Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.
The North Hollywood shootout, also known as the Battle of North Hollywood, was a confrontation between two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu, and police officers in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles on February 28, 1997. Both robbers were killed, twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police.
On September 12, 1997, six men robbed the Dunbar Armored facility on Mateo St. in Downtown Los Angeles, California of US$18.9 million. The robbery was orchestrated by Allen Pace III, of Compton, with childhood friends Erik Damon Boyd, of Buena Park; Eugene Lamar Hill Jr., of Bellflower; Freddie Lynn McCrary Jr., of Arleta; Terry Wayne Brown Sr., of Los Angeles; and Thomas Lee Johnson, of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was the largest cash robbery to have occurred in the United States until the Easter Sunday Robbery of March 31, 2024 which was estimated at over $30 million.
The Brink's Company is an American cash handling company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. Its operations include cash-in-transit, ATM replenishment & maintenance, and cash management & payment services, such as vault outsourcing, money processing, intelligent safe services, and international transportation of valuables.
Armored Car Robbery is a 1950 American film noir starring Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, and William Talman.
The Lufthansa heist was a robbery which took place at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated US$5.875 million was stolen, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time.
The 2006 Securitas depot robbery in Tonbridge, England, was the UK's largest cash heist. It began with a kidnapping on the evening of 21 February 2006 and ended in the early hours of 22 February, when seven criminals stole almost £53 million. The gang left behind another £154 million because they did not have the means to transport it.
Leslie Isben Rogge is an American bank robber who was the first criminal on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives to be apprehended due to the internet.
On 5 April 2004, at 8 AM the Nokas Cash Handling in Stavanger, Norway was raided by heavily armed men. It was the biggest-ever heist in Norway.
The 1981 Brink's robbery was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, by several Black Liberation Army members and four former members of the Weather Underground, who were at the time associated with the May 19th Communist Organization. The plan called for the BLA members – including Kuwasi Balagoon, Sekou Odinga, Mtayari Sundiata, Samuel Brown and Mutulu Shakur – to carry out the robbery, with the M19CO members – David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck – to serve as getaway drivers in switchcars.
$17.3 million in cash was robbed from the Charlotte, North Carolina, regional office vault of Loomis, Fargo & Co. on the evening of October 4, 1997. The robbery was committed by Loomis vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt, his married girlfriend Kelly Campbell, Steven Eugene Chambers, his wife Michelle Chambers, Michael Gobbies, and four other co-conspirators. An FBI criminal investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as sixteen others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 88% of the stolen money.
The Linwood bank robbery was a bank robbery that occurred in Linwood, near Glasgow, in 1969. Three police officers were shot in the aftermath and two officers were later awarded George Medals. The lead robber, Howard Wilson, served 32 years in prison for the robbery, the murder of two officers and the attempted murder of a third; he was paroled in 2002.
Frederick Grant Dunn (1905–1959) was an American criminal, burglar and bank robber whose career spanned over four decades from 1919 until his mysterious death in 1959. He led a small gang during the 1940s and 1950s, Dunn becoming referred to by the press as "the modern John Dillinger", and whose activities eventually resulted in his being listed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted in 1958.
Herman Karl Lamm, known as Baron Lamm, was a German-American bank robber. A former Prussian Army soldier who immigrated to the United States, Lamm believed a heist required all the planning of a military operation. He pioneered the concepts of "casing" a bank and developing escape routes before conducting the robbery. Using a meticulous planning system called "The Lamm Technique", he conducted dozens of successful bank robberies from the end of World War I.
Fred William Bowerman was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw.
Lawrence Robert Lawton is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. Lawton gained notoriety for committing a string of jewelry store robberies along the Atlantic Seaboard prior to his arrest in 1996. He spent 12 years in prison, and once released, began a career as a motivational speaker, life coach, and author.
On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately €38,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a single shot being fired.
The Catt family, Ronald "Scott" Catt, and eventually his two children, Hayden and Abigail Catt, were responsible for a number of bank robberies in the Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas areas. After the death of his wife, Catt was facing financial difficulties due in part to his drug and alcohol addictions and unstable employment history. Catt decided to bolster the family income by robbing banks. Catt and his family committed several robberies, all occurring while the family lived a seemingly typical middle-class American life.
The Trenchcoat Robbers, Ray Lewis Bowman and William Arthur "Billy" Kirkpatrick, are a pair of bank robbers from the United States. Their biggest heist was the February 1997 robbery of a Seafirst Bank branch in Lakewood, Washington that netted $4.4 million. Their modus operandi involved picking the lock of closed banks, tying up the employees, and stealing from the vault. Their first robbery is believed to have happened in September 1982. Their disguises included trenchcoats, wigs, fake mustaches, hats and glasses. They are believed to have robbed 28 banks in the United States.
On February 10, 1997, the Seafirst Bank branch of Lakewood, Washington, was robbed of $4,461,681 in cash by Billy Kirkpatrick and Ray Bowman, also known as the Trenchcoat Robbers. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service caught the two, and they were both sent to 15 years in prison in 1999. It is one of the largest robberies in U.S. history.
