FACTORALY - E67 THEFT

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Nicking things is bad, but we're discussing how things are stolen and what's stolen this week on Factoraly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Simon. Hello Bruce, how are you today? I'm feeling a little bit fragile but fairly good. Oh dear, have you been out on the town last night? Just a little bit fragile, but fairly good. Oh dear, have you been out on the town last night? Just a little. Okay. Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but it's your own darn fault. So you've managed to crawl out of bed just in time to produce this.

This. What is this? What are we doing? This podcast. Shall we say it together? One, two, three. Factorily. Factorily. Which is this? What are we doing? This podcast. Shall we say it together? One, two, three. Factorily. Which is a podcast about stuff.

Stuff. Things that nobody really cares about. Except us. And the people, and you, obviously, you're listening. Yes, obviously. You're that kind of person who does care about this sort of stuff. And even if you didn't before, you'll get to the end of this episode and go, Huh, I never knew that about x

so we're gonna steal about 30 minutes of your time yes um it'll be like taking candy from the baby would you i wouldn't do that would you do that i wouldn't do that no well i wouldn't give candy to a baby in the first place well exactly to take it away that just seems just be wrong yes it would but we're talking about theft, right? Yes, we are. Which is just as well, because otherwise that's a very odd intro. I know, I know. So, theft. Theft.

So, what's the difference between theft, robbery and burglary? I'm glad you asked me that. This took up quite a large chunk of my researching time. There are lots of terms, lots of definitions that are slightly different depending on how the crime is committed and under what circumstances. They each have their own words which have their own origins so we are etymology packed today so brace yourself okay right so theft is connected to the word thief yeah which is an old saxon word theath which comes from the proto-germanic theuber it's always meant thief it's it's one of those words that was invented specifically to refer to that thing. That's what it has always been.

The definition of theft is essentially the act of stealing something. The word steal comes from the Proto-Germanic steelen, and that's where we get stolen. And then you've got the word rob, which comes from an old French word, robin, which is actually the root of the person's name, Robin. So Robin Hood, his name Robin, was actually connected to robbing people. So he was a Robin Hood. Yes, exactly. So I never realised that. I was quite chuffed with that. So the difference between these things are, according to the Sentencing Council website, theft is sentencing council is brilliant it's a really

interesting place because you can actually work out how much time you're going to have to serve yes depending on what you've done so you can do your research before you go and do the crime and weigh up the pros and cons yeah i mean you know do you want to go category one or are you happy to get to be to like stuck down in category four indeed it's uh it's anyone's game so category four is like low value it's up to 500 quid okay and no harm to anybody um i won't bother with categories three and two but category one is very high value that's above a hundred thousand pounds okay right and there may be harm to others as well right and then it tells you how how much you should how much time people should serve right okay it's quite interesting you can kind of work it out and sort of other things to take

into account like multiple offenses and stuff and you know a category four you know community order or uh or a discharge and a fine um or you know picking up litter whereas the category one is like up to sort of three or six months in custody. Can be anything really. Can be quite a lot. So it's not when it comes to sentencing in a court, it's not just a judge picking a number out of the air. They actually have guidelines and brackets to follow. Yeah. is defined by section one of the theft act 1968 as the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it right so if i

if i nick your microphone yes and with the intention of like doing it as a joke and then giving it back to you that's not theft that's just hilarious pranking uh yes specifically with the intent of keeping it and depriving the other person of it so uh stealing from a person such as pickpocketing stealing from a dwelling well this is this is where i find it odd because there's also burglary right okay so the sentencing council gives a really nice difference between things. So it says theft means taking someone's property, which is nice and broad and vague, without the use of force. Burglary means illegally entering a property, residential, commercial, whatever, and stealing something from it. Robbery means stealing from a person, usually using force. Okay.

So you can sort of picture that in your mind. You know, theft is general. Burglary is breaking and entering. Robbery is mugging someone on the street. But a lot of theft is also burglary. Yes. You know, for example, if you take the Giaconda. The what now? La Giaconda. You know La Giaconda. you take the Giaconda. The what now?

La Giaconda. You know La Giaconda. No, I'm going to need more. She has a funny smile. Oh, it's a person. I thought it sounded like an Italian car or something. No, no, it is a painting. Oh, I see.

Oh, I see. Right. It's that painting. Right. I mean, that's quite interesting. Because, I mean, it's kept in a building, right? So technically it's a burglary. But they always start about it being theft. There's an art theft.

Yes, they do. I mean, you know, that's, first of all, that was the Mona Lisa. We're sorry, we're talking about the Mona Lisa. Yes. What was the word you used for it? La Giaconda. Is that what it's originally? Which is the correct name for it.

Is it? Yeah. Oh, we're having little side facts coming out of the front and centre here. So it first went missing in 1911 from the Louvre. Right. And then two years later, it was recovered by the Italian police. Okay. The guy who stole it was a guy called Vincenzo Perugia,

who was an Italian who'd worked at the Louvre. Oh, I see. And he kept the painting in a trunk in his apartment in Paris for two years. Wow. Before he went back to Florence. And he got caught because he contacted the owner of an art gallery and asked for a reward. Snitch.

For returning it. I can't help thinking of burglary as sounding like a slightly childlike word. I think of burglars and I think of that sort of stereotypical idea of a guy in a flat cap with a black mask over his eyes and a stripy black and white shirt being chased by comical, cartoony-looking police officers. It seems cartoony to me. Yes, yeah.

But the word burglary first appeared in the 16th century in english the word burglar is spelt b-u-r-g-l-a-r as opposed to e-r but it sounds like a burglar it sounds like one who burgles as if burgle is a verb but burgle didn't become a verb until the 19th century so the word burglar just refers to a person and is hundreds and hundreds of years old. And in the 19th century, it actually started off as a joke. Someone said, well, if he's a burglar, then that must mean he burgles. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And now the word burgle is actually a verb.

Burglar has got, I mean, if you pronounce it burglar, it's fine. But most people say burglar. Burglar, yes. So there's like an invisible missing vowel in the middle of it. Yes, indeed, yeah. There have been lots of burglaries of stuff. Yes, I expect they have. One of the more recent ones was the Hatton Garden, like 2016.

There was a bunch of old people who broke into Hatton Garden through an elevator shaft. Yes, that's right. And they reckon they got away with about £200 million. Crikey, worth of diamonds. Yes. Because Hatton Gardens is the jewellery quarter in London, isn't it? Yes. And they were all caught.

I mean, the gang was led by a 76-year-old guy. And the seven of them between them had a combined age of 443. Oh, my goodness. So seasoned veterans oh yeah i mean they were all caught yeah yeah except nobody's ever found the diamonds oh really no oh they've done a good job of stashing that away then oh yeah you know you see on cars, you know me, I'm going to talk about cars, right? Of course. But you see on cars like a notice in the back saying no tools are left in this vehicle overnight.

Oh, yes. I saw one on a very flashy sports car and it said no hairdressing equipment is left in this vehicle overnight. And there's another one which was um it was a slurry van and it said no excrement is left in this vehicle overnight oh my goodness i mean is there a market for that sort of thing where's the market for tools sure for tools yeah i can't imagine anyone breaking into a slurry van to steal the slurry because last year there were 44 514 tool thefts wow 44 and a half thousand that's a lot which has gone up for by five percent from the previous year right okay basically one

tool is stolen every 12 minutes crikey and usually from vans yeah and i'm assuming that's you know no one's going after a hammer and a chisel are they they're sort of looking for yeah exactly yeah yeah livestock rustling it's a great rustling i didn't look at rustling yeah in the old west it was it was cattle and and uh horses um sometimes it's sheep yes it's technically an organized crime sheep rustling is it really i mean you know there are thousands of pounds worth of sheep being stolen in each raid i think in in 2020 so like 2.3 million pounds of the sheep were nicked good grief wow yeah loads of stuff have you ever taken anything home from work like a

post office fan no no like a like a like a set of post-it notes or some pencils or nothing that i wasn't entitled to no i have have you i've ended up with staplers and and pens and pads of paper and all sorts of stuff really from offices and and theft is, I mean, it's not huge, but it's significant. And it's like people think, oh, it's fine, I'll just take it home. There are people who've taken home more than that. I mean, there are people who've taken home desks and chairs and things. There's one person took their office chair home, and they still have it 18 years later wow that's a good office chair there was a you you jokingly said did i ever take

home a van from royal mail when i was a postie there was a news item i seem to remember from years ago that um one particular postie was refusing to deliver those free leaflets that come through your door and end up straight in the recycling he didn't want to bother his customers because they're annoying so he ended up taking them all home and just sort of keeping them there for a while and for a while i mean several years and his entire attic was filled with these pizza menus and conservatory installation leaflets and all these sorts of things. And it's theft.

Those things are the property of Royal Mail until such time they're delivered through someone's letterbox. And therefore he was sacked and convicted of theft from Royal Mail. Going to prison for nicking pizza leaflets. Yep, yep. My other, this one's just coming off the top of my head,

but I suppose you could call this workplace theft, sort of. The actor Sir Ian McKellen, at the end of filming the Lord of the Rings movies, his wizard staff went missing from the props collection. And it turns out he took it home with him. It now sits in a pub in london that is owned by sirian mckellen it's it sits behind the bar and people go to this otherwise lovely charming nondescript pub yeah just to see gandalf's staff sitting behind the

bar i think they've let him go get away with that one i think they would yeah i mean that that is that is kind of stealing from work but but it's a whole other level. But it's Sir Ian McKellen, so... Yeah, exactly. There are lots of strange things get stolen, though. What have you found? What's unusual? Well, someone once...

Thieves once stole a portable public toilet in Gomel, Belarus. Right. They didn't realise there was somebody actually using it at the time. There was someone in Gomel, Belarus. Right. They didn't realise there was somebody actually using it at the time. There was someone in it. In it, yeah.

No. Yeah. Oh, do you know who the patron saint of thieves is? No. It's St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas.

I mean, he's the patron saint of children, fishermen, broadcasters, travellers, or St. Nicholas. But he's also the patron saint of thieves, but only if they repent oh really yes how interesting thieves other odd things that i've found that have been stolen um a train uh in 2020 sorry a train yeah a whole train whole train well just

the engine okay not the carriages um in 2022 an entire diesel train engine was disassembled piece by piece and stolen from a train yard in india thieves gained access to the area by digging a tunnel from sort of the neighboringing building into the train yard. And they disassembled this train and took it all away. Piece by piece. Piece by piece. There's a song about a guy who works in a car factory who keeps stealing little bits of cars and taking them home. Oh, is there?

Yeah. I don't know that one. I'll put a link in. We have show notes to help with this. So I'll put a link. I think it's a Johnny Cash song. And it's called One Piece at a Time. That's brilliant.

It's a really good song. Some other unusual things I found that got stolen. George Washington's wallet, which was on loan to a museum in New Jersey. Okay. It was stolen from the museum in 1992. And it was missing for for three weeks uh and um unusually it was it was returned to the museum by a lawyer representing his anonymous client who felt so guilty about having stolen george washington's wallet yes he

gave it to his lawyer for the lawyer to return ah and of course the lawyer being you know protecting his client couldn't well yes couldn't name who it was no exactly um the there was a 500 reward issued by the uh museum and they passed it to the lawyer because you know he came forward with information about where this wallet was wow so he made something out of it. Oh, good for him. Indeed. A glacier or glacier, depending on your persuasion. You don't mean somebody who puts windows in? No, not a glacier. A glacier.

An iceberg, if you will. Iceberg. Five tons of ice were stolen from the Georges Mont Glacier in Patagonia. Little by little by little, a fellow from Chile in 2012 went and visited this glacier and chipped bits of it away. And he sold it because the ice was particularly clear and pure and good quality. And apparently the amount of ice that he stole was worth six thousand one hundred dollars oh so so not a massive crime but how do you how do you value ice i mean unless you're in a bar well that's that's exactly it he he um he sold it to um to bars and restaurants around chile okay as as gourmet polar ice cubes.

So let's talk about theft of cars. Oh, go on. Grand Theft Auto. Well, yes, exactly. The most popular stolen car is the Ford Fiesta. Is it? There were, last year, there were nearly 6,000 Ford Fiestas stolen. Oh. Although the one that gets the high viz is Range Rovers.

They get stolen a lot. Do they really? Yes. But the number one most stolen car is the Fiesta, followed by the Focus. But yeah, the Range Rover Sport, there's only 1,631 stolen last year only. Okay.

But as a proportion of how many vehicles there are in circulation, I would imagine there's a lot more Ford Fiestas than there are of that. Well, yes, except that there are about 75,000 Range Rovers that have really bad security. They're actually vulnerable to criminals who exploit. It's got a keyless entry system. Oh, okay. And it's exploitable. Oh, dear. Wasn't there, I seem to remember there being a statistic at one point that said red cars are the most likely to be stolen because they just sort of stick out like a sore thumb. If you're going through a car park looking for a car to

steal, the red one catches your eye and you go for it. Don't say that. I'm just having a car to steal the red one catches your eye and you go for it don't say that i'm just having a car re-sprayed red oh dear so like i said green is um i've got a green one as well oh for goodness sake silver no don't know any silver ones fine good so silver is the um no i don't know if it's still true but there there was a point at which insurance on red cars was really, really high because they were the most likely ones to get stolen. Interesting. Because the thing I'd heard about red cars was that the police play a version of snooker. Right. So you have to give a ticket to a red car before you can go for a colour. So, yeah, so red cars got stopped more regularly by the police because they you need to have red before you can go for a color that's both terrible and wonderful at the

same time there was also um i remember reading possibly in the same report about the red car but when parking in a car park with lots of other cars around you i would automatically think it would be safer to park amongst other cars than in an empty level you know just a lone car out on its own solitary isolated far away from all the others i would think would be more of a target for being stolen yeah but actually it's not because there's less cover i suppose yeah if a thief goes to a really crowded car park, they can sort of slip in between the cars. They might just look like they're getting into a neighbouring car. You can't really see them terribly well because of all the other cars.

If they go to a solitary car in the middle of nowhere, it's more obvious. So they reckon that it's actually safer to park your car on its own, away from other cars. See, I don't believe that because the other thing is like if you walk away from a car and somebody sees you walk away from it i would imagine that the theft would be more successful yes if there weren't other people around going back to their cars and then they saw you actually breaking into it yes that's true that's true i think we need to conduct a survey if there are any car thieves out there yes um please write to us anonymously and tell us what your preferred

method is yes hello at factorly.com that's the one great now you mentioned the um jewelry heist in Hatton Garden. Yes. This is interesting. Obviously, theft is bad. Yes. It's negative. Through all of this research, I just kept on coming up with how many thefts there have been,

how many people have been affected by different sorts of theft, what an absolute life-ruiner it is. So it's clearly a negative, illegal thing. And then I started thinking about how many movies there are about heists. Oh, my God, yes. I love a heist movie. Yes. And I was thinking of the great train robbery, Bonnie and Clyde, the Italian job. How many oceans are there?

Yeah, oceans 11 through 27, however many there are. And there's something about the planning and the plotting. It's always told from the point of view of the thieves and you sort of get behind them and you you wish them success you know you really want croaker to get away with that that bunch of gold don't you you're really rooting for him and his mates absolutely his minis um so i sort of looked around a few particularly impressive heists uh One of the most elaborate diamond heists was at the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. Okay. Which straight away sounds like the sort of place that's going to get robbed, doesn't it?

Because it's full of diamonds. Yes. But this particular thief, one Leonardo Notapartolo, disguised himself himself as a diamond merchant whatever one of those looks like and moved into an apartment next to the diamond center in 2000 and he just studied the place he he went in and out and in and out he got to know the staff and you know under the guise of being a diamond merchant and he really cased the joint. And he managed to get through this incredibly elaborate security system. The vault was two floors underground. It had 10 different layers of security, including cameras, motion sensors,

thumbprints, biometric scanners, all this sort of stuff. And somehow or other, he managed to get through all of that and stole $100 million worth of diamonds and gold without triggering any of these levels of security i'm assuming they caught him so they caught him he was eventually this is so bizarre he was eventually linked to the crime um by throwing some litter out of his car driving down a highway and they found some dna of his on a sandwich that he'd eaten and then chucked half out. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison at the age of 51. Did they ever recover the diamonds? Some of them. The majority were never found. Just like your fellas in London. In Manhattan Garden.

Wow. Yeah. another heist that i i read about which was uh quite charming was the great canadian maple syrup heist oh i've heard about this yes tell me this was amazing i vaguely remember this but tell me more so this happened over several months between 2011 and 2012 nearly 3 000 tons of maple syrup valued at 13.7 million dollars disappeared from a storage facility in quebec i know because basically they harvest the maple syrup every year and to allow for years when it's not as available they stockpile it yes that's right special place yes yes so these these people um went to said special place and siphoned the maple syrup off and replaced it with water so that when they went to sort of check the weight of the barrels that it was kept in they didn't notice any difference wow and the amount that they stole this 3 000 tons of maple syrup this

constitutes about 75 percent of the world's supply of maple syrup what did they do with it it didn't say they got caught and the stuff was found um but i don't have no idea what they were intending in tankers or something were they going to bottle it and sell it off in little gift shops around the world? I don't know. Well, yes. I mean, you know, you'd have to like almost invent a maple syrup company.

Yes, you would, wouldn't you? To market it and bottle it. You can't just walk into your local Sainsbury's and say, well, here, do you want some maple syrup? Can you? It's just, it's not done.

Yeah, people have stolen some very weird stuff. Napoleon's penis? I didn't know Napoleon had someone who played the piano. You said pianist, right? When he died, the doctor who removed parts of him during the autopsy. Yes. And then allegedly his penis was stolen by Napoleon's chaplain who smuggled it from St Helena all the way to Corsica. And this was like in 1821.

Okay. And it stayed in his family until 1916. Oh, crikey, nearly 100 years. Yeah, when it was sold to a book-selling company in London. And then it was displayed in public in 1927 at the Museum of French Art in New York.

There are so many layers of odd to that. Why did a London book-selling company purchase Napoleon's penis? Yeah, I have no idea. Probably for money to display it and kind of get people to pay for it. That's just

odd. But it's not the only body part that's been stolen. Okay. Tell me more. You know this bloke Albert Einstein? I've heard of him. He was quite clever, wasn't he? So he died in 1955, April 18th. And his autopsy was done by a pathologist called Thomas Harvey.

But Thomas Harvey, basically, he removed Einstein's brain. Oh. And he got fired for doing it. So he was working at Princeton Hospital. But he got permission from Einstein's son to study the brain, even though he'd already cut it into 240 pieces um but but it remained in his sole possession until 1978 oh gosh wow and i mean if you're going to steal a bit of einstein that's probably the bit that's most interesting isn't it

yes you wouldn't go and steal i don don't know, Einstein's foot. No, no. One of the more audacious attempts at theft was at the San Antonio Aquarium in July 2018, so quite recently. Okay. And this was captured by video surveillance. What happened was somebody nicked a shark. A shark? A shark. From the aquarium?

Yes. Okay. But they were spotted stealing a shark. Right. And they tracked the suspects down to a house filled with sharks and marine animals in a small pool. My goodness. And anyway, so the shark was called Miss Helen. And because he was spotted,

she was returned to the aquarium the next day. Right, okay. Okay, so she wasn't out of water for long. No. Again, on the show notes at factrolley.com, I will put a video of the person actually stealing a shark. In India, back in April 2022, a gang decided to see if they could steal a 60-foot-long, 550-ton iron bridge. OK. They basically nicked a bridge.

They were disguised in government uniforms. They used they use gas cutting torches and earth excavators and they basically cut this bridge up for scrap oh right and and and the local villagers didn't know that it was being stolen they thought that the government was actually dismantling the bridge all right so i was going to say they they obviously sort of did it in broad daylight dismantling a bridge isn't really something you can hide is it eight of them in high viz basically nicked a bridge wow the audacity crikey there's quite a lot of um metal objects that get stolen for scrap i read in 2008 50 cast iron manhole covers were stolen from California for exactly the same reason, to be sold as scrap iron. Yes.

And, you know, manhole covers are right in the middle of the road. It's quite hard to do it subtly. They each weigh about 150 pounds, so it takes quite a lot of doing. And the state had to pay $500 per manhole cover to replace them. Wow. Let alone what damage it might have done to any cars that drove into the manhole without noticing. That happens in London too. I mean, when you walk around London, you see the old coal chute covers.

Oh, yes. And they're nicked. I mean, there was like 200 of them stolen in nighttime raids in 2004. Crikey. About 100 of them stolen in nighttime raids in 2004. Crikey. About 100 of them happened in one week. And they have, it was basically, steel prices were high. Yes. At that point.

And they were very high quality steel. Happens in China as well. About 240,000 of its 600,000 covers were taken in the same year. Good, great. They got so bad that it was a risk to people walking the streets in China. Oh, wow. And so the Chinese government developed covers made of materials other than steel that would be worthless if they were stolen.

OK. Well, that puts the 50 covers in California to shame, doesn't it? It does. Well, you know what they have a lot of in California? Oranges. Beaches. Sure. And they also have quite a few in Jamaica.

Okay, makes sense. Yeah. In 2008, the Coral Spring Beach Resort in Jamaica, people made off with enough sand from its beach to fill 500 trucks. I beg your pardon. So yeah, so this happened in summer in July. Right. Like people were watching these people loading the sand onto trucks. And they just thought it

was the council doing something. Yeah. And it took months of investigation. The police finally got to the bottom of it and found that they worked out that the sand had been sold to other resorts in Jamaica. Who were lacking in sand. Yeah, there's a black market in white sand. That's bizarre. Are there any Guinness records for theft?

Sadly, not really. The thing about Guinness World Records is that people set out to have their feats of whatever it is. Recognised. And recognised the very essence of theft is that you really don't want one of the McWhirter brothers standing there watching you do it. Yes. So, no. So, no. it. Yes. So no, not really. So no.

No. Okay. And also, I guess we should put a warning to people to say, theft. Don't do it. No, it's not good. It's wrong. It's illegal.

It's bad. It makes a good movie, but don't do it. Don't do it, really. In the show notes, you will see the sentencing that you can get for doing it. Yes. It's not a good idea. No, really. In the show notes, you will see the sentencing that you can get for doing it. It's not a good idea. No, no. So what three things should people do right now?

What three things they can do? The first thing is, quite simply, they can tell all their friends about this podcast. They can share it. They can shout about it. They can promote us through word of mouth. What's the second thing the second thing is i mean i'm assuming you already have subscribed to this podcast they'll have done that already okay so so you've done that so what you need to do the third thing then is to leave us a review oh yes please five star review it's what it deserves it does and you know leave a little note in there as well explain why you think it's worth five stars please do so that's it for another fun-filled episode of fact orally please come again next time bye-bye cheerio