The most genius crimes

genius

All of these people have been described as geniuses. What is each one known for? Which of them are geniuses, in your opinion, and which aren’t?

• Phil Taylor

• Lionel Messi

• Albert Einstein

• Adolf Hitler

• Elon Musk

• Steve Jobs

• Kanye West

• Bobby Fischer

• Jane Austen

• Banksy

What does the word “genius” mean to you?

Can someone be a genius and a terrible person at the same time?

Is there such a thing as an “evil genius”?

What makes a crime impressive, even if it’s wholly unethical?

Can you think of any famous robberies or heists?

What made them memorable?

Four crimes that took real brains

Most crimes are rushed, messy and badly thought out. A small number are different. They are planned over months or even years by people who study their target as carefully as any engineer. Here are four of the most famous, from a British mail train in 1963 to a tunnel under a Brazilian bank in 2005.

By Spborthwick - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27248551

The Great Train Robbery, England, 1963

In the early hours of 8 August 1963, a Royal Mail train was travelling from Glasgow to London with a cargo of used banknotes. In the Buckinghamshire countryside, a gang led by Bruce Reynolds was waiting. They had found a way to tamper with the railway signals: they covered the green light with a glove and connected a battery to the red one. When the driver saw red, he stopped the train. The gang separated the engine and the carriages carrying the money, moved them to a bridge where a lorry was parked, and passed more than a hundred mailbags down the embankment in under half an hour. Their haul was about £2.6 million, worth tens of millions in today’s money. The robbery was not bloodless. The driver, Jack Mills, was hit on the head and never fully recovered. The gang planned to lie low at a farmhouse nearby, but they left in a hurry, and police found their fingerprints on a Monopoly board and a ketchup bottle. Most of them were in prison within a year.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1990

Shortly after midnight on 18 March 1990, two men posing as police officers rang the side door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They told the young security guard that they were responding to a disturbance, and he let them in, against the rules. Within minutes, both guards on duty were handcuffed and tied up in the basement. The thieves then spent 81 minutes in the galleries and made off with thirteen works of art, including paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer. Today the stolen works are valued at around $500 million. No one has ever been charged, none of the works has been found, and a $10 million reward is still waiting to be claimed. The museum’s founder insisted that the collection must never be rearranged, so the empty frames still hang on the walls.

The Antwerp Diamond Centre, Belgium, 2003

The vault under the Antwerp Diamond Centre had heat sensors, motion detectors, a magnetic field, a seismic alarm and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. Its security was considered foolproof. Over the weekend of 15 and 16 February 2003, thieves opened most of its 160 safe deposit boxes and left with diamonds, gold and jewellery worth an estimated $100 million. The man police named as the mastermind, an Italian called Leonardo Notarbartolo, had rented an office in the building more than two years earlier and presented himself as a diamond dealer, which gave him regular access. According to his own version of events, which many investigators doubt, the gang beat the sensors with simple tricks, including hairspray. Their mistake came afterwards. They dumped a bag of rubbish in a forest near the motorway, and a local man found it. Inside were documents, video tape and a half-eaten sandwich carrying Notarbartolo’s DNA. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but most of the diamonds have never been found.

The Banco Central robbery, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2005

In 2005, a new business selling artificial grass opened in a rented house in Fortaleza, a short walk from the city’s branch of Brazil’s Banco Central. Neighbours saw workers carrying out large amounts of earth every day and assumed it had something to do with the business. In fact, the gang spent around three months digging a tunnel almost 80 metres long, about four metres below the street. Their planning was meticulous: the tunnel was supported with wood, lined with plastic, and had electric lights and air conditioning. Over the weekend of 6 and 7 August, they broke through more than a metre of steel-reinforced concrete into the vault and carried away about 165 million reais, roughly 70 million US dollars at the time. The money, in 50-real notes, weighed around three and a half tonnes. The notes had not been recorded by serial number, so they were almost impossible to trace. Staff only discovered the theft on Monday morning. Police later arrested dozens of people and recovered part of the money, but much of it was never found, and several gang members were later kidnapped by other criminals who wanted a share.

What do they have in common?

All four crimes depended on patience, research and a clear understanding of how security systems and people work. Yet three of the four ended in arrests, usually because of one small human mistake: fingerprints on a board game, a bag of rubbish in a forest, money that was too hard to spend quietly. The Gardner thieves are the exception. Their identities are still unknown, and that may be the reason their crime continues to fascinate people more than thirty years later.

By Iantresman - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83251751

By Federal Bureau of Investigation - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43485034

'Stolen: Heist of the Century' on Netflix.Credit : Courtesy of Netflix

Photograph: Tuno de Vieira/AP

vocabulary

Match the words/phrases (1-8) with their meanings (a-h)

Which of the four crimes do you find the most impressive? Why?

Which one needed the most patience? Which one needed the most nerve?

The train driver in 1963 was seriously injured. Does violence change how you feel about a “clever” crime?

Why do you think the Gardner Museum case has never been solved?

Should the bank, the museum and the diamond centre take some of the blame for weak security?

Which is harder to turn into money after the crime: cash, famous paintings or diamonds?

Now read two opposing opinions on 'genius' crimes. Who do you agree with more? What would you add?

Marcus

Helen

Let’s be honest about what these people achieved. The Fortaleza gang ran a fake business for three months, dug an 80-metre tunnel with lighting and air conditioning, and broke into the vault at exactly the right moment.

I find this kind of admiration uncomfortable. Every one of these “genius” crimes had victims. The train driver in 1963 was beaten so badly that he never fully recovered. The Gardner Museum lost paintings that belonged to the

The Antwerp team got past a vault that experts called one of the safest on the planet. That takes engineering skill, discipline and an understanding of human behaviour that most of us will never have. Calling it genius doesn’t mean approving of it. We describe generals, hackers and chess players as brilliant without saying everything they did was good. Intelligence is intelligence, whatever it’s used for. And if we refuse to admit how clever these crimes were, we learn nothing from them. Banks and museums have improved their security precisely because people studied these cases closely and accepted that the criminals had outsmarted everyone.

public, and nobody will see them again unless they’re found. Dealers in Antwerp lost diamonds that have never been recovered. When we call criminals geniuses, we turn them into film heroes and forget the real people who paid the price. It also sends a dangerous message: if you’re clever enough, breaking the law becomes something to celebrate. Plenty of people are intelligent, patient and good at planning. Most of them use those skills to build things, not to take them from others. If we want to talk about genius, let’s save the word for people who deserve it and call these crimes what they are: theft.

... and now for some crimes that didn't quite work out the way the criminals had hoped.

The invisible man (Pittsburgh, 1995). McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks with lemon juice on his face, believing it would make him invisible to security cameras. He was arrested the same night, after his face appeared on the evening news.

The pay stub note (Chicago). A bank robber wrote his demand note on the back of his own pay stub. Half of it was found outside the bank, with his name and address on it.

The Facebook burglar (Minnesota, 2014). A burglar logged into Facebook on his victim’s computer and forgot to log out. The homeowner used the profile to arrange a meeting, and police arrested him wearing the stolen watch.

The sleepy burglar (Thailand, 2021). A man broke into a house, turned on the air conditioning in a bedroom and fell asleep. The homeowner, a police officer, found him in his daughter’s bed.

The neighbour who needed a nap (Santa Ana, California). A burglar climbed through a neighbour’s open window and fell asleep at the foot of his bed. When the homeowner woke up, he recognised him immediately.

The signature (UK). A teenage burglar sprayed his own name on a wall at the scene.

The holiday photos. An armed robber who stole £6,000 from an estate agent’s office left behind a mobile phone full of photos of himself and his partner.

The wrong target (Colombia). A man with a gun tried to rob a martial arts school. The students dealt with him themselves.

The Millennium Dome raid (London, 2000). A gang crashed a digger into the Millennium Dome to steal diamonds worth hundreds of millions of pounds, planning to escape by speedboat down the Thames. Police had known about the plan for months, replaced the diamonds with fakes and were waiting for them.

The Hatton Garden pensioners (London, 2015). A gang of mostly older men carried out a carefully planned raid on a safe deposit vault, then used their own cars, which were caught on camera. Police secretly recorded them boasting about the job.

Which of these failed crimes made you laugh?

The Millennium Dome and Hatton Garden gangs planned carefully but still got caught. What went wrong?

What usually catches criminals: bad planning, bad luck or human nature?

Why do people enjoy stories about stupid criminals? Is it fair to laugh at them?

With CCTV, smartphones and DNA testing, is a successful “genius” heist still possible today?

Do some research on another 'genius' crime.

Take some notes and tell me about it in the next class.