Bank Robbing a Terrible Business, Statistically 207
isoloisti writes "Three UK economists got access to national data on bank robberies. The conclusion is that robbing banks pays, but not very much. Average take is about $19k per person per robbery. But, there's a 20% chance of being caught per raid. To make an average income, a robber needs to do two jobs per year, and has greater than 50% chance to be in the slammer after 2 years."
Successful Bank Robbers... (Score:4, Informative)
Know what you are doing [officer.com].
In the US there are very few large scale organizations that are not businesses, and violence is bad for business; there is not that much of it. A good example of this kidnapping, extortion, protection rackets, are usually small-scale. There are other occupations that are safer and easier to gouge people out of money so it never reaches the scales that it does like in Mexico.
If the poverty line gets low enough combined with severe cuts in local services, it would not surprise me to see this trend be reversed.
Use hacking skills (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, robbing a bank doesn't get you much.
If you want cash, the money is in an end-of-day armored car robbery. There's a high risk, and a good chance you're going to have to kill a few people, but the payoff can be millions. You're going to need a lot of surveillance time to find the routes, a biggish truck with a Faraday cage in case there's any tracking devices (and the same thing in your warehouse when you unload), and a good way to launder large quantities of cash. Wouldn't hurt to have several good radio jammers positioned, both for the armored car frequencies and the police frequencies, and that won't jam whatever you're using to talk to your partners. Might even have a few timed charges on the local police antenna towers. Probably need a crew of 4-5, at least 2 to deal with the driver and guard, one getaway driver and at least one surveillance guy. Remember, they're probably wearing body armor, so go for the headshot or if you're a great shot and don't want to kill, take out their shooting arm and legs, in that order.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Re:Who did the math? (Score:5, Informative)
One raid, 20% change of getting caught, you need two raids a year, and that increases changes to over 50%, WTF!?
TFA claims that doing two raids a year gives you a greater than 50% chance of getting caught within 2 years (i.e., 4 raids). Let's check the math...
After 1 raid you have a 100% - 20% = 80% chance of eluding capture.
After 2 raids, it's 80% ^ 2 = 64%
After 3 raids, it's 80% ^ 3 = 51.2%
After 4 raids, it's 80% ^ 4 = 40.96%
100% - 40.96% chance of not getting caught = 59.04% chance of getting caught, which is in fact over 50%.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:3, Informative)
except when government gets involved...
You mean this government [wikipedia.org]???
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Informative)
No, the cash in an ATM does not come from the bank. It comes from a cash vault at a central depository in secured canisters via an armored car. Nobody at the branch (including the armored car delivery guy) physically touches any of the cash that goes into the ATM. The people at the depository are guarded by guns; robbing a depository would be a bit more difficult than robbing the cash from a drawer at a branch bank.