yes, they're true
Speaker 3: and they're real, but the big question today is how
Speaker 3: do they work? How do they function in reality outside
Speaker 3: of those fictional worlds?
Speaker 1: Right? How do real heist actually work? Here are the facts,
Speaker 1: and let's call this why you shouldn't rob a bank.
Speaker 1: Some of this research comes from an older and older
Speaker 1: piece that Paul and I did for a show called
Speaker 1: brain stuff. Oh I remember this, Yeah, which is available
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Yeah, I was nuts on this one. If
Speaker 1: we want to get a handle on real life heist,
Speaker 1: we can look at the numbers, and the numbers may
Speaker 1: surprise some of us. In twenty eleven in the United States,
Speaker 1: let's focus on the US just for this part. In
Speaker 1: twenty eleven in the US, there were over five thousand
Speaker 1: bank robberies fourteen documented once. Most of these, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: happened during the day while the bank was open at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are when there is a teller or a
Speaker 3: bank manager or someone on the scene.
Speaker 1: Also multiple witnesses. People who just came to make a
Speaker 1: depositor get a money order and we're probably thinking about
Speaker 1: grabbing Chipotle after they were not planning for this. Also,
Speaker 1: the all the data shows that they there are two
Speaker 1: favorite days for bank robbers. Those days are Tuesdays and Fridays.
Speaker 1: Despite what feature films might have us believe, the majority
Speaker 1: of robbers are not experts. They are not professional bank robbers.
Speaker 1: They are rank amateurs. Eighty percent of individual bank robbers
Speaker 1: have never been convicted of a bank robbery before. It's
Speaker 1: their first time out.
Speaker 3: And may probably the numbers will show us the first
Speaker 3: time getting caught.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, that is true. The criminals also, contrary
Speaker 1: to what heist and fiction would have us believe, are
Speaker 1: not teaming up in some super swanky, awesome oceans eleven
Speaker 1: Avengers Voltron esque kind of thing. Instead, eighty percent operate alone.
Speaker 1: And they also use predictable patterns. They tend to if
Speaker 1: they survive the first one, if they escape the first one,
Speaker 1: they tend to do the same things, sort of franchise
Speaker 1: and repeat it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or you know, they're not experienced in how to
Speaker 3: manage the money and the spoils once they've attained them, right,
Speaker 3: and then that will lead them to be to being caught.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. According to
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, the FBI's clearance rate for bank
Speaker 1: robbery is a little under sixty percent of those cleared robberies.
Speaker 1: Of the crimes that are solved, about half of those
Speaker 1: are solved within thirty days. And people will bank robbers,
Speaker 1: I mean will get caught sometimes not for anything directly
Speaker 1: related to the bank robbery, as you said, Matt, they
Speaker 1: will get caught after the heist using you know, bills
Speaker 1: with sequential serial numbers, using something that can be traced.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: There was a Yeah, there's this excellent vice video called
Speaker 1: rap Monument, which has it's just a cavalcade of mostly
Speaker 1: amazing MC's And there's a line in one of these,
Speaker 1: in one of the verses where they say the bank
Speaker 1: vaults don't talk, but the numbers read, and that is
Speaker 1: that is directly alluding to the way that serial numbers
Speaker 1: on bills, especially larger bills, can be traced. So if you,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be sitting on a stack of
Speaker 1: ill gotten cash, please be very aware that someone somewhere
Speaker 1: knows the numbers of those bills and they're kind of
Speaker 1: waiting for you to use them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, or especially to use them to make a
Speaker 3: large purchase of an expensive thing, especially if you do
Speaker 3: it sequentially several times of a large purchase such as
Speaker 3: a oh, I don't know if Ferrari or a mansion,
Speaker 3: or a Wendy's.
Speaker 1: Franchise, A Wendy's franchise. Sure, I mean, that's when you've
Speaker 1: really made it, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're talking a lot about how people get caught
Speaker 1: using the money they've stolen, but we haven't talked about
Speaker 1: how much money professional or lucky robbers actually make. It
Speaker 1: is surprising conspiracy realists. We often hear about millions of
Speaker 1: dollars billions of dollars in some cases disappearing, but life
Speaker 1: for the average bank robber is pretty hard scrabble and
Speaker 1: hard won. There was a study by several British economists
Speaker 1: that examined just the nuts and bolts math this. So
Speaker 1: what they found is the average return on a bank
Speaker 1: heist in the United Kingdom is nineteen thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: dollars per person per heist. In the US it's way worse.
Speaker 1: It's only a little bit over four thousand dollars per mist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of that, you know, if you're
Speaker 3: looking at it on average, you're talking about the loan
Speaker 3: actors that walk into a bank hand a piece of
Speaker 3: paper over that says empty the register, give me everything
Speaker 3: you have, I have a gun, and then they walk
Speaker 3: out and that's it. They don't go for the vault,
Speaker 3: they don't go for any of the big ticket items,
Speaker 3: they don't go to the security deposit boxes. They just
Speaker 3: go in, get that money and then leave. So that's
Speaker 3: definitely swaying numbers there, right, And you're also talking about
Speaker 3: the UK where weapons are like firearms are much more
Speaker 3: difficult to come by, so it's its whole other thing.
Speaker 3: Like if you walk into a bank just wielding a
Speaker 3: knife or something, change the calculus a little bit about
Speaker 3: what can go down and what you can get.
Speaker 1: Right. Also, the UK is one of the most closely
Speaker 1: surveilled areas of the world. We did mention this in
Speaker 1: a previous episode, just the density of cameras.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the interesting thing that these people also found,
Speaker 3: these economists that are looking at the numbers, they found
Speaker 3: that if you increase the number of people in your crew,
Speaker 3: you actually can move those numbers a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, every additional member of a heist gang
Speaker 1: raises the value of the robbery or the takeaway by
Speaker 1: in the UK it's a little over nine thirty three pounds.
Speaker 1: That translates to a bit over fifteen grand, So that
Speaker 1: feels like a valuable contribution. But we have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind the per person hall diminishes with every new
Speaker 1: member added to the gang, and of course the likelihood
Speaker 1: of something going wrong, someone squealing, someone making a rookie
Speaker 1: mistake that rises exponentially.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but it definitely gets into that thing where
Speaker 3: if you have if you have a crew like we
Speaker 3: were talking about in the beginning, of people who are
Speaker 3: managing things, who have a specific task, who are going
Speaker 3: to go in and get the money and take the
Speaker 3: money and do all that, you can see it working
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So, how does this work out if any of
Speaker 1: our fellow listeners were professional bank robbers, what would they
Speaker 1: have to do to make it a genuine living right
Speaker 1: to not have to constantly be hungry, homeless, et cetera,
Speaker 1: just to meet their basic needs.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So let's look at just in the United States,
Speaker 3: the poverty line and where these how these numbers match up.
Speaker 3: So in twenty thirteen, the poverty threshold at least would
Speaker 3: be an annual income of eleven four and ninety dollars
Speaker 3: per per So for one single person, eleven and a
Speaker 3: half thousand dollars a year, that'd be your income, right,
Speaker 3: And this means that on average, if you were just
Speaker 3: a professional bank robber or just all by your loansome,
Speaker 3: you'd have to rob three banks a year, and you'd
Speaker 3: have to keep all the loot and not do anything
Speaker 3: with it necessarily, or at least, I don't know, you'd
Speaker 3: have to invest smartly or launder it correctly and smartly
Speaker 3: just to stay out of the poorhouse, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And the most recent number we can find
Speaker 1: for the poverty threshold is from twenty sixteen. Yeah, two
Speaker 1: and eighty six dollars, So that still hasn't moved very much.
Speaker 1: But making a living as a bank robber has become
Speaker 1: increasingly difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but hey, think about it this way. That's only
Speaker 3: three maybe four jobs a year, and that's it. That's
Speaker 3: all you gotta do.
Speaker 1: I imagine there's a lot of pre production that goes
Speaker 1: into that. Maybe, or who knows, maybe there's yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: there there are just some people who impulsively rob banks
Speaker 1: and keep getting away. There are so many stories of daring,
Speaker 1: ambitious heist not just related to banks. Banks we tend
Speaker 1: to have more information about because they're one of the
Speaker 1: most common forms of this sort of crime. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, not all heists are created equal. Some high
Speaker 1: screws didn't just conspire to, you know, rob a vault
Speaker 1: at a bank. They conspire to move massive, gargantuan amounts
Speaker 1: of loot, some things that are objectively priceless works of
Speaker 1: art that cannot have a value assigned, and so on.
Speaker 1: And the most bizarre thing about it is some of
Speaker 1: these crews got away. So let's let's explore this. Let's
Speaker 1: look at some of the world's biggest heist Let's look
Speaker 1: at some of the folks who were caught, and let's
Speaker 1: look at some of the folks who are still out
Speaker 1: there today.
Speaker 3: And we'll do that right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, Matt, what do you say
Speaker 1: do you want to do? You want to start off
Speaker 1: with some heist where the perpetrators were ultimately apprehended.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely, And let's okay, let's first jump to
Speaker 3: September twelfth, nineteen ninety seven. This is a story about
Speaker 3: a bank robbery that feels like several major emotion pictures
Speaker 3: that I have seen or at least heard about. The
Speaker 3: target or let's just say, the title of it is
Speaker 3: the Dunbar Armored Robbery. That's like what we're going to
Speaker 3: call it here. And the target was Dunbar Armored Incorporated.
Speaker 3: And they are an armored truck company. So what they
Speaker 3: do is they move cash and valuables from one place
Speaker 3: to another in a vehicle that is generally you know,
Speaker 3: has a crew of people who are there to protect
Speaker 3: the money, and they're all armed. It seems like an
Speaker 3: extremely dangerous thing to attempt to rob, at least on
Speaker 3: the surface, right. But in Los Angeles, California, a group
Speaker 3: of people, including a man named Alan Pace the Third,
Speaker 3: got together and conspired to rob the Dunbar Armored Inc. Company,
Speaker 3: So instead of robbing a single one of these cars,
Speaker 3: they went to the source of where the cars go
Speaker 3: back to the depot basically right. And this guy, Alan
Speaker 3: Pace the third was working at Dunbar and he knew
Speaker 3: the ins and outs of the place. It was in
Speaker 3: fact an inside job, and he had a crew of
Speaker 3: people that came with him. They tied up some security guards,
Speaker 3: they made off with a whole bunch of money, and
Speaker 3: they also destroyed all of the security tapes. They didn't
Speaker 3: they didn't destroy the cameras or anything. They took the
Speaker 3: actual tapes, so there was no real evidence. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of a weird thing because for a long time
Speaker 3: they couldn't figure out exactly what happened. But they realized
Speaker 3: it must have been an inside job because somebody knew
Speaker 3: entirely too much about the security where the cameras were,
Speaker 3: how those cameras were recording, and where that stuff would be,
Speaker 3: and how much money would be where at what time. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it's a really fascinating thing to look at.
Speaker 1: It's also, I believe, still the largest cash robbery to
Speaker 1: have occurred in the US. Right.
Speaker 3: I think it's been estimated to be that because it
Speaker 3: was around eighteen. It was around nineteen million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, which would make it closer to
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars today. Yeah, this story is amazing, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't end happily for mister Pace.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, he got caught as well as
Speaker 3: several other people. Alan Pace the third was considered the mastermind,
Speaker 3: you know, if we're going to use those terms. He
Speaker 3: was the guy who came up with the idea because
Speaker 3: he was the inside man. He knew the ins and outs.
Speaker 3: But he also had some people working with him, like
Speaker 3: Eric Damon Boyd, one of the accomplices. There were several
Speaker 3: people working with him that ended up going to jail
Speaker 3: and getting arrested and you know, going to trial and
Speaker 3: ended up in the slammer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Eugene Lamar Hill, I think was the was the
Speaker 1: weak link there, or at least at first.
Speaker 3: The slip up is Lamar Hill, the guy that was
Speaker 3: was trying to he got caught with the sequential bills
Speaker 3: with the original rapper and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That tells you how much this stack of money is worth.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Because this gang attempted to be pretty
Speaker 1: smart and pretty strategic about how they would seem to
Speaker 1: legitimately have created such wealth. They were buying real estate,
Speaker 1: and then I believe they were also starting business fronts,
Speaker 1: you know, right, like like a PO Box Corporation or
Speaker 1: LLC stuff like that. But Eugene was talking to a
Speaker 1: real estate broker and he I guess he felt too
Speaker 1: comfortable or he got a little lax and he literally
Speaker 1: handed this guy that stack of bills, like you said,
Speaker 1: that could have just come from an armor t rock
Speaker 1: and his associate, He's often referred to as Hill's friend,
Speaker 1: but I would say maybe acquaintance is a better term,
Speaker 1: because his real estate buddy notices this strap of cash
Speaker 1: and he goes immediately to the police. And once Eugene
Speaker 1: Lamar Hill is arrested, he confesses and he names all
Speaker 1: the members of the crew.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and they also connected Hill up to this
Speaker 3: U haul that the crew had rented, because they were
Speaker 3: bringing that in to load all of the cash into
Speaker 3: this U haul and it was Hill who actually had
Speaker 3: rented it. And then I think there was a broken
Speaker 3: taillight or something that was found on the scene of
Speaker 3: the robbery. They connected that up to that specific U
Speaker 3: haul they found Hill. They like they connected all those
Speaker 3: pieces together and that's how they get most of the
Speaker 3: rest of the crew with that confession.
Speaker 1: So justice is served mostly. Unfortunately, the law enforcement agents
Speaker 1: were not able to recover all of the money, some
Speaker 1: of which remains missing today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they only recovered about five million of that. You
Speaker 3: know at the time was nineteen million, so you know
Speaker 3: that a lot of that just went into stuff those
Speaker 3: those front companies in the real estate and all that
Speaker 3: other stuff. But they probably were able to get back
Speaker 3: some of that real estate because you could actually tie
Speaker 3: it to the being used by that money. Really really
Speaker 3: cool case. I mean, it's messed up. Those guys saw
Speaker 3: justice or experience justice, are experiencing it. But again, I
Speaker 3: think a pretty good example of one of these highly
Speaker 3: coordinated events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's this is fascinating to me because these
Speaker 1: people went to prison, right, Yeah, but how how does
Speaker 1: a person feel if they are in prison for a
Speaker 1: crime they definitely committed, and they know that they will
Speaker 1: not only get out at some point, but they also
Speaker 1: know the money that they stole is somewhere and they
Speaker 1: may be able to access it. It's got to be
Speaker 1: pretty intense.
Speaker 3: You know, we're going to get into a similar thing
Speaker 3: to that a little bit later in the episode, where
Speaker 3: you just you're biding your time in jail because you
Speaker 3: know where the rest of it is.
Speaker 1: Let's go across the pond for the next one, the
Speaker 1: Securitas Depot heist.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so this one jumps us forward to February
Speaker 3: twenty first, two thousand and six. This time we're in Kent,
Speaker 3: southeast of London. If you're looking at a map and
Speaker 3: secure TOAs just like the old Dunbar group, they guess what,
Speaker 3: transferring tons of money and valuables in armored cars, And
Speaker 3: this time we're at a Securitas depot instead of a
Speaker 3: dumbbar depot. Same very very similar kind of thing, and
Speaker 3: this one went down similarly with a couple of twists.
Speaker 3: The first big twist is that these guys realized that
Speaker 3: in order to be successful they were going to need
Speaker 3: some leverage. They went to the home of Colin Dixon,
Speaker 3: who was the manager of this depot, and he and
Speaker 3: his family were kidnapped at gunpoint, and a crew or
Speaker 3: at least one or two people stayed behind with that
Speaker 3: family while Colin basically brought all of these robbers of
Speaker 3: this crew of people to the depot let them in.
Speaker 3: Those guys then essentially kidnapped all of the workers who
Speaker 3: were at the depot and they tied them all up
Speaker 3: and they took just giant basically cages and pallets of
Speaker 3: cash and valuables. They loaded him onto a giant truck
Speaker 3: and took off and they ended up making away with
Speaker 3: fifty three million British pounds.
Speaker 1: Which makes this the largest cash robbery in UK history. Again,
Speaker 1: this is ruthless work, but they do end up getting caught,
Speaker 1: right they I do want to stay just for a
Speaker 1: second on their process here. Yeah, because the way that
Speaker 1: they got Colin Dixon was pretty devious.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They impersonated police officers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They pulled him over and he was basically like, okay,
Speaker 3: well this is fine, I'm gonna work all this stuff out.
Speaker 3: And then they said, well, sir, we need you get
Speaker 3: out of your car. They took him to the back
Speaker 3: of the car, basically locked him in the back of
Speaker 3: the car, and then asked him a bunch of questions
Speaker 3: that police officers generally wouldn't ask, and they put a
Speaker 3: gun in his face.
Speaker 1: So after the robbery, Dixon and his family survive Thankfully,
Speaker 1: after the robbery secured, US offers a reward of two
Speaker 1: million pounds, no real questions asked, Just give us information
Speaker 1: that will lead to the arrest of these assailants. And
Speaker 1: it works out because on February twenty third, two days later,
Speaker 1: police have already arrested two people and charged them with
Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit robbery.
Speaker 3: But they're just people who were on the crew, right right,
Speaker 3: because some of the main people that were involved with this,
Speaker 3: or at least that were thought to be the masterminds,
Speaker 3: had actually fled to Morocco smartly I think on their
Speaker 3: part there, but they fled and they were I believe.
Speaker 3: They're justcribed in several places as cage fighters or former
Speaker 3: cage fighters. There's a guy named Paul Allen and another
Speaker 3: one named Lee Murray or Murray m r Ay. So
Speaker 3: after these guys are arrested, you're talking about ben two guys,
Speaker 3: and then it ends up being five guys that get arrested.
Speaker 3: It's basically the whole crew except for the masterminds and
Speaker 3: these guys in Morocco. Then finally Paul Allen gets extradited
Speaker 3: from Morocco. He gets charged, but he keeps telling everybody well, no,
Speaker 3: I wasn't the mastermind. I was just doing what I
Speaker 3: was told. I was working for this guy Lee Murra
Speaker 3: or Murray, and Lee is already incarcerated in Morocco. So
Speaker 3: it's like, I guess he was kind of using Lee
Speaker 3: as the fall guy perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because while they were in Morocco they did a
Speaker 1: number of things, some of which were very clever, some
Speaker 1: of which are understandable, and some of which are you know,
Speaker 1: sort of not thought through. They went on a spending spree,
Speaker 1: as reported in The Guardian by Matthew Weaver and his associates.
Speaker 1: They went on a spending spree. They were making it
Speaker 1: rain in Morocco. They bought property. They bought jewelry, which
Speaker 1: is you know, very very popular. We'll get to the
Speaker 1: loose diamonds, don't worry, holds its value, one of the
Speaker 1: sketchiest things people can have. They also bought illegal things
Speaker 1: like drugs, and this is something smart that they did.
Speaker 1: They invested thousands of dollars or pounds rather in plastic
Speaker 1: surgery for their associates. I've always been curious about whether
Speaker 1: that kind of tactic works. If someone is attempting to
Speaker 1: disappear you know, we hear about despots having plastics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we hear about you know, people in drug cartels getting
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. The thing, the thing about it is not
Speaker 1: to quote Donald Rumswell directly, but it's it's an unknown
Speaker 1: unknown right. If someone successfully has has used plastic surgery
Speaker 1: to evade the long arm of the law, we'll never
Speaker 1: know about it. Yeah, so maybe we only know about
Speaker 1: the people who got caught with a bad nosed job
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just got to look for all those tremendously
Speaker 3: rich people with lots and lots of work done, start
Speaker 3: asking questions.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we may be conflating populations there.
Speaker 3: Don't do that.
Speaker 1: So what we see here is that they're they're caught because,
Speaker 1: despite their best intentions, they went to a country that
Speaker 1: has an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. And in
Speaker 1: our earlier conversations about pseudoside, we've learned right that the
Speaker 1: only way people can fake their death and profit from it,
Speaker 1: or the only way people can commit a huge crime
Speaker 1: like this and survive without going to jail, is essentially
Speaker 1: to relocate to someplace that does not extradite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really the only way. And in the end,
Speaker 3: they were covered about twenty four million I think, I
Speaker 3: think twenty four million pounds of the fifty something fifty.
Speaker 1: Four Yeah, I wonder what happened to that, right, because
Speaker 1: what we see here, maybe it's a little bit misleading, folks,
Speaker 1: because in both of the heightst we just talked about
Speaker 1: the people got caught, but the money didn't get caught.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not necessarily, it got moved around in the market.
Speaker 1: Right. There we go, There we go. We have another
Speaker 1: example from the United Kingdom that has even higher stakes.
Speaker 3: Oh this one, we're going back before either of the
Speaker 3: previous two, back to nineteen eighty July.
Speaker 1: Twelfth, great year for bank robberies.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is in Knightsbridge, London. This
Speaker 3: is or it's a part of London's in the UK.
Speaker 3: It's in the city of Westminster, I believe. And the
Speaker 3: target here is a thing, a place called Knightsbridge Safe
Speaker 3: Deposit Center, so less of a bank, more of a
Speaker 3: giant repository of safety deposit boxes, a giant a collection
Speaker 3: of safety deposit boxes. And there was a small crew
Speaker 3: of people that went into there, including this gentleman named
Speaker 3: Valerio Viiccei Vishay via Viccha. I don't know how to
Speaker 3: say it, but Valerio, let's call him. They walked in
Speaker 3: pretending like they were just going to get a safety
Speaker 3: deposit box, and as soon as they got into the
Speaker 3: secure area where the deposit boxes were, they pulled out
Speaker 3: his crew pulled out pistol, held everybody up. Then they
Speaker 3: put a closed temporarily closed sign on the front of
Speaker 3: the safety deposit center. Then they invited a couple other
Speaker 3: people in who were part of their.
Speaker 1: Crew, dressed as security guards.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they began basically just busting open all of
Speaker 3: these safety deposit boxes and they got away with a ton.
Speaker 1: Of money, A huge amount of money, right, wasn't it
Speaker 1: around sixty million pounds? It was over sixty million pounds
Speaker 1: I believe.
Speaker 3: Yes, But again that's not cash, right, it's it's valuables,
Speaker 3: mostly valuables, some cash, probably bonds and all these other things.
Speaker 3: But the safety deposit boxes were owned by millionaires in London,
Speaker 3: owned by famous people like sports. They're just famous peoples
Speaker 3: of all.
Speaker 1: Ilk aristocrats, yes, money royalty. Right. They forced open one
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen boxes, I think, yes, what around two hours,
Speaker 1: so they were in the room for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but one hundred and fourteen box is full of
Speaker 3: whatever it was, and uh, they're yeah, thinking about sixty
Speaker 3: million British pounds. But then, okay, so these guys make
Speaker 3: off with all this, they are they are successful with
Speaker 3: these past three. The robbery itself goes off pretty well, right,
Speaker 3: right in all three of these, right, they get in,
Speaker 3: they get the spoils, and then they leave. The problems
Speaker 3: are given enough time, you have enough people involved, somebody
Speaker 3: slips up, and this is what occurred. There were several
Speaker 3: several accomplices of Valerio who ended up getting caught. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's let's spend a little bit of time
Speaker 1: on Valerio because he is anomalous in the world of robberies.
Speaker 1: Remember we said earlier at the top that eighty percent
Speaker 1: are loaners, eighty percent are first time amate two with
Speaker 1: this not your buddy Valario. He came to England from Italy,
Speaker 1: where he was already wanted on charges for something like
Speaker 1: fifty armed robberies. Yeah so maybe not necessarily banks, but
Speaker 1: this guy was no stranger to the hustle.
Speaker 3: No, he wasn't. He also wasn't the kind of guy
Speaker 3: that liked to lay low after he's done a job
Speaker 3: or something and not spend a lot of money, not
Speaker 3: have a lot of visibility. He liked to be out
Speaker 3: there living as is described by several websites. We looked
Speaker 3: at lavishly. That's how he did his.
Speaker 1: Thing, living Levita Loca. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and then that leads him down a pathway
Speaker 3: because he ends up, Oh where did he go? He
Speaker 3: skipped the.
Speaker 1: Country to South America.
Speaker 3: He went to South America right after this large robbery,
Speaker 3: and he was doing really well, you know, spending a
Speaker 3: ton of money. He's got a ton of money now.
Speaker 3: But he ends up wanting to get a ferrari I
Speaker 3: think a tester rosa. I believe that's what it was.
Speaker 3: And he goes back to the United Kingdom just temporarily
Speaker 3: flies back over there just to oversee the shipping of
Speaker 3: this ferrari back to where he's living in South America,
Speaker 3: and the authorities, of course somehow notice that he's there.
Speaker 3: You can only assume he's using a passport that's not his.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, he was not aware that he
Speaker 1: was already directly tied to this crime because of a
Speaker 1: single fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. Oh wow, that belonged to him,
Speaker 1: though was found on the scene. Also, I know we
Speaker 1: just mentioned blood, but we should say no one was killed, right, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, right. So he goes This guy is such
Speaker 1: a pill. He he goes back to England, as you said,
Speaker 1: to get his testosa ship to South America. Not the
Speaker 1: smartest move. And people who saw him thought he was
Speaker 1: not an impressive person. They thought he was a show off.
Speaker 1: They thought he was flexing too hard, like he wanted
Speaker 1: people to see his rolex and he wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about how his love of exotic cars. He was doing
Speaker 1: his best to not blend in. So the cops set
Speaker 1: up a roadblock. That's how they get him. They literally
Speaker 1: know where he's coming from and where he's going, set
Speaker 1: up a roadblock. They take him out of his car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they smash a windshield of his Ferrari, right.
Speaker 1: Which I think was sort of them proving a point.
Speaker 1: You know, that's their version of showing off their rolex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: And he is sentenced to twenty two years in prison,
Speaker 1: but I believe being extradited to Italy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes back to Italy after a little bit
Speaker 3: of jail time, ends up spending more jail time in Italy,
Speaker 3: but he ends him this thing that's called a day prison,
Speaker 3: or he's got like day privileges while he's at prison,
Speaker 3: so he can actually leave for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 3: He's got a company that he's running, and he ends
Speaker 3: up getting into some dastardly stuff. Again, I think he's
Speaker 3: he's spotted by like a patrol vehicle or something, just
Speaker 3: kind of your standard police patrol vehicle in Italy, and
Speaker 3: he's doing something weird. He ends up getting in a
Speaker 3: shootout with an officer and dying.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's connect some dots here, because he's in
Speaker 1: a shootout, which means he has a firearm in Italy
Speaker 1: while he is technically in prison. Right. I think he's released,
Speaker 1: as you said, during the day, and he has to
Speaker 1: be back in his cell at ten thirty or something
Speaker 1: like that, and he's acting suspiciously quote unquote acting suspiciously?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? You know what I mean? In
Speaker 1: this country, there are a lot of innocent people who
Speaker 1: have been fatally shot for quote unquote acting suspiciously. In
Speaker 1: this guy's case, I gotta say I believe law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it appears that he may have been waiting
Speaker 3: for literally an armored truck or I mean again, there's
Speaker 3: some rumors that I was reading about on there, but
Speaker 3: who knows. In the end of this huge heist, the
Speaker 3: sixty million pounds worth of stuff, authorities got ten million
Speaker 3: or they were covered roughly ten million pounds worth of
Speaker 3: stuff and valuables, but the rest of it was either
Speaker 3: spent or can't be found. So there you go, kind
Speaker 3: of the same ending there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he also he wasn't a good person. Any
Speaker 1: loss of human life is a tragedy. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make light of the fact that this guy died.
Speaker 1: He was also by acting suspiciously. In his case, he
Speaker 1: was sitting in a stolen car, that's what it was,
Speaker 1: while he was waiting for the van. I would say
Speaker 1: that is suspicious. Yeah, I was like, just because a
Speaker 1: person is in a stolen car does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: they stole it. But it doesn't look good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should at least check it out. And if
Speaker 3: they have a weapon and they, you know, fire shots
Speaker 3: at you as a police officer, I think that's how
Speaker 3: things are going to go.
Speaker 1: There was a quote from his time in court when
Speaker 1: it was originally sentenced for the Knightsbridge robbery. I just
Speaker 1: want to see what you think about this. I want
Speaker 1: to hear your reaction to this. So one detective said
Speaker 1: this guy wanted to be known as the mastermind of
Speaker 1: the world's biggest robbery, and then continuing to say he
Speaker 1: had an ego the size of the Old Bailey. And
Speaker 1: then at the trial. At the trial, this dude says
Speaker 1: to the judge, maybe I'm a romantic lunatic, but money
Speaker 1: was the last thing on my mind, you know, which
Speaker 1: is a very strange way to plead your case. It's like, look,
Speaker 1: I just it's.
Speaker 3: Just the excitement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not about the money. It's loading a message.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll send a message. Well, yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 3: is the kind of guy who watched He reportedly watched
Speaker 3: Scarface almost sixty times and that was just his favorite
Speaker 3: movie and he wanted to be Scarface. He had a
Speaker 3: ring or something that Yeah, he had a key ring
Speaker 3: that was golden and it was a shotgun. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I'm done talking about this Valerio guy. Let's take a
Speaker 3: quick break from our sponsor and we'll come back and
Speaker 3: talk about some of the heists that went really well
Speaker 3: for the people who perpetrated them, or at least it
Speaker 3: didn't go well for the authorities chasing down the perpetrators.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Let's talk about some of the heists
Speaker 1: where the perpetrators got away asterisk asterisk caveat at all. So,
Speaker 1: just to be clear about this kind of situation we're
Speaker 1: talking about, there are quite a few, a surprisingly vast
Speaker 1: number of enormous cases. I don't necessarily want to call
Speaker 1: them heist cases where we know money disappeared and we
Speaker 1: know where it was last scene, but we don't know
Speaker 1: what happened to it. The breadcrumb trail has disappeared, right,
Speaker 1: So we can laundry lists some of those, but some
Speaker 1: of them deserved their own episodes. We decided to start
Speaker 1: with a couple of cases where we do know the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of the crew and we know a
Speaker 1: little bit about how it worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we at least know the best assumptions, according to authorities,
Speaker 3: about perhaps the groups that were involved here. So let's
Speaker 3: jump to January twentieth, nineteen seventy six, and let's go
Speaker 3: to Lebanon, specifically Beirut, and there's let's see the target
Speaker 3: here is the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut,
Speaker 3: and what occurred here on this day is it's believed
Speaker 3: that some crew of people officially unknown crew of about
Speaker 3: eight soldiers as well as a separate team of individuals
Speaker 3: who were safe crackers, they gained access to the vault
Speaker 3: of this bank, the British Bank of the Middle East
Speaker 3: in Beirut, and they were able to empty the entire
Speaker 3: contents of that vault and it's estimated to be somewhere
Speaker 3: between twenty million US and fifty million US worth of gold, bars,
Speaker 3: Lebanese and other foreign currencies, as well as stocks, jewels,
Speaker 3: and other valuables. And that money was worth about sixty million,
Speaker 3: somewhere between sixty million to one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 3: in twenty ten. So a really big takeaway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this also touches on something that I think
Speaker 1: we were all somewhat anticipating when we talked about successful heist,
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent successful heist, there was a state
Speaker 1: actor involved. These weren't just some random amateurs. They were
Speaker 1: a group associated with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization
Speaker 1: under Yasara Arafat. Because at the time Lebanon is in
Speaker 1: the grips of a civil war exactly. They're able to
Speaker 1: break into this otherwise fairly fortified bank, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, while the chaos is going on, while there's so
Speaker 3: much confusion and violence occurring, they were just able to
Speaker 3: use that opportunity essentially as cover to go in and
Speaker 3: take this place.
Speaker 1: Yet and no one, not only has no one involved
Speaker 1: in this hest been caught, no one has been charged
Speaker 1: with the crime. You know what I mean. This is
Speaker 1: not this is not a situation where someone decides to
Speaker 1: skidaddle off to a country that won't extradite. Instead, they disappear,
Speaker 1: they pull akizer.
Speaker 3: So say, yeah, just to give you an idea of
Speaker 3: what it looks like, you're if you think about it
Speaker 3: this way, there are people with large, high powered rifles
Speaker 3: that have grenade launchers attached to them, that are wearing
Speaker 3: military fatigues that are unmarked, so it's not that you're
Speaker 3: officially associated with any military. They roll up with their
Speaker 3: grenade launchers, and it's pretty crazy the way they did this,
Speaker 3: I mean, and that must have been a very up
Speaker 3: like opposing force just to see it coming. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just very very strange because again it became a
Speaker 3: war zone there at that bank. It wasn't like they
Speaker 3: just walked in and took the money. There was firing,
Speaker 3: you know, there was weapons being fired and assuming grenades
Speaker 3: being launched. It's a pretty intense thing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and this loot was not just cash, right, We're
Speaker 1: talking gold, jewelry stocks. And oddly enough these guys ended
Speaker 1: up famous and anonymous because the Guinness Book of World
Speaker 1: Records was inspired to cite this as the quote biggest
Speaker 1: bank robbery in the world. The crazy thing about this
Speaker 1: is that it is quite possible someone listening to this
Speaker 1: episode today along with you, may have been involved. They
Speaker 1: would be elderly now right, or maybe they would be
Speaker 1: a family member, like a sibling or a child of
Speaker 1: one of the what which we call them, well, we
Speaker 1: should call them criminals, but I like histers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: let's remember that part. To me, the most crucial part
Speaker 1: about this is that they were very likely involved with
Speaker 1: a state actor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they used They used C four, the plastic explosive
Speaker 3: to gain access to the vault, which you know, it
Speaker 3: generally doesn't occur if you are a group of citizens
Speaker 3: getting your hands on C four. While it may not
Speaker 3: be as difficult as the world's authorities would like it
Speaker 3: to be, but it is certainly not easy.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's not something ideally, it's not something we
Speaker 1: want people to be able to order from Amazon or eBay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know grenade launcher is attached to your sixteens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's military hardware. So let's fast forward to two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, a few days before Christmas. Here we
Speaker 1: are in jolly old Ireland.
Speaker 3: Yes, to Belfast. So let's talk about the target here.
Speaker 3: It's a place called Belfast, Northern Bank. And before we
Speaker 3: even get into who it is or what occurred or
Speaker 3: anything like that, let's just hit that number. Around twenty
Speaker 3: six and a half million British pounds, as well as
Speaker 3: other additional foreign currencies were taken.
Speaker 1: Yeah. According to The Guardian, in total, as of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, ten people have been arrested have been
Speaker 1: charged for being somehow involved with the conspiracy here. But
Speaker 1: they're all charged with being somehow involved.
Speaker 3: Well, but also they've never officially been like.
Speaker 1: Charged with actually yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like it's hard to even wrap your head around
Speaker 3: the thing. They they were connected, right, but they weren't
Speaker 3: the people they're doing the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the other currencies involved were us dollars
Speaker 1: and euros, right.
Speaker 3: Can we just talk about the significance of this robbery.
Speaker 3: So we're in Belfast. Uh, there's a peace process going
Speaker 3: on because of the tensions you know in Northern Ireland
Speaker 3: as well as other parts of Ireland. The IRA and
Speaker 3: a couple other groups that were involved in tensions over
Speaker 3: the years.
Speaker 1: Again similar to state actors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're very you're in a precarious position, they're
Speaker 3: already and then to have a violent act like this
Speaker 3: occur where millions and millions of dollars are stolen of
Speaker 3: all the people's money in the area. I mean that's
Speaker 3: people's money. That's not just the bank sitting there. Although
Speaker 3: you know insurance through various state programs and everything. Still
Speaker 3: it's a symbolic act.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's that's the idea, and it almost crippled the
Speaker 1: ongoing peace process because there was a lot of finger pointing.
Speaker 1: The police of Northern Ireland, as well as the British
Speaker 1: and Irish governments said that the IRA had a hand
Speaker 1: in this. However, the IRA said, no, why would we
Speaker 1: do that. What on earth are you talking about? That's
Speaker 1: the last thing we want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Now let's talk about a little bit of
Speaker 3: what happened, so similarly to what we saw with one
Speaker 3: of the previous the Securitas heist, some masked what they're
Speaker 3: being referred to in the Guardian as masked gang, masked
Speaker 3: and armed gang members. These guys show up at two homes,
Speaker 3: two separate homes of two separate bank managers there who
Speaker 3: work at the Northern Bank, right, and they hold people hostage,
Speaker 3: specifically their families, at gunpoint. Then they get moved around
Speaker 3: a little bit. They you know, they take some of
Speaker 3: the family members to like a forest. Apparently they're really
Speaker 3: spreading these people out. They're extremely organized on what they're
Speaker 3: gonna do. Then they get one of these guys, one
Speaker 3: of these bank managers, to go to work like it's
Speaker 3: just a regular old day, pretend nothing's wrong, but he
Speaker 3: because he knows that his family's at risk.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But then when the banks close that evening, the bank,
Speaker 3: these gang members actually like were let in by this manager,
Speaker 3: let into the vaults and then they just loaded up
Speaker 3: a van with all of the contents.
Speaker 1: And got away. That's the craziest thing. Again, the people
Speaker 1: who were arrested, the people who were charged, were not
Speaker 1: charged with actually carrying this out. I believe currently as
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen, one person has been convicted. They were
Speaker 1: convicted of money laundering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so after the fact, just using it.
Speaker 1: Right, And the authorities consider this case ongoing, so they
Speaker 1: haven't they haven't closed it. It remains unsolved. Again, given
Speaker 1: the time frame here, it's even more likely that someone
Speaker 1: involved is listening to this show. Now. When I say
Speaker 1: more likely, I still don't mean it's probable. Yes, but
Speaker 1: if you're listening, No, we can't even say that, Matt.
Speaker 1: You can say someone might be listening. And that's about
Speaker 1: where we have to draw the line. I believe legal
Speaker 1: is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we at this point we do know a
Speaker 3: very small portion of this money that was stolen has
Speaker 3: been recovered, A very very small portion. I think two
Speaker 3: million out of the two million, out of the sixty
Speaker 3: pounds I guess in banknotes were discovered. And then there's
Speaker 3: another like one hundred k and US banknotes and listen
Speaker 3: to this. According to the Guardian, these US banknotes were
Speaker 3: found in the toilet of the Police Athletics Association's New
Speaker 3: Forge country club. One hundred thousand dollars of the money
Speaker 3: that was still in there was found in the police
Speaker 3: country club.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so this definitely has the This definitely has the
Speaker 1: aroma of an inside job, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, but the I think the the authority
Speaker 3: is there. The official word was like, oh no, this
Speaker 3: money was just planted there as a distraction. It wasn't actually,
Speaker 3: you know, nobody involved with the police did anything to
Speaker 3: do with that money. It was just put there.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, all right, wink, yeah, this let's continue to
Speaker 1: build on this. Let's let's look at just a few
Speaker 1: quick laundry lists, okay, sure of unsolved conspiracies. One thing
Speaker 1: that I believe stands out for a lot of US
Speaker 1: residents and a lot of residents of the Middle East
Speaker 1: would be the massive allegations of stolen money in the
Speaker 1: course of the US's involvement in Iraq, in the course
Speaker 1: of the US's involvement in Afghanistan. So if we look
Speaker 1: at this, what we find will be almost a thousand,
Speaker 1: almost a thousand cases of alleged fraud committed not not
Speaker 1: by you know, not by local militias or terrorists, but
Speaker 1: committed by contractors working from Uncle Sam. As we know,
Speaker 1: you know, war is a war is very fertile soil
Speaker 1: for corruption, for profiteering. In this case, a US audit
Speaker 1: found that the occupying force in Iraq during the Iraq
Speaker 1: War lost track of something around like nine billion dollars
Speaker 1: with a B.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's insane and right there by the way, Remember
Speaker 3: we're talking about several associations, several groups, but one of
Speaker 3: the main ones is our old pals Blackwater aka XE
Speaker 3: I think aaka Academi. Well, which is our old pals,
Speaker 3: Eric Prince.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's a fascinating article about
Speaker 1: this that I would recommend called BBC uncovers Law Iraq
Speaker 1: Billions by a journalist named Jane Corbin, and this came
Speaker 1: out in June of two thousand and eight. So this
Speaker 1: is old news. This is over ten years old now,
Speaker 1: but it's fascinating to get to get this glimpse. I
Speaker 1: just want to share some parts of this. So an
Speaker 1: investigation by the BBC found that not just nine billion
Speaker 1: that's the US audit, The BBC found twenty three billion
Speaker 1: had been lost, stolen or just maybe put in the
Speaker 1: wrong accounting line, which I thought was very generous of
Speaker 1: them to phrase it that way. Wow, let me read
Speaker 1: this part too. So the BBC used US and Iraqi
Speaker 1: government sources to research how much some private contractors have
Speaker 1: profited from the conflict in Iraq and the subsequent rebuilding.
Speaker 1: A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
Speaker 1: What the order applies to seventy court cases against some
Speaker 1: of the top US companies.
Speaker 3: WHOA, that feels like a whole episode, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think we need to do that.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree completely. When Henry Waxman commented on
Speaker 1: this during his time as Chairman of the US House
Speaker 1: of Reps, he said, the money that's gone into waste, fraud,
Speaker 1: and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous. He
Speaker 1: noted at the time that it may turn out to
Speaker 1: be the largest case of war profiteering in history, not
Speaker 1: in US history, in human history. Holy crap, that's a
Speaker 1: little hyperbolic. If we're being honest, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: tough to rank these things with accuracy when we're talking
Speaker 1: about just how much money goes missing. But we we
Speaker 1: have to admit billions of dollars vanished.
Speaker 3: Yeah they did. Oh man, I'll never forget. Was it Rumsfeld?
Speaker 3: He was like, yeah, we don't know, just billions of
Speaker 3: dollars that we can't account for in the budgets. But
Speaker 3: you know, it speaks to the fog of war, like
Speaker 3: we're talking about the cover that you get when there's
Speaker 3: conflict like that. Because if we think about or if
Speaker 3: we take ourselves back to two thousand and three when
Speaker 3: the United States was invading Iraq again, and I believe
Speaker 3: Saddam at least the story goes that Saddam Hussein ordered
Speaker 3: his son and a bunch of other men in trucks
Speaker 3: to go to one of the largest Baghdad banks and
Speaker 3: take out a billion dollars or as close to a
Speaker 3: billion dollars as he could to basically procure it and say,
Speaker 3: you know, we're about to be under attack, we're at war.
Speaker 3: We need to make sure this money isn't stolen by
Speaker 3: the opposing for horses, right, But they in turn essentially
Speaker 3: stole a billion dollars out of the bank. Because it's
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's just such an odd thing to
Speaker 3: think about it that way, and it makes you wonder
Speaker 3: how often that kind of thing occurs, where moneies that
Speaker 3: are accrued from all these various places, but you know,
Speaker 3: are thought to be the state's money. Depending on when
Speaker 3: a conflict is occurring and how it's occurring, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It makes me wonder about Fort Knox.
Speaker 1: A little bit. Right again, what we see here, the
Speaker 1: clear trend is that the most successful heist, in terms
Speaker 1: of escaping arrest and in terms of escaping arrest with
Speaker 1: the money or with the loot, whatever that may be,
Speaker 1: those successful heist tend to have state actors somehow involved.
Speaker 1: Those are the inside jobs that carry the most weight
Speaker 1: in highest chance of success. In Afghanistan, we've got what
Speaker 1: an estimated forty five billion dollars that went missing. There's
Speaker 1: a report from the Fiscal Times in twenty fifteen that
Speaker 1: talks about how this came to be. And the big
Speaker 1: question is whether these missing dollars vanished due to a purposeful,
Speaker 1: intentional heist or whether it's just flawed accounting on the
Speaker 1: part of the Pentagon, which has, for the entirety of
Speaker 1: most people's lives listening to this show, always had a
Speaker 1: problem with accounting.
Speaker 3: Always. It's so weird. Those black budgets, they just don't
Speaker 3: match up with the money that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, As of twenty fifteen, the Pentagon had data for
Speaker 1: about fifty seven percent of the almost eight hundred million
Speaker 1: that they spent on one program in this country between
Speaker 1: two thousand and two and twenty thirteen. Again, that's not
Speaker 1: the whole pie. It's just something called the commander's Emergency
Speaker 1: Response Program. And this is something the Fiscal Times rightly
Speaker 1: criticizes because it's very difficult to see where the money.
Speaker 1: You can see where the money comes from, but you
Speaker 1: can't see where it goes. It is a black bag,
Speaker 1: it's a black budget. It's a mystery box, you know.
Speaker 3: And such as the nature of military conflicts.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, well, here just for a peak behind
Speaker 1: the current without getting too into the weeds on it.
Speaker 1: Under the Emergency Response program, here commanders could spend money
Speaker 1: to respond to sudden catastrophes, immediate needs, you know, fires, floods, earthquakes.
Speaker 1: Theoretically that kind of stuff, and any money they spend
Speaker 1: under half a million dollars isn't treated as a defense
Speaker 1: contract and it doesn't have to bear up to the
Speaker 1: same scrutiny or documentation. So question, I don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to this, but question how often or how rarely
Speaker 1: did someone request fourth one hundred ninety nine thousand.
Speaker 3: Dollars seriously or just four hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you don't want to be you don't want
Speaker 1: to show off. You don't need to test EUROSA.
Speaker 3: Man. That sounds like petty cash in a way, but
Speaker 3: up to you know, a couple under grand Wow, that's
Speaker 3: that's insane.
Speaker 1: Now to be fair to Uncle Sam at this at
Speaker 1: this point, currently they have discontinued that ambiguous process and
Speaker 1: that kind of workflow for accounting. But I but I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's just so much money on the table
Speaker 1: there that it feels almost certain corruption must exist. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's mitigated, maybe it's tamped down, but it has to
Speaker 1: be there. We have a lot of people listening today
Speaker 1: who are active or former military members, and I am
Speaker 1: certain that some of us have seen really dodgy things
Speaker 1: happen in the field, you know, really dodgy financial things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. It's right, let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. You can reach.
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