Since the invention of locomotives in the early 19th century, trains have often been the target of robbery, in which the goal is to steal money or other valuables. Train robbery was especially common during the 19th century and is commonly associated with gangs of outlaws in the American Old West. It has continued into the 21st century, with criminals usually targeting freight trains carrying commercial cargo, or targeting passengers of public transportation for their valuables.
Tyco International plc was a security systems company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with operational headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Tyco International was composed of two major business segments: security solutions and fire protection.
James Burke, also known as "Jimmy the Gent", was an American gangster and Lucchese crime family associate who is believed to have organized the 1978 Lufthansa heist, the largest cash robbery in American history at the time. He was believed to be responsible for the deaths of those involved in the months after the robbery.
The Brink's-Mat robbery was one of the largest robberies in British history, with £26 million worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash stolen. It occurred at the Heathrow International Trading Estate, London, on 26 November 1983, from a warehouse operated by Brink's-Mat, a former joint venture between US security company Brink's and London-based company MAT Transport. The bullion was the property of Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd. Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson were convicted of armed robbery. Most of the gold has never been recovered. Lloyd's of London paid out for the losses, and several shooting deaths have been linked to the case.
ADT Inc., formerly The ADT Corporation, is an American security company that provides residential and small business electronic security, fire protection, and other related alarm monitoring services throughout the United States. The corporate head office is located in Boca Raton, Florida. In February 2016, the company was acquired by Apollo Global Management for $6.9 billion in a leveraged buyout. In January 2018, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
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.
$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.
GardaWorld Corporation is a Canadian private security firm, headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, with 120,000 employees as of January 2022. Its U.S. business name is United American Security LLC, dba GardaWorld.
An armored vehicle is an armored van or truck used to transport valuables, such as large quantities of money or other valuables, especially for banks or retail companies. The armored car is typically a multifunctional vehicle designed to protect and ensure the wellbeing of the transported contents and guards. Typically customized on a basic van or truck chassis, they feature bullet-resistant glass, armor plating, and reinforced shells and cabs. Armored cars are designed to resist attempts at robbery and hijacking, being able to withstand bullets from most handguns and rifles, as well as extreme degrees of heat, explosives, and collisions.
Loomis AB is a Swedish cash handling company. The modern company was formed in 1997 by the consolidation of two armoured security concerns, Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc. Their international network covers over 200 operating locations in the US and eleven Western European countries.
Cash-in-transit (CIT) or cash/valuables-in-transit (CVIT) is the physical transfer of banknotes, coins, credit cards and items of value from one location to another. The locations include cash centers and bank branches, ATM points, bureaux de change, large retailers and other premises holding large amounts of cash, such as ticket vending machines and parking meters.
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 1999 Loomis truck robbery was a daring currency heist of a Loomis, Fargo & Co. semi-trailer truck on March 24, 1999, still unsolved. At some point during its route transporting money from Sacramento, California to San Francisco, one or more robbers boarded the truck, cut a hole in the roof, removed approximately 2.3 million dollars, and disappeared with the money, completely evading detection by the truck's driver and guards. The robbery was not discovered until after the truck arrived at its destination. No suspects were ever identified by authorities and the theft is now a cold case. Even the exact tools and methods used by robber or robbers were never conclusively determined.
On 25 November 2019, royal jewellery was stolen from the Green Vault museum within Dresden Castle in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. The stolen items included the 49-carat Dresden White Diamond, the diamond-laden breast star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle which belonged to the King of Poland, a hat clasp with a 16-carat diamond, a diamond epaulette, and a diamond-studded hilt containing nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, along with a matching scabbard. The missing items were of great cultural value to the State of Saxony and were described as priceless; other sources estimate the total value at about €1 billion. However, in the years following the burglary, more accurate estimates place the total value of the stolen items at around €113 million.
Thomas Fredrik Berglund is a Swedish corporate executive. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of Securitas for 14 years, till April 2007. Berglund has been the deputy Chairman of ISS A/S since 2014, and AcadeMedia since 2017. He was Chairman of Eltel Networks for 4 years till 2012, and was Chairman of Securitas Direct. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of hospital group Capio for 10 years, till 2018.
The City bonds robbery of 1990 was a heist in which £291.9 million was stolen in London, England. The carefully planned operation made it seem at first as if a courier had been mugged on 2 May, yet the City of London Police soon realised that it was a sophisticated global venture which ended up involving participants such as the New York mafia, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Colombian drug barons. The robbery was one of the largest in world history.
On April 17, 2023, a major theft occurred at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Canada, with over C$20 million worth of gold and cash in foreign currency being stolen. In the evening of Monday, April 17, a container which contained goldbars and foreign currency was offloaded off an inbound aircraft and transferred to an Air Canada holding facility at the airport where Air Canada staff were tricked by a forged shipping document to load it onto a getaway truck. Nine people have been charged in relation to the heist.
At 2 a.m. on July 11, 2022, a Brink's truck driver carrying jewelry between jewelry shows in the U.S. state of California stopped at a Flying J truck stop near Lebec, north of Los Angeles. During this period, almost a third of the jewelry bags they had been transporting were stolen. It is believed, due to the amount of jewelry stolen in such a short time, that there were several people involved. Some of the jewelers believe that the theft was an inside job, or at least that Brink's may know more than it has publicly disclosed. Several experts have stated that it is unlikely that any of the stolen jewelry will be recovered because the stolen metals can be melted down and recast. Additionally, identifying marks on the stones can be eliminated by jewelers working with thieves. Police and the FBI continue to investigate but no suspects have been named.
US$4.88 billion (2023)
US$98.3 million (2023)
