[imagesource: Courthouse News]

Hollywood loves a heist movie.

Some are watchable, some are actually well made, and others are, shall we say, steaming piles of nonsense.

Then there are real-life heists which you can be pretty certain will one day become a Netflix true-crime show, and the crazy story of the three New York men who fleeced banks around Europe is one of those.

As skilled as Val Cooper, 56, Alex Levin, 52, and Gari Smith, 49, were, they did still end up getting caught, and were charged earlier this week by the US Department of Justice with money laundering and conspiracy, as well as conspiracy to violate the Travel Act.

It’s alleged that between March 2015 and October 2019, they stole more than $30 million in cash and other valuables, using spy cameras to break into safe deposit boxes around the world.

The heists are alleged to have been carried out on banks in countries including Ukraine, Russia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Latvia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan.

Prosecutors say they targeted businesses that “appeared to lack security features, including video surveillance cameras in certain areas,” reports The Daily Beast:

“The crimes we allege in this indictment read like something straight out of Hollywood fiction,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney said in a statement.

“The thieves used sophisticated tools to thwart security systems at foreign banks and tried to cover their tracks by laundering money through U.S. banks. However, thanks to the outstanding work of our FBI Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force and our international partners, these criminals now face real federal charges and the possibility of real-time in federal prison.”

Court documents state that the men would identify banks with lax security measures, and then pose as customers who wanted to rent a safety deposit box.

Once inside, they would use “sophisticated camera equipment” to “take photographs of the inside of safe deposit box locks,” prosecutors said.

That equipment included cameras often used in medical procedures, such as a borescope:

“Another co-conspirator used these photographs to create duplicate keys, and then other co-conspirators used the duplicate keys to open the victim safe deposit boxes in order to steal the contents, including currency, gold bars, jewelry, and other property,” a DOJ press release said. After the heist was complete, the trio would leave the country.

The heists went on for years, with allegations that they had law enforcement officials on the payroll in some countries, until authorities in New York carried out a search on Cooper’s property.

Once inside, they found a trove of evidence, including safe deposit box keys without any identification numbers, cash, and jewellery.

A search of Cooper’s storage unit also turned up a borescope and safe deposit box lock.

Levin is believed to have ties to La Cosa Nostra, a notorious Mafia crime family, as well as a Russian organised crime group.

The countdown to the three-part docuseries begins.

[source:dailybeast]