Modus Operandi by Mauro Corvasce (universal ebook reader txt) 📕

This two-safe method is a growing trend in residential buildings of wealthy people. We recently heard a story where a wealthy businessman had two safes installed in his home. One his wife was aware of and the other she was not. Unknown to the husband, the wife had installed a safe for herself. The reason for all this security is simple, the amateur will not attempt entry and the professional will be delayed and hopefully apprehended.

Safecracking

Safecracking is the glamorous profession among thieves. A lot of training and experience is needed to accomplish this task. We have personally been to quite a few burglaries where safes have been involved. In our combined law enforcement careers dealing with all types of safes from the small personal safe to large bank vaults, we have never run across a safe that has been cracked or opened without force. Don't get us wrong. It does happen, but in all the safes that we have worked on, brute force was used to open them. Very rarely do you hear about a safe being opened by someone turning the combination dial—unless it was an inside

job and they knew the combination of the lock.

The outside surface of a safe is one of the most difficult from which to obtain any type of latent fingerprint impressions. The safe manufacturer coats the outside surface with a material that makes them more secure, but makes our job a lot harder. This coating is either a wrinkled surface paint or the metal itself is indented. Safe industry people tell us they do this because it makes the outside of the safe more durable to nicks and scratches.

The first and easiest way to gain entry into a safe is, if the safe is small enough, to remove it from the premises where it can be worked on without worry of detection. Safes are designed to be placed in floors, walls and vaults. In vault types, it may be easier to gain entry by attacking the perimeter walls rather than the door of the safe. You would be surprised at how much time and expertise that goes into the vault door only to have the walls of the safe built of simple wallboard and 2 x4s. This often happens in strip mall banks.

If you are going to attempt to gain entry by unlocking the safe, you will need to take with you a number of tools. You will need a heavy bag, preferably canvas or nylon to carry the tools. You will need flashlights to light the way, at least one that is the kind that you wear around your head to keep your hands free. Chisels, pry bars and hammers are also needed to assist you in forcing your way to your goal. Screwdrivers, needle-nosed pliers, battery-powered drills and saws will also be needed. A set of lock picking tools may also come in handy.

One tool for our high-tech thieves will be an amplifier microphone, which is placed on the safe door near the dial. By turning the dial left and then right or left depending on the safe, you can hear distinctive clicks as the inner mechanisms are engaged. These clicks are counted and translated into the numbers on the dial and then the safe can be opened.

Drilling the lock is another alternative. This is accomplished by first locating where the bolt hits home. You will use your amplifying microphone and open and close the

handle quickly while moving the microphone around to determine where the bolt is located. You drill in this location and with any luck, the safe will open.

This bolt area on modern safes has reinforcement plates where a drill will not penetrate. One method of dealing with this problem is by preheating the area with a torch, letting it cool down, drilling a while and then heating the area again. Repeat this process until entry is gained.

When all else fails you may have to punch the safe. This method consists of striking the dial on the safe door hard with a large hammer to tear this dial off. Once you have done this your next step is to take a steel hole punch and try to punch out the center spindle. In some cases, this will allow the safe to open.

High-speed saws or grinders with carbon blades can be used to cut around or through locking mechanisms. Acetylene torches can also be used to cut into the safe, but care must be taken so as not to destroy the contents of the safe.

You may have realized that all this banging, sawing and drilling will make a lot of noise, so care must be taken to secure a location where the noise will not be heard and reported to the police. We have never come across any methods of sound suppression which is why the location of the theft is important. For example, you are not going to force open a safe on a main residential street in the summertime with all the windows of neighboring houses opened.

The safe door is the strongest point of a small safe. By turning a small safe upside down, you can often use a sledgehammer and chisel or a pick and axe and, by brute force, smash a hole into the bottom of the safe.

If you drill a small hole in one corner of the safe door, thereby missing all of the extra anti-theft protection, you may be able to peel back the layer of steel exposing any locking mechanisms. This peeling is accomplished with a pry bar, chisel and hammer.

To make certain that the safe contains valuable items, you may first want to go on a scouting expedition. This is accomplished by drilling a small hole into one of the walls of the safe and inserting a small video camera with a light unit to illuminate the contents of the safe.

Some safes contain additional security devices, such as alarms or