How I Rob Banks

Chapter 50Five Banks a Week

I have probably broken into more banks than anyone you will ever meet. A little boastful, perhaps, but it’s probably true. Hopefully, most people will not meet anyone who has ever broken into a bank—bank robbers are few and far between, and I would like to think it is because people like me make it more difficult.

I can't count how many banks I have broken into. It's a career of decades at thousands of sites, but I can give you a small hint in terms of things I have learned about bank security and planning.

Years ago, I was commissioned by a major brand bank to perform a series of assessments against its banks. I was free to pick which branches, but the client wanted several areas checked.

Once we agreed on the branches and got all the legal paperwork taken care of, time was the most important thing: everything had to be completed by Christmas.

We had taken longer than expected to get everything squared away, so we had to break into 18 banks in under a month. Breaking into one bank a month is a hard ask, but now I had to break into at least five banks per week!

To give an idea of how crazy that is, that's more than Bonnie and Clyde broke into during their entire bank robbing “career” that spanned 21 months—they only managed 15. Same for the famous bank robber John Dillinger—he only managed 12 banks between 1933 and 1934. And it's just shy of Jessie James, who, between 1866 and 1881, only managed around 9 banks (the rest of his robberies were trains ...