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by wavefunction 3324 days ago
I couldn't find a great source of data on bank robberies but just looking at this indicates bank robbers who successfully get away are pretty rare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_robbers_and_robbe...

3 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Mark_Rifkin

He actually _did_ get away with the initial heist, but screwed it up by trying to do it again. Did a few years in prison, but from the sounds of it, the banks only recovered a few million dollars, not the whole amount!

I thought that was an interesting story :) Mild-mannered programmer, biggest heist ever!

I was reading this article earlier: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-15/brisbane-man-charged-a...

TLDR, today police arrested a man for a bank robbery in 1991, 26 years ago.

How would I have to interpret this list to come to any conclusion?
Like I mentioned, I couldn't find a definitive set of data concerning unsolved/total bank heists versus unsuccessful heists or arrests.

So I invite you to do what I did, which is look at the list and note how many were either shot, arrested, or otherwise eventually 'failed.'

The post I'm replying to makes it sound like folks got away all the time and that doesn't appear to be the case.

And if nothing else, you can find some interesting details in there. NYC burglaries in the 1850s and 1860s were patronized by a female German-immigrant while she simultaneously hob-knobbed with the society set.

My main point is that I don't think folks 'got away with it' as much as we might like to romanticize.