Movie-Like Jewelry Heist Nets Thieves $500,000

Who doesn’t love a good heist movie? I personally love them. Everything from getting the gang together, scoping out the victims, making the plan, seeing it almost fall apart but then watching the thieves make their escape. What can I say, crime is one of my favourite forms of entertainment… wait let me clarify. FICTIONAL crime is one of my favourite forms of entertainment, the real stuff however, not so much, but every once in a while there will be a story in the news that scratches the same itch as the Oceans franchise does.

Now don’t get me wrong, we cannot forget about the victims in these situations. These stories may be entertaining, but it is good practice to also try to empathize with the victims here. We are talking about people’s hard work and livelihoods being taken right out from under their noses. Now with that out of the way, here is the craziest crime I’ve heard about this year so far.

On Monday, February 6th Leah Laroque reported on the robbery from the previous weekend via CTV Ottawa. The robbery occurred on Saturday the 4th around midnight when the 3 perpetrators arrived at the Towngate Shopping Plaza. The thieves broke into a neighbouring BBQ restaurant by cutting the heavy metal door clean off its hinges, disabled the security system and wiped the CCTV hard drives before accessing the jewellery store. The robbers first cut small circular holes in the wall connecting the 2 businesses to locate the security cameras, then slightly bigger ones to disable them.

Once the surveillance equipment was offline the robbers cut a gaping hole in the wall between the two businesses. Judging from photos the hole seems to be about 2 metres tall and 2 metres wide, so this would have required either a lot of time or some pretty hefty power tools. Not only did they manage to cut through all of the drywall, studs and plumbing, they were also considerate enough to close off the copper piping and stop the businesses from flooding. This detail definitely stuck out to me. First of all, why even bother? You are already literally robbing people and cutting massive holes in their walls, so why would you feel bad about a little water damage. Secondly, as a robber wouldn’t you want to pack as light as possible? Bringing equipment to close the pipes would just be another thing to carry to the robbery and just another thing that could be forgotten at the scene of the crime and traced back to you.

Once the perpetrators entered the jewellery store they simply had to lift the safe and make their escape, but that would be a much more difficult task than it seems. After a quick google search I can estimate that the safe would be somewhere around 3,000-4,000 lbs, and that is if it were empty. Now I know a couple things about moving safes, you can stick it on a blanket or towel and slide it across the floor, or you could just get some kind of rolling cart so you could wheel the safe straight to the getaway vehicle, but both of these scenarios include you LIFTING A 2 TONNE SAFE. I don’t care if the robbers were Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Rock and the Incredible Hulk, NOBODY is lifting that safe even high enough to get a sheet under it. Moving this safe may have been the greatest feat of human strength, it’s too bad someone disabled the security cameras or we could know who the real world’s strongest man is. I guess this will go down in history with the likes of Stonehenge and the great pyramids.

So after all of this hard work the robbers went home, cracked the safe, and discovered they are now $500,000 richer. Now is it just me or is this just not worth the effort. I mean when you do the math, half a million split 3 ways makes about $166k per thief, and if TV has taught me anything you have to launder that money if you ever want to use it, which can take about 30% off the top. So once the money is clean you only have about $115k, which is kind of sad. When you compare that to the average salary in Toronto is close to $90,000 annually, and if you had half the work ethic of these robbers, you would get a promotion in no time. So I guess the moral of the story is, keep your head in the books and stop plotting elaborate robberies in your mom’s basement with your buddies. At least the robbers still have the pride of getting away and being free, and nobody can take that from them… except for the police.

Larocque, L. (2023, February 6). Thieves cut huge hole in Ottawa restaurant wall to get at jewelry store next door. Ottawa. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/thieves-cut-huge-hole-in-ottawa-restaurant-wall-to-get-at-jewelry-store-next-door-1.6262304