[RL] gold bar in an open safe, they were just asking for it. Options

[PBTHHHHT]

Thieves take a gold bar from an open safe in a museum.

[Kyoto Kid]

...talk about a milk run.

...maybe soy milk run at that.

Of course if these boobs don't have the equipment to properly melt and recast the massive ingot into smaller more marketable sizes, they will have a real fun time fencing it.

[Jack Kain]

I wouldn't put getting a hold of the right equipment to melt down gold past them just yet. The thing is worth almost 2 million dollars.

[Demerzel]

Not to mention you could break it apart with chisels and hammer it into any shape you desire. Gold is rather soft.

[Kyoto Kid]

...still, gold hits the streets shortly after the job. This would definitely arouse a bit of suspicion, not only from the police either.

I were a fence, I would be just a bit wary with all the publicity surrounding the heist.

...and who knows who this Nakahagi guy is?

Tried to find other sources on this story for more details. but search fu dead ends when everything is in Kanji.

[StealthBanana]

Link the sources? I can probably puzzle the kanji out.

[Teulisch]

THINK man!

if the owner of the gold was mr johnson, he then gets the insurance money, AND he gets a block of gold he then melts down into smaller bars... some to pay the theives. easy fraud scenario, storing that much gold in one spot.

[pbangarth]

[Fezig]

Haha, good point. How do you get away with including "huge ass chunk of gold out in the open" in your list of assets insured. Seems like Farmers would be hesitant at the least. I think even the e-surance chick would tell you where to stick it on that one :P

[Meriss]

They didn't *rereads news story* Yup they did. How many folks wanna gues this is one of those Yakuza soy milk runs? :nuyen: Just one more example of Mind boggling Japanese happenings.

[Jack Kain]

Well if anyone in Japan can launder a 198,482,195 Yen bar its the Yakuza.

[FrankTrollman]

I really don't understand how they got away with it. It's 100 kilograms of gold, inside a cubby hole, and under 24 hour observation.

Let's say you did itthe fast way: you and two friends have two titanium prybars and a thick plastic tarp. You have two people with prybars raise the bar from each corner and have the third slide the tarp down to the far edge of the bar. Then you let the gold down and have all three members of the team pull together and quick drag the gold bar into the open. Then you unfold the bottom of the tarp and wrap the gold bar like an egg roll.

Now you've got yourself a quandary. The bar itself masses in as much as 1.5 Nippon men. So it's actually well within the possibility of a man to carry by mass alone. And the bar is only about 5 liters so it could easily fit into a backpack that in turn could fit into a pocket well folded. That's somewhat discreet, but it may tear your bag and it is also going to slow down your primary lifter something fierce. Your other option is to split the mass between two people and have them carry it like a palanquin between them. Even with the leverage neither team member is going to be faced with more than 60 kg, so if they are all stong guys this should be no problem. Heck, on straightaways the thrid man can hold the tarp up in the middle. You can make good time that way, but of course you completely don't look like you're doing anything legitimate.

In any case, you've just made a couple of metal-on-metal crashing sounds and you're on 24 hour candid camera anyway, so you have to assume that they know you're up to something. And you have to sneak or run downstairs and past an armed guard. Seriously, what the hell?

My supposition is that the guard was either intimidated by the third man holding out a gun, or straight up paid off with say... a 10,000,0000 yen bribe. Once that guard has been bypassed by either of those means it's a sprint to the car and out you go.

But seriously, that's a more difficult job than most jewelry store robberies. A jewelry store just has bars and such on the windows - nothing you can't go through with a thermite line or a hydraulic cutter on the locks. Just the fact that you had to go up and then down a flight of stairs past personel while being watched on camera makes it much harder than the vast majority of smash and grabs.

-Frank

[X-Kalibur]

Most smash and grabs are done in daylight too, who needs to break in to the store when you can just go in during store hours and smash the glass, grab the goods, and be gone. People won't even try to stop you.

[PBTHHHHT]

And the payoff for this grab is close to 2 millions, a much larger return for one item... (though heavy).

[2bit]

I'm pretty sure they make machines that can handle this sort of thing.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Spike]

And on a completely unrelated note...


... I expect I'll be taking a little vacation to the bahamas for a while. ;)

[PBTHHHHT]

Not just gold bars that goes missing in Japan. How about gold bathtubs?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070530/ap_on_...gold_tub_stolen

[Demon_Bob]