Hey there, curiosity seeker,
Creative thinking is everywhere.
It’s a form of leverage you can apply to any domain, a fact criminals know all too well.
Masters of unorthodox thinking, they expose flaws in even the strongest systems. Here are some classic examples of ingenuity applied to the wrong side of the law:
1. Hired Hands
In 2008, Anthony Curcio placed a Craigslist ad offering $28 an hour for roadwork in Monroe, Washington. Applicants were told to wait outside a Bank of America branch wearing work clothes and hi-vis vests. On the day, dozens showed up (along with Curcio), dressed the same. He strolled into the bank, stole $400,000, and escaped down a creek on an inner tube while police questioned the “construction workers.”
2. The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower
Conman Victor Lustig pulled off one of history’s boldest scams in 1925.
Forging government papers, he posed as a French official and convinced scrap dealers the Eiffel Tower was being secretly sold for metal. Targeting the insecure André Poisson, he extracted a huge bribe worth £1.2m in today’s money. Poisson, too embarrassed to go public, stayed silent, allowing Lustig to flee. Buoyed by success, Lustig even tried the con again before police got wise.
3. Narco Subs
In the 1990s, cartels began building homemade submarines to smuggle cocaine undetected. Most were crude semi-submersibles made of fibreglass, hugging the waterline to dodge authorities. One, discovered in 2000 near Bogotá, was a fully submersible, 120-foot vessel capable of hauling 150 tons of cocaine with a street value of over $1bn. Though some were caught, many slipped through, earning cartels billions.
4. Smugglers’ Shoes
When Prohibition hit the US in 1920, bootleggers devised the “cow shoe”: a regular shoe fitted with wooden blocks shaped like hooves. By leaving cow-like tracks, smugglers could move alcohol undetected.
5. The Gardner Heist
On St. Patrick’s Day 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers persuaded guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to let them in. The guards were handcuffed in the basement while the thieves calmly stole 13 masterpieces (Rembrandts, Vermeers, and more) worth over $500m. It remains the most significant unsolved art theft in history, and a masterclass in using authority as a disguise.
Big love,
Chris & the 42courses team x
