Do 'Ocean's Twelve'-Style Heists Really Happen?

[R.A. Hettinga]

This popped up in my "bearer" filter this morning...

Cheers,
RAH
-------

<http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1494863/12142004/story.jhtml>

MTV.com - Movies - News
  12.14.2004 9:03 PM EST

Reel To Real: Do 'Ocean's Twelve'-Style Heists Really Happen?
Sometimes, but the real-life criminals can't possibly be as hot as George
Clooney and Brad Pitt.



 While dodging nemesis Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), Danny Ocean (Clooney)
and Rusty Ryan (Pitt) plan the biggest and most difficult job of their
now-storied careers. As the stakes rise higher and higher, even Ocean's
straight-arrow wife, Tess (Roberts), gets involved. With astronomical
amounts being bandied about, we couldn't help but wonder: What was the
biggest heist ever pulled?

The Real Story: There have been quite a few enormous heists over the years,
several of which bear mentioning here. Art thieves tend to pull the biggest
scores (in terms of dollar value, if not creativity). In 1991, in a heist
worthy of Ocean's crew, thieves made off with 20 paintings worth about $500
million from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Holland. The robbers pulled
a basic "smash and grab," going up a ladder and through a window and
heading back out with some of Van Gogh's most famous works, including "The
Potato Eaters" and "Still Life With Sunflowers." However, in a very
un-Ocean move, the thieves - after presumably panicking - ditched the
paintings not far from the museum. Still, according to "Guinness World
Records," it was technically the greatest art robbery ever. 

 The biggest heist in U.S. history - and the biggest "successful" art heist
- was a $300 million score from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
1990. The thieves - who pulled the old "walk in the front door dressed like
cops" routine - made off with works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Manet. All of
the paintings are still missing, and the perpetrators are still at large.
CNN.com reported in 2002 that the FBI is still actively investigating the
case, so perhaps that whole "crime doesn't pay" thing will enter in at some
point.

 Some thieves prefer to kick it old-school, including the man behind the
world's largest mugging, which took place in London in 1990 (a good year
for crime, it seems). In a heist typical of Matt Damon's Linus, a man
mugged a courier carrying a briefcase containing 300 bearer bonds worth a
total of $435 million. Pretty impressive, except that within hours every
major bank had been informed that the bonds were stolen, rendering them
virtually worthless.

 Finally, our favorite heist - history's richest jewel robbery - truly
smacks of the skilled Ocean crew. The heist took place at the Antwerp
Diamond Center in Antwerp, Belgium, and netted the thieves an estimated
$100 million in gems. No alarms were triggered, the bombproof vault doors
were not tampered with and there was no sign of a break-in, so no one knows
when 123 of the 160 vaults were actually emptied. The crime was discovered
on February 17, 2003, and, according to BBC News, is believed to have been
carried out by a veteran group of Italian thieves known only as the School
of Turin.

 While the heists carried out by Ocean and his gang are highly improbable,
they are not altogether impossible. And, just like in the movies, things
don't always go in the thieves' favor. One major difference between reel
and real on this one, though: We doubt that any of these professional
criminals are as hot as Clooney and Pitt.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'