The Null Device

2014/1/20

A candidate for the most audacious bank heist in history happened in Japan in 1968, some time after a bank had started receiving bomb threats:

An armored car was making its way to deliver bonus payments for factory workers totaling nearly 300 million yen (roughly US$800,000, which accounting for inflation, is over $5 million in today’s dollars) when a policeman rode up on a motorcycle. The officer told the four bank employees on the truck that the manager’s house had just been blown up and that officials had received a warning that there was a bomb planted on the armored car they were driving. The officer then proceeded to look under the vehicle — and then came the smoke and flames.
The officer yelled for them to take cover, and they did, running toward the nearest building, which happened to be a prison. Once the four bank employees were at a safe distance from the apparently-about-to-explode car, the officer removed the threat from the area. He got behind the wheel of the armored car, still carrying all that money, and drove away.
He wasn’t a cop. And the dynamite under the car? Just a warning flare he set to flush the security detail out of the vehicle. The fake police officer had just pulled off the single largest heist in the history of Japan.
The crime remains unsolved to this day.

crime deception japan 0