You can rob a place with a gun, or you can rob it with a brain. I preferred the brain.
I wasn’t a thug. I was a technician. While other guys were lifting weights in the yard, I was studying schematics. My father was a master machinist who taught me that if you can understand how a machine is built, you can understand how to break it.
I didn’t just break the law. I engineered my way around it.
1. THE EARS: The Scanner Net
Information is the most dangerous weapon you can carry. In the days before digital encryption, I raided Radio Shacks for police scanner crystals. But I didn’t just use them; I modified them .
The Ghost Channels: I learned that if I flipped the transmit and receive crystals in a pair of walkie-talkies, it created an encrypted channel. Only those two radios could talk. The cops could scan all day and hear nothing but static .
Hard-Wired Warning: I wired police scanners directly into the powertrains of my cars. I didn’t need batteries. I knew the heat was coming before they even put their donuts down.
2. THE SILENCE: Custom Ballistics
The Feds called it a “defaced weapon.” I called it a modification. I carried a .25 caliber Browning Semi-Automatic. But a stock gun is loud and traceable.
Machined, Not Filed: Amateurs file serial numbers. I put the slide on a mill and machined them off. There was nothing for the lab to recover.
The Tailpipe Trick: I threaded the barrel for a silencer. But you can’t get caught with a silencer in the car. So, I shoved it up the tailpipe of the car, hung on a wire coat hanger. The cops tore my car apart in Lackawanna and never found it. If they had looked up the exhaust, I’d still be in a cell .
3. THE ENTRY: The Art of the Safe
My mentor, Jimmy “JR” Russell, taught me the three ways to beat a box: Punch, Peel, and Burn.
The Punch: Knocking the dial spindle through the locking mechanism.
The Peel: Stripping the steel skin back like a banana.
The Burn: Using a thermal lance to melt through the hard plate.
But sometimes, you have to get creative. When we targeted a supermarket night drop, I didn’t bring dynamite. I fabricated a custom stainless-steel mesh net designed to slide down the throat of the depository and catch the money bag before it hit the vault.
The methods described here are history. I paid for this knowledge with years of my life in state and federal penitentiaries. Today, I use these skills as a Control Systems Engineer to build things up, not tear them down. Don’t try this at home. I did the time so you don’t have to.
