Could a 'Bank Job' Happen in 2008?

FROM THESTREET.COM:

The Bank Job, a current popular movie set in East London in the 1970s, follows the escapades of a band of robbers who successfully raid a bank's safe-deposit boxes.

Could this type of scheme really happen today?

Surely, this "based on a true story" tale is either typical Hollywood mythologizing or hopelessly out of date. Advances in electronic security must make such cops-and-robbers plots pure fiction, right?

Yes, for the most part, but that hasn't stopped people from trying.

With today's advancements in security systems and the fact that banks are aware the systems are indeed necessary, the feat would be extremely difficult to pull off.

"Security systems now are designed with heat, vibration and noise sensors. If anyone were drilling or using a jackhammer to get into a vault, the alarm would almost certainly go off," says Dave McGuinn, president of Safe Deposit Specialists. "If it didn't, it would need to be checked."

But McGuinn believes that in the 1970s it would have been entirely feasible. "Back then there was barely any attention paid toward vault and bank security," he says.

In the movie, the criminals -- with a little help from inside a British government agency -- are tipped off that the Lloyd's Bank on Baker Street will be closed for the weekend as repairs are made to the security systems.

The group of old friends, headed by Terry and Martine, take full advantage of the situation. They rent a leather-goods store two doors down and promptly begin drilling into the basement. Their plan to drill a tunnel underneath the shops and up into the vault goes accordingly and the thieves make their way into the room of safe deposit boxes without setting off a single alarm.