[HN Gopher] Harvey's Casino Bomb
___________________________________________________________________
Harvey's Casino Bomb
Author : realloc
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-07-28 07:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fbi.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fbi.gov)
| kodon wrote:
| Great read. Found this youtube from the FBI that shows the
| explosion:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clWUhbxBh8Q
| silexia wrote:
| Thank you for sharing the YouTube video, it was a great
| addition to the article!
| nom wrote:
| Super interesting. How is it that we don't hear about such cat-
| and-mouse games anymore? Do they not happen or are they not
| talked about? It seems like it's a thing of the past, but why?
| strulovich wrote:
| Isn't ransomware the modern version of it?
| 1-more wrote:
| Ransomware is also a better sort of arbitrage against the
| legal system. If you somehow got caught and prosecuted you
| didn't do a violent crime, so that has to probably help you
| somewhat. Of course you did do a federal crime so you have to
| serve 85% of your time no matter what.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Not at all. White collar criminals often serve longer than
| even violent criminals. Look at Bernie Maddof, Allen
| Stanford and others
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Bit of a stretch, but I think it can be attributed to the
| overall reduction in crime since the early 90s, most likely
| brought upon by the elimination of lead in gasoline.
| runj__ wrote:
| What parent commenter is talking about:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
|
| It is very much a hypothesis, but it certainly could be true.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Because it doesn't usually work out. Most of the time if you're
| asking for physical cash to be transferred you're going to get
| caught especially today given the miniaturization of
| electronics for trackers or beacons. It's just too easy to
| follow whatever truck is being used to move the money and large
| amounts of money is quite bulky. You could maybe see some come
| back because of cryptocurrency and like the other reply said
| you could say that ransomware attacks is the modern day
| equivalent of this kind of extortion.
| dmix wrote:
| Exactly, mostly cellphones and high-tech surveillance has
| made the FBI's job much easier. That and today when
| everything is labelled 'terrorism' they get some friendly
| help from the intel community. Where in that case even hiding
| in a bunker in Pakistan next to a military base is only
| saving you a number of years.
|
| In this casino story they already had a 6-person SWAT team
| flying high enough not to be detected, above the helicopter
| doing the planned cash drop. While the solo helicopter pilot
| was a special agent armed with an MP5 and night vision, and a
| bag with fake $3 million of bills and every intention to
| catch or shoot the guy picking up. All of this was organized
| while the timer of the bomb was ticking down.
|
| Given the low odds, it's boils down to an over-complicated
| suicide mission, with high risk of it not working out. Nor
| any point even if does. With the financial system also under
| a ton of surveillance and the involvement of his family and
| even one of their girlfriends.
|
| It's no wonder that this sort of thing has become a rarity
| even for the clever ones like this guy.
| nerdbaggy wrote:
| Here is a great long form about it
| https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/
| phab wrote:
| And they have a fun interactive game you can play to defuse the
| bomb too! https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/
| danans wrote:
| Is that a toilet bowl float in the picture? Perhaps that was
| functioning as the mechanism's accelerometer?
| rob74 wrote:
| From https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-
| dynamite/:
|
| > _Fourth, inside the top box Big John rigged a float from a
| toilet cistern. If the box was flooded with water or foam, the
| float would rise, completing a circuit._
|
| The "accelerometer" was another device:
|
| > _Fifth, beside the float was a tilt mechanism built from a
| length of PVC pipe lined with more aluminum foil; inside hung a
| metal pendulum held under tension from below with a rubber
| band. [...] Once this was armed, if the bomb was moved in any
| way, the end of the pendulum would make contact with the foil,
| completing a circuit._
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| >Tourists at neighboring casinos bet on when the bomb would go
| off, or if it would go off. After the bomb detonated, crowds
| cheered and reveled from a safe distance.
|
| Completely unhinged tourists. Hotel explodes and people cheer
| cause they probably won money.
| beervirus wrote:
| Meh, no one was hurt. Vegas is all about spectacle, and this
| was certainly a spectacle.
| anonu wrote:
| The schadenfreude is killing me. Im sure many working class
| people lost their jobs. A hotel was demolished causing
| substantial monetary loss for its owners and investors. The
| FBI had egg on their face.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm having a hard time beating up on the FBI.
|
| The only other viable outcome I can see is if they gave the
| extortionists the money and caught them later -- and they
| certainly would have caught them. But there is no guarantee
| the same scenario would not have unfolded with the bomb
| going off. And having given in to the demands of the
| extortionist probably would have inspired a wave of similar
| crimes.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It wasn't demolished. The structural integrity was not
| damaged, $18M was spent on repairs, and it reopened about
| 10 months later. Given the owner's attitude towards his
| staff, it seems likely they would all have been re-hired if
| they were still looking for work.
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting. You wouldn't expect that given these
| pictures[1] and phrases like _" creating a five-story
| chasm in the casino"_.
|
| [1] https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/a
| ugust/a...
| geocrasher wrote:
| This wasn't Vegas, this was Tahoe. My grandparents owned a
| home there not long after this happened, and I remember there
| being a lot of talk about it. But when this happened I was
| just a kid. This also wasn't long after Mount St. Helen blew
| up. My parents and I lived in Carson City at the time. I
| remember the ash falling. At first I thought it was snow!
| There was no ash from the Harvey's explosion though. It
| wasn't _that_ big :p
| beervirus wrote:
| Oops, good point. What I said still mostly applies to Tahoe
| though.
| awb wrote:
| A criminal spectacle, that's the difference. Odd that betting
| was allowed on the outcome of a crime.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What should they do? Mourn the loss of some concrete and steel?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I meant in a tongue and cheek kind of way. I was thinking it
| was funny. Apparently HN is full of people that interpret
| text literally and cannot infer nuance whatsoever.
| bhickey wrote:
| https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/
| rob74 wrote:
| Thanks! When I saw the photo, I was immediately reminded of
| this article, which was posted here about one year ago (I
| think?), but I hadn't bookmarked it...
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| I swear if they don't make this into a feature film real soon
| now, I'm gonna sue someone.
| Ndymium wrote:
| In the end he was caught because his van was identified and
| because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that
| his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's."
|
| I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-
| like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and
| outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going
| to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk about it to
| anyone outside those that are directly involved. But criminals
| that have executed the "perfect crime" get caught driving over
| the speed limit, with expired license, spending money too
| lavishly...
|
| I suppose he would have been caught some other way if not for
| this, but it almost seems like a comical trope to me. Maybe you
| are the best bomb maker around, but you weren't that good at the
| simpler things.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Posting this link (that somebody else posted in this thread) to
| an article with lot more coverage on the issue that wikipedia:
| https://magazine.atavist.com/a-thousand-pounds-of-dynamite/
|
| Eventually, the sons of "Big John" caved in to the FBI in
| interrogation. While the tip of the former girlfriend made the
| whole family prime suspects in the first place, they did not
| have anything on them until the sons decided to talk (and get
| immunity for their involvement in exchange).
| [deleted]
| kumarvvr wrote:
| As always, with any crime, the more people involved, the
| greater the possibility that _human_ factors will sabotage the
| operation.
|
| The perfect crime has one perpetrator.
|
| It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in
| conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds /
| thousands of people.
|
| Theories that we faked the moon landing always intrigue me. Or
| that the earth is flat.
| giarc wrote:
| >It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in
| conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds /
| thousands of people.
|
| I have the same reasoning for the 9/11 truthers. Do people
| really believe that no one on the "inside" has come out to
| say it was all staged/planned/faked? Hijacking 4 planes and
| flying them into buildings is going to take a lot of
| planning. Not to mention that people claim there was no plane
| that hit the Pentagon. Like really? They go to all that
| planning and just think "let's just use a missle at the
| pentagon, no one will notice it wasn't a plane."
| paulpauper wrote:
| The perfect crime is one in which you will either not serve
| time or only a little if caught. Politics comes to mind.
| 55555 wrote:
| I see your point! I totally do. I also used to hold this
| belief. But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was
| revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware
| of a system that was sucking up all of our data for
| warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret
| for something like 10 years (or more?).
|
| For sure it's true that a secret can be kept by three people
| if two of them are dead. But there are clear cases where
| large groups of people have been able to keep secrets as
| well, or at least keep them from spilling out into public
| awareness.
|
| I'd bet that for most crimes, the secret isn't kept, and
| there is someone else out there that knows who did it, who
| simply doesn't tell law enforcement. And yet most serious
| crimes aren't solved.
|
| Humans have a real need to tell other people personal things,
| even to their own detriment. But sometimes things stay
| secrets even if tons of people know about them.
| shahar2k wrote:
| how many of those 10k people really have the awareness
| required to put that kind of data invasion in context and
| perspective? I think the reaction to large issues like
| climate change, tells you exactly all you need about
| people's ability to downplay large issues into "someone
| else's problem"
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think that Snowden leaks were more or less an open
| secret. I mean, it is about spies spying. Sure, the NSA
| overstepped its borders, but it is not exactly the first
| time (remember ECHELON), and the way it did that wasn't
| revolutionary. They didn't have a quantum computer,
| nanobots or anything like that: just competent computer
| security specialists and too much money to spend. Not even
| something significant like breaking commercial-grade crypto
| or anything like that, they "broke TLS" by inserting
| wiretaps in datacenters where data wasn't encrypted.
|
| Snowden gave proof and technical details about what was
| happening. It is like showing proof that Israel has nuclear
| weapons. Israel doesn't talk about it, they may or may not
| have nuclear weapons, most people think they do, and such a
| revelation won't surprise anyone, but it is still a big
| deal, because they can't use their "deliberate ambiguity"
| strategy anymore.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Eventually, Snowden came out with the truth isn't it.
|
| Also, not all of those 10k people might not be knowing what
| they are doing or don't care. You can cloak a lot of
| espionage activity with forms, sheets, memos, brainwashing
| and what not.
| adventured wrote:
| > But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was
| revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were
| aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for
| warrantless search and they had successfully kept the
| secret for something like 10 years (or more?).
|
| Illegal domestic electronic espionage/surveillance wasn't a
| vast secret. It was widely known that the Feds were making
| every effort they could to push down that road, and the
| Feds had a very long history of illegal domestic espionage.
| Frankly, it was obvious that it was going on. A lot of
| people I know in tech had crossed paths with other people
| that knew pieces of the puzzle, that some domestic
| espionage programs were going on (particularly supercharged
| after 9/11). You'd get snippets of it in discussions.
| Snowden's revelations were not the first, it was the
| bombshell that was comprehensive (and only for a small part
| of what they were doing).
|
| It wasn't yet proven, and the full extent wasn't yet known,
| there wasn't enough credible public evidence to demonstrate
| exactly what they were doing. There's a huge difference
| between something not being secret, and being proven, and
| that's what Snowden's actions helped to correct.
|
| While it's in the not-yet-proven stage, the malevolent
| skeptics in particular will all sandbag any attempt to
| reveal it, by burying discussions under conspiracy tags and
| swat away any attempts to dig into what's really going on.
| Some skeptics do that on purpose because they have a vested
| interest in doing so, some do that because they're cowards
| (which is what is represented by the common statement: "if
| you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to
| fear" - it's cowardly people hiding from a moment of
| confrontation).
|
| Ready for another one? They're still performing illegal
| domestic electronic surveillance. That too isn't some vast
| secret. Oh I know, but but but they're not supposed to be
| doing that! Golly.
| vmception wrote:
| That's like a call center agent telling you a policy is for
| "security" and not knowing the actual policy or the legal
| rationale or the supporting law
|
| A lot of people in the intelligence community were aware
| but few had all the details or would care to look
| giarc wrote:
| Funny you should mention 'get caught driving over the speed
| limit'.... from another link in this thread that did happen.
|
| Like most plans, Birges's fell apart rather early on. One of
| his sons got a speeding ticket, placing him near the ransom
| drop point. His girlfriend drove off the road, resulting in her
| hospitalization.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo...
| nashashmi wrote:
| The book and movie the Irishman comes to mind when I think
| about people who got away. They never really can keep their
| mouth shut.
|
| It's in our nature to tell others who we are and everything we
| do. It's why we have social media. It's our nature.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| A big part of it is the same asymmetry you see with security.
| All the other side needs is one mistake that leaves an opening.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That's how they got the Unabomber.
| tyingq wrote:
| >I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem
| movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane
| mistakes and outright stupid moves like this.
|
| I think the same when you watch TV shows like Dateline. Yet the
| clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%. And I
| doubt that 40% are all master minds.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > Yet the clearance rate for homicides in the US is below 60%
|
| The war on drugs helped a lot with this.
| 55555 wrote:
| I assume you mean because LE is splitting resources and
| also dealing with drug cases. I think it wouldn't be
| unrealistic to have the drug cases fund themselves through
| seizures. I wonder how bad of an ROI our LE gets on drug
| investigations.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Drug prohibition also drives up murder rates massively.
| For your typical turf war murder, even the victims' side
| has little incentive to talk to the cops.
| me_me_me wrote:
| that's because there are very few masterminds on the other
| side of the fence.
|
| The idea of a detective as per cop movies are romanticised, a
| lot of them are doing bare minimum and are as dumb as the
| criminals.
| silexia wrote:
| I had the misfortune of seeing this first hand. I caught an
| employee who embezzled $19,000 from my company red handed.
| The police refused to help even after I reported it until I
| called the mayor's office and complained.
| me_me_me wrote:
| But if you caught them red handed why are their hands not
| red? Case closed.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Now that's going all the way to the top!
| the-dude wrote:
| It is because you don't hear about the cases which don't slip
| up.
| dogorman wrote:
| Selection bias is a cheap canned answer, but it doesn't make
| any sense here. Sensational unsolved crimes make the news.
| The public hearing about crimes isn't conditional on those
| crimes being solves. Arguably some of the most enduringly
| notorious crimes are the ones that go unsolved.
|
| The Zodiac Killer; never been caught. "D.B. Cooper", never
| caught. The presumed murder of Jimmy Hoffa, unsolved.
| the-dude wrote:
| The best crimes do not look like crimes. The police does
| not put out press releases repeatedly with 'we got no
| leads'. Such cases fade fast.
| dogorman wrote:
| > _The best crimes do not look like crimes._
|
| Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved
| crimes.
|
| > _The police does not put out press releases repeatedly
| with 'we got no leads'._
|
| They do, in all the cases I listed they've asked the
| public for help for years. Certainly they don't do that
| for crimes they don't know occurred, but there is no
| shortage of known crimes that are very publicly unsolved.
|
| For that matter, there are also a whole lot of missing
| person bulletins soliciting information from the public.
| Many of them might be murder victims, but it isn't known
| whether they are really alive or dead, let alone
| murdered. The public is nonetheless asked for
| information.
| adventured wrote:
| > Sure, but there is really no shortage of known unsolved
| crimes.
|
| That's certainly the nice way to put it -
|
| "If you're murdered in America, there's a 1 in 3 chance
| that the police won't identify your killer. To use the
| FBI's terminology, the national "clearance rate" for
| homicide today is 64.1 percent. Fifty years ago, it was
| more than 90 percent." ... "Criminologists estimate that
| at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved since the
| 1960s"
|
| https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-
| one-...
| dogorman wrote:
| Yes, police are pretty good at solving "the spouse did
| it" crimes, the most obvious sort. When the victims were
| chosen randomly, the clearance rate becomes abysmal.
| They're also bad at solving crimes when the victims come
| from the marginalized fringes of society. Jack the Ripper
| is a famous unsolved case of a serial killer who targeted
| prostitutes more than a century ago. Modern examples
| include the Long Island killer, the Eastbound Strangler,
| and plenty more.
|
| When the existence of such a serial killer is recognized,
| it tends to make the news at least regionally. Sometimes
| they become internationally famous for many years. But to
| my point, the public hearing about it is _not_ contingent
| on the culprit being caught. If anything, the ones who
| are caught fast and easy tend to make the least amount of
| news. You can 'juice' unsolved crimes for stories a
| century after the fact, but stories that follow the _"
| husband did it and we caught him"_ format tend to
| disappear from the news after the culprit has been
| sentenced.
| vmception wrote:
| Still shocking to me that nobody looks at the life
| insurance broker who knows that the spouse would be
| vulnerable to a sure conviction if the other spouse was
| found dead within the next few months after opening the
| policy
| ekster wrote:
| What is the broker's motive?
| vmception wrote:
| for the lulz?
|
| fbi says there are over 2,000 serial killers free in the
| US
|
| we dont know nearly enough of them to know motivations or
| even assume thats a prerequisite
| ekster wrote:
| A random person doing it for the lulz is already likely
| to get away with it, at least for a while. No need to do
| that much prep.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Except for when the husband didn't do it after being
| convicted, where it turns out the wife was having an
| affair with a golf pro, and someone comes in and kills
| them both. I bet that one would even lend itself into
| making a great movie.
| chris_va wrote:
| What, would you have an entire movie with the husband
| sitting in prison slowly whittling away the time with a
| rock hammer? Never would get funded.
| panarky wrote:
| Clearance rate for rape: 34.5% (65.5% unsolved)
|
| Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-
| in-the-u.s.-...
| the-dude wrote:
| The Dutch police has a cold case team, yes. For cold
| cases ( there is even a word for it ) which have not seen
| progress or public attention for year, some even decades.
| praptak wrote:
| I think most police forces have one. A decade might mean
| there's new tech that can move the case forward or the
| criminal got caught for something else and it's just a
| matter of connecting the cases.
| klyrs wrote:
| I happen to know somebody who was involved in the
| investigation of highly professional heist. The bank wanted
| to keep it quiet, and I can't find much other than this one
| article about the incident. I was gonna call it movie-
| worthy, but it's not, because there were no salacious
| details, no close calls, just in&out and no funny business.
|
| https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19980804&slu
| g...
| raldi wrote:
| Huh? Big unsolved crimes receive unending fame.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| This is not always the case... the DoJ reminds me of a
| sales organization. Crimes are sales leads. Publicized
| leads are usually very close to being closed(solved).
|
| That doesn't always work though - the crime may be
| something the public is aware of, and then the pressure to
| "close" the lead is even greater. There are numerous "big"
| crimes that the public has no awareness of though.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| This is somewhat pessimistic..
|
| If the case is high profile enough, they will _always_
| find someone to find guilty.
| meowface wrote:
| The Zodiac Killer and D. B. Cooper are notable
| exceptions. And there are probably a bunch more.
|
| It seems statistically unavoidable that there are always
| going to be some big cases that go unsolved. It'll
| probably become less and less common - especially since
| it seems inevitable that nearly all DNA will eventually
| be traceable via genetic genealogy databases - but some
| crimes just won't result in any DNA or other significant
| evidence being left.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| D.B. Cooper
| mavhc wrote:
| The trick is to make sure no one even knows the crime was
| committed.
|
| Or to make the crime legal by paying politicians
| duxup wrote:
| If Harvey got $3 million in cash and gotten away, or just not
| gotten caught. We would have heard about it.
|
| Unsolved Mysteries type shows and news stories would be all
| over that sort of thing.
| oneepic wrote:
| His name is John Birges Sr., not Harvey.
| paulpauper wrote:
| and on FBI wanted lists too.
| [deleted]
| swader999 wrote:
| Great, I'm probably on a list now for clicking that link.
| IshKebab wrote:
| A really boring list.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| They can't arrest all of us. :-)
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's a great sentiment until you're one of the ones that
| they do arrest!
| whereistimbo wrote:
| Heh. FBI is using Cloudflare.
| eplanit wrote:
| This is so close to the plot of the movie Juggernaut[1], and
| occurred only 4 years after the movie's release -- I can't help
| but wonder if the bomber was inspired by the plot. That movie had
| bombs (on a ship, not a casino) with multiple triggering
| mechanisms: some behind flathead screws, movement switches,
| photoelectric detectors/triggers. So similar. A really good
| movie, by the way.
|
| 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071706/
| tyingq wrote:
| If you're confused by the description of two boxes and the
| picture of the single box, the picture is of the smaller box that
| was on top. The box on the bottom held the dynamite. From
| googling around a bit it wasn't exactly 1,000lbs of dynamite. It
| was 18 cases of Hercules Unigel dynamite, each case about 40lbs,
| so 720lbs.
|
| A tech-oriented rundown of the device:
| https://hackaday.com/2015/09/21/this-is-what-a-real-bomb-loo...
| (some factual errors, for example, there was no TNT in the
| device. Just dynamite. But a good overview of the anti-tamper
| pieces)
| jstx1 wrote:
| I first heard of this on an episode of The Dollop -
| https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/309---big-john-and-harv...
|
| It's a great story.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-28 19:01 UTC)