I heard about this the other day so I looked it up. I have a thing for true crime. I guess those years in Boston when the Bulgers were active got me hooked on true crime. Who knows. I think what interests me in these sorts of stories is their rarity. I remember a time when robbing an armored truck was more common. At least in seemed more common. I went looking for some annual stats to see if robberies are up, down or otherwise, but there’s not a lot of great data on armored truck robberies.

This story from an industry site suggests the number of robberies has declined, but it is short on statistics. Digging through the FBI crime tables, I don’t see where they track armored car robberies. There’s a category under bank robberies, but the numbers are so small I think that’s for robberies that occurred at a bank getting a armored car service. The robbers hit the truck while it was at the bank. This story indicates there are only about 35 armored car hits a year.

From the story:

Shortly after dusk along a lonely stretch of Interstate 95, armed robbers hijacked an armored truck, tied up the two guards and disappeared into the night with 275 pounds of gold bars.

The guards told police they were surprised by three armed men driving a white van who ordered the guards to lie on the ground, tied their hands behind their backs and then marched them into nearby woods.

The robbers then helped themselves to barrels filled with about $4.8 million in gold before making their getaway. Transvalue said its employees were not injured during the heist.

Transvalue chief executive officer Jay Rodriguez said the truck carrying the gold bars left Miami about 4 a.m. Sunday. The load was headed to Attleboro, Massachusetts, a town south of Boston nicknamed “Jewelry City” for the large number of manufacturers based there.

There’s some chance the robbers just got hilariously lucky, but that seems unlikely. It also seems unlikely that the truck broke down as stated. It’s possible, but it would be an amazing coincidence. I would not be shocked to learn that the guards were involved in the heist, maybe taking a bribe to tip off the robbers.

That would be the weak part of the plan. In these cases, the authorities will submit the drivers to intense examination, including a polygraph. You don’t get the job without  thorough background check so these are not men used to dealing with cops. That’s why amateur crooks get caught. They don’t know how to handle cops and they eventually talk themselves into trouble. Once the Feds can put the pressure on the guards, whatever they know the Feds will know.

Even so, the planning to take out a truck like this requires an above average IQ. It also takes big balls and some experience in crime. The robbers had to pick the right truck on the right day. They had to be willing to put a bullet in the guards, who are armed and trained to shoot first. They also had to know the route and have scouted the highway to know the best place to pull the job. It may have been a whole lot of dumb luck, but I’m betting this was not a job pulled by hillbilly meth heads.

That’s probably why these jobs are rare. In the 70’s you had college kids pretending to be revolutionaries robbing armored cars. You had organized criminals pulling complex jobs. Then you had bank men who were not members of crime families, but they were familiar to organized criminals. Anthony Shea, a mutt from Charlestown Mass, was not good at anything other than robbing banks and armored cars. In other words, you had more smart people in the crime business forty years ago so maybe that’s why there were more big jobs being pulled.

When you think about it, there are maybe 10% of males willing to commit a serious crime if the circumstances are right. By serious crime, I mean the sort of caper that gets you a long stretch in the penitentiary or requires you to use violence. Research says 40% of males get arrested by 23, but the overwhelming majority of those crimes are petty. It’s a different breed of cat robbing armored cars from the guy selling a few joints at his high school. I don’t feel like getting into the numbers, but my guess is 10% is a good number.

Of those, half will have a below average IQ and incapable of doing complex jobs. Given the vibrancy of the criminal population, I’m being very generous. Two thirds are probably on the left side of the bell curve. What percentage of those are well above average in IQ to the point where they can plan a big job like the gold heist above? My guess is a very small number and only some of them are willing to risk life in prison to pull the big heist.

That’s what makes this stuff interesting. The crooks are either very lucky or very rare examples of high IQ, risk taking professional criminals.