Yahoo Lifestyle 13 True Crime Cases People Deem "The Most Clever Ever Committed"
Warning: This article discusses suicide and murder. Please proceed with caution.
Earlier this month, a now-anonymous Redditor posted in r/AskReddit, requesting that people share the tales of the most clever true crime cases they've ever heard of. Naturally, I ended up in an internet rabbit hole researching a bunch of these cases I'd never heard of before, so I decided to share my findings with all of you fellow true crime enjoyers. So, without further ado, here are 13 cases people deem "the most clever ever committed":
Note: Stories have also been pulled from this similar thread. The following entries are merely summaries; however, if you'd like to go on a deep dive of your own, sources have been linked out for each case.
1.Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. In 1925, the well-established conman moved to Paris in the summer and set his sights on fooling top French scrap metal companies out of their money in an elaborate ruse. First, he had stationary made for himself adorned with the official seal of the French government, making him appear as though he held an official government job. On the stationary, he crafted letters to several large names in the French scrap metal industry, inviting them to a meeting with him at the Hôtel de Crillon to discuss the future of the iconic French landmark. At the meeting, he reportedly told them, "Because of engineering faults, costly repairs, and political problems I cannot discuss, the tearing down of the Eiffel Tower has become mandatory."
The Eiffel Tower, of course, was not actually going anywhere. The meeting's attendees were none the wiser, though, and competatively bid in an effort to be the one to buy the Tower. Lustig received his payment, and they, in return, received nothing. This happened at least twice.
Lustig continued to con his way through the world for ten more years and ultimately was caught in 1935 and sentenced to 20 years on Alcatraz. Lustig's cons worked so well in part because he was so hard to catch. He reportedly had nearly 50 aliases, tons of fake passports, and concocted a lore so complex and confusing that the name he was officially logged under at Alcatraz — Robert V. Miller — wasn't even his real name, but just another pseudonym.
You can read more about Lustig's life and other cons here.
2.On the morning of Sept. 30, 2008, 15 people — all in matching safety vests, goggles, and hats — gathered outside a Bank of America in Monroe, Idaho for a "Clean Monroe Beautification Project" they'd been hired for. At the same time, a Brinks armored truck parked in front of the bank, and employees unloaded bags of money from the vehicle into the branch. Suddenly, one of the 15 beautification workers ran towards the truck, pepper sprayed the guard in the face, grabbed two large bags of money ($400,000 in total), and ran off into the woods. The man's name was Anthony Curcio.
Here's how it all went down. The 15 men, which included Curcio himself in a fake mustache and painter's mask, had all been hired by Curcio, who posted a fake ad on Craigslist that promised $28.50/hour to help clean up the area. After going through with his plan and making a run for it with the bags of money, he evaded the police's manhunt entirely, making his escape on the Skykomish River in an inflatable tube. The latter garnered him the nickname "D.B Tuber" — inspired by the infamous D.B. Cooper. His unusual tactics, lack of physical harm, and the general unpopularity of banks at the time garnered him lots of support and sympathy.
Ultimately, Curcio was caught because a homeless man had seen him doing a practice run of his plan ahead of time. The man found him sketchy and copied his license plate number. He also gave police some materials Curcio had left behind, and using that, they were able to match the DNA to his.
You can read more about Curcio here.
Suggested by: tequilabourbon
3.Wolfgang Beltracchi is a German painter who made millions of dollars over the span of forty years selling forged "undiscovered" paintings from the likes of Picasso and Gauguin. He was so good at this, in fact, that he duped experts and had pieces displayed both in well-known private and public collections, like that of Steve Martin. His method was to paint original pieces in the styles of these artists and market them as lost or formerly undiscovered rather than to attempt to recreate one that already existed. He and his wife — who aided in the scheme by saying art pieces were from her grandfather's collection — were caught in 2010, all because of the white paint Beltracchi used.
While working on a piece that eventually sold for $3.6 million, he ran out of zinc, which he used to make period-accurate white paint. So, he purchased some from a Dutch manufacturer. They, however, failed to mention that it contained titanium, which an analysis of the piece picked up on. Titanium had only begun being used for white pigment in the 1920s, and the piece had claimed to be older than that.
After serving jail time, Beltracchi continued painting, though this time, he sold his work under his actual name.
You can read more in-depth about his methods and story here.
Suggested by: schlorpsblorps
4.In 2001, a security guard at Gassan Diamonds in Amsterdam simply walked out of the store with $8 million in diamonds, without being suspected at all. Denis, who in his mid-twenties at the time, had only been working at the store since April of that year. On the day of the robbery, he showed up to work carrying a box and told his coworkers that his new microwave oven was inside. He left with the box full of diamonds, and nobody thought twice about him as he exited. It wasn't until the next day that they even noticed the diamonds were missing from the safe. Evidently, Denis didn't return to work after that.
Ultimately, Denis turned himself in a month later and stashed the diamonds in an outdoor sculpture in Almere, about 20 miles outside of Amsterdam.
You can read more about the whole thing here.
Suggested by: zeekoes
5.At 3 in the morning on August 8 of 1963, a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London was robbed in what is now called "The Great Train Robbery of 1963." The train had a "High-Value Package" carriage that housed mostly letters and packages with cash. On average, the carriage had £300,000 worth of money aboard, but due to the bank holiday weekend in Scotland that morning, it held £2.3 million, which would be roughly £30 million today.
The train's driver stopped the vehicle due to a red signal it received at Sear's Crossing. It was, however, a ruse. The robbers attached a six-volt battery to the red light to activate it and shoved a glove into the actual signal light to stifle it. Following proper protocol, the train's driver stopped and the co-driver called the signalman to find out what was wrong...only to learn that the train's phone line had been cut. He was then attacked as the rest of the robbers made their way to the train, knocking out the driver and unattaching the carriages of regular mail from those with the high-value packages. They did all this so stealthily that those aboard the detached carriages who were sorting mail had no idea anything was even wrong.
From there, their goal was to drive the train an additional mile to a nearby bridge where their accomplices were ready to transport the money via a "human chain of robbers" into their vehicles and to their hideout. One of the robbers had even gone so far as to befriend people who worked on the railway, posing as a train enthusiast who they then allowed to tour, ride in, and even drive some trains. Realizing the mail train was far more complex than the smaller local ones he'd driven, they had no choice but to wake the captain, then force him to drive to their meet-up spot.
They loaded an estimated 2.5 tons worth of cash into their vehicles and transported it to their hideout — a farmhouse 30 minutes out. They lived there for days and even played Monopoly with real money instead of the play money. It seemed as though they intended to stay longer, but after dishing out the money, they fled early, growing anxious after hearing low-flying aircraft in the area they feared were looking for them.
Investigators began putting the pieces together and searching for the burglars. Ultimately, one of the robbers told train staff that they couldn't move for 30 minutes before calling the police, which gave them an idea of how far their hideout was. Additionally, a local homeowner called in after noticing suspicious activity near the farmhouse. There, investigators found the robbers's abandoned items, which included bedding, bank note wrappers, post office sacks, the Monopoly board game, and food. Fingerprints on the board game and a bottle of ketchup led investigators to those involved in the crime, all of which were then arrested.
You can read more about the robbery here.
6.H.H. Holmes was — according to the Library of Congress — America's first prolific serial killer. In the 1890s, in Chicago’s South Side, Holmes created his very own "Murder Castle" full of trap doors, soundproof rooms, secret passages, acid vats, chutes, outside-locking doors, and "gas jets." He routinely fired and hired new construction workers to assemble the horrid place so that no one could catch on to what he was creating. Holmes also had an in-house kiln where he'd cremate his victim's bodies to cover his tracks. Those he didn't burn were sold to medical schools to use as cadavers.
It's unknown precisely how many people Holmes killed, but the majority of them were women and were financially motivated. He often killed with the interest of a person's life savings, insurance money, or property. He lured many of his female victims from the 1893 World's Fair, and fled from Chicago once it closed, only to partake in a string of killings and insurance fraud around the country before ultimately being arrested the following year in 1894.
You can read more about Holmes here and here.
Suggested by: Stone_Crowbar
7.Did you play one of those "peel to play" McDonald's Monopoly games that came on food items and soda packaging in the '90s? If so, you might've been wronged in Jerome P. Jacobson's "McMillions" scam, in which he reallocated $24 million worth of winnings to people he knew and collected on the profits.
If you're not familiar with the game, essentially, when you purchased certain items from Mcdonald's, they came with these little game pieces stuck onto the packaging that you would peel open to reveal whether you'd won or not. There was no additional cost to play, and prizes ranged from up to $1 million in cash to a car to free McDonald's food items.
Jacobson was the director of security at the marketing company that made the pieces for McDonald's Monopoly game. He was entrusted with sticking the winning pieces onto the food packages himself so that McDonald's staff couldn't steal them. Despite having to carry the winning pieces in a case with a tamper-proof seal and having an auditor follow him wherever he brought the pieces, Jacobson was able to find a workaround. In error, the supplier sent a package of the tamper-proof seals to Jacobson directly instead of the marketing company, which allowed him to access the winning pieces and re-seal the case without detection. To avoid detection, he would sneak into airport bathrooms where the female auditor couldn't follow him and would replace the winning tickets with losing ones.
Jacobson would then distribute the winning tickets to people in his circle, but none too close to be immediately linked. For instance, he chose his butcher, his nephew, members of his car club, a man he met at an airport, and friends of friends. He'd collect money from them upfront in addition to some of their winnings and request that they hand them off to people in other states to claim the prizes so as not to look suspicious. However, this wasn't enough. Several stores had been pre-selected by a computer to hold the winning pieces, and reality didn't line up with that. Additionally, a large chunk of the winners redeemed their prizes in other states but had permanent addresses in Flordia and Georgia — where Jacobson lived and had previously worked as a police officer.
By 2001, the FBI was involved, and Jacobson was arrested for felony conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Ultimately. 50+ people were convicted for the scheme.
You can read more about the McMillions scam here.
Suggested by: v_rose23
8.In 1987, several burglars traveled in tunnels under a Bank of America near Beverly Hills, busted in through four feet of concrete to get into the floor of the bank's vault, and fled with an estimated $91,000 in cash. According to security, they left behind "an 18-inch hole in the floor and a large supply of equipment, clothing and food." Bank of America's spokesperson said between the items left behind and the money strewn about the crime scene, it appeared as though they intended to stay in the vault for longer — perhaps the whole weekend — but that they fled in a hurry, likely due to the several alarms they set off.
The burglars likely entered the 12-foot tall drain hole through a manhole cover, and the sound of them breaking into the bank's floor was believed to be veiled by construction noises across the street as well as the sound of traffic on the busy street. As was protocol, security didn't check the location until the alarm went off a second time.
The methods used here seemingly mirrored another bank robbery that occurred in June of the previous year at First Interstate Bank in Hollywood, where the burglars made out with $190,000 in cash. According to LA Magazine, "They carried gas-powered generators, hammer drills, power saws, and—most important—digging equipment, which they used to tunnel their way 100 feet up and into the bank’s vault."
The burglars were never caught, and seemingly did not strike a third bank after tripping the alarm at the Beverly Hills branch.
Suggested by: foofarraw
9.In April of 1990, $500,000 worth of art was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. At 1:24 in the morning, the thieves — dressed in stolen police uniforms — were buzzed into the museum, claiming to be responding to a disturbance call. They duct taped the security guards to a bench in the basement, disabled the cameras, and proceeded to steal 13 pieces of art. They even went so far as to cut the canvases out of the frames they were in. While they took some of the museum's finest pieces, they left the most valuable one untouched. None of the stolen art has ever resurfaced, and the culprits remain at large.
You can read more about it here, and see the stolen art for yourself here.
Suggested by: FerretAres
10.In 2018, 71-year-old Alan Abrahamson faked his own murder using a gun and a weather balloon. The Palm Beach Gardens resident was found lying in a field right outside his gated community, just out of the security camera's line of sight. From the beginning, investigators couldn't quite figure out the peculiar case. Abrahamson didn't have any likely enemies and there didn't seem to be signs of struggle. When he'd left that morning, Abrahamson had taken 37 minutes for what was usually a 5-minute walk. And, most importantly, they couldn't find the gun.
One investigator had a rather unusual theory based on an email receipt for a $55 weather balloon they found in Abrahamson's email. Further investigation showed he'd also recently purchased a helium tank and had search results going at least 10 years back about undetectable suicide methods and how much helium he'd need to lift something off the ground. And while there's no proof he ever saw the episode, a similar suicide method was utilized in a 2003 episode of CSI: Las Vegas, which could have sparked the idea.
It's likely Abrahamson sought to conceal his suicide due to the suicide clause in most life insurance policies, which — according to CNN — "says a death benefit won’t be paid if the insured person kills themselves within two years of taking out a policy."
Ultimately, the police did, in fact, rule his death as a suicide.
You can read more about it here.
Suggested by: Theddt2005
11.In 2007, 33-year old František Procházka worked for a security group in Prague. He'd only been employed there for four months at the time. One day, he stole an estimated 5 million CZK — which was roughly $31 million at the time — all in cash, in the middle of his shift. He reportedly loaded the cash from the company's safe into four metal cases, which he then loaded into a car in the company's parking lot, which someone else drove away. He then went back to work for the remainder of his shift like nothing had happened at all. He left like usual that evening, and the police weren't notified until the next day. He has yet to be caught.
You can read more about it here.
Suggested by: maxitobonito
12.The Hatton Garden jewelry heist is, to this day, still one of Britain's largest burglaries ever. Over Easter weekend in 2015, an estimated £25 million worth of jewelry, cash, and gold were stolen from 73 total safe deposit boxes. The burglars made huge holes in the thick concrete wall, as pictured below, to enter the safe. All five "ringleaders" behind the crime, the majority of which were known as professional conmen with large-scale burglaries under their belts prior to this one, were in their sixties to late seventies. The Guardian jokingly called them "Dad’s Army" and "The Diamond Wheezers." French coverage reportedly referred to them as "le gang du papys," roughly translating to "grandpa's gang."
The men meticulously planned the heist for three years prior to executing it, reportedly with the hopes of it being one last big job before they retired with their stolen wealth. Though their track record proved successful, two things led to their downfall: technology and hubris. While their methods worked in an earlier time, more modern tech like mobile phone evidence, license plate recognition software, and CCTV recordings caught them red-handed. Additionally, one of them was reportedly overheard by an undercover cop bragging about their heist in a neighborhood pub.
You can read more about the heist here and where the ringleaders are now here.
Suggested by: DarthMousemat
13.And finally, in 1976 in Nice, France, a peculiar yet rather impressive robbery took place over Bastille Day weekend. Unbeknownst to anyone, a team of criminals had spent months building a carpeted, cemented, barely-large-enough-for-a-human tunnel from the sewer to the wall of a bank's vault, where they broke through 18 inches of reinforced concrete. The tunnel had a ventilation tube and lighting, the latter of which was thanks to a half-mile-long extension cord they'd connected to a light fixture further out. Once they'd broken into the vault, the robbers camped out for the weekend there, opening 317 safety deposit boxes. To say they made themselves at home would be an understatement. They left behind a portable stove, dirty pots, stale bread pieces, empty wine bottles, and wrappers. Additionally, they'd taken to using some of the solid silver heirlooms they found in the safety deposit boxes as chamberpots.
Discarded jewels (those that would've been traceable), documents, and two tons of muddy tools — "crowbars, chisels, drills, hydraulic jacks, six blowtorches, axes, jackhammers, [and] 27 acetylene tanks" — littered the floor. On the wall, they drew a giant peace sign with the words, "Without weapons, Without violence, Without hate."
The Monday after the bank holiday, employees returned and were unable to open the vault's door. A small hole was drilled into it — so small that, even after sending their tiniest detective through it, he snagged his pants and had to investigate pantsless. Once inside, he learned the thieves had welded the vault door shut from inside.
They discovered that, in total, approximately $36 million was stolen, mostly in cash. Though it's believed a team was behind the operation, only one man — Albert Spaggiari — was ever arrested. Under an alias, Spaggiari wrote a book confirming he was the man behind it. He told his story assuming the statute of limitations on the robbery was up, so even if he were discovered, they couldn't jail him. He was, however, charged with money laundering, which had no expiration.
A couple of months after being arrested, Spaggiari jumped out a courthouse window and fled away with an accomplice on a motorcycle. He died in exile in 1989, and the stolen cash and jewels were never recovered.
You can read more about the heist here and Spaggiari here.
Suggested by: mrgonzo247
Do you know of a true crime case you think is one of the most clever of all time? Share a bit about it with us in the comments below and it just might be featured in an upcoming edition of this post.
