Great Brink's Robbery

The Great Brink's Robbery was an armed robbery of the Brink's Building at the east corner of Prince St. and Commercial St. in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on January 17, 1950. Today the building is a parking garage located at 600 Commercial Street.

The $2.775 million ($27.6 million today) theft consisted of $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities. It was then the largest robbery in the history of the United States. The robbery, skillfully executed with few clues left at the crime scene, was billed as "the crime of the century". It was the work of an eleven-member gang, all of whom were later arrested.

Joseph "Big Joe" McGinnis was the originator of the heist, according to information later gleaned from Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe. He brought in Anthony Pino and Stanley "Gus" Gusciora.

O'Keefe and Gusciora secretly entered the Brink's depot; they picked the outside lock with an ice pick and the inner door with a piece of plastic. They later temporarily removed the cylinders from the five locks, one at a time, so that a locksmith could make duplicate keys for them. Once this was done Pino recruited seven other men, including Pino's brother-in-law Vincent Costa, Michael Vincent "Vinnie Jean" Jacquouille, Thomas "Sandy" Francis Richardson, Adolf H. "Jazz" Maffei, Henry Conan D., James "Guillemets" Faherty, and Joseph Banfield.

The gang decided to wait for the optimal time for their heist. Pino studied schedules and was able to determine what the staff was doing based on when the lights in the building windows were on. O'Keefe and Gusciora stole the plans for the site alarms. The gang members entered the building on practice runs after the staff had left for the day. Costa monitored the depot from a room of a tenement building across Prince Street from the Brink's building. By the time they acted, the gang had planned and trained for two years.

On January 17, 1950, after six aborted attempts, the robbers decided that the situation was favorable. They donned clothing similar to that of a Brink's uniform with Navy pea coats and chauffeur's caps, along with rubber Halloween masks, gloves, and rubber-soled shoes. While Pino and driver Banfield remained in the getaway car seven other men entered the building at 6:55 PM.

With their copied keys, they came to the second floor through the locked doors and surprised, bound, and gagged five Brink's employees who were storing and counting money. They failed to open a box of the payroll of the General Electric Company but scooped up everything else.

...
Wikipedia