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Three charged in Hollywood heist-style bank burglaries

NEW YORK — It seemed like something out of a big-budget heist movie.

Pedestrians pass a HSBC bank branch that was robbed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, April 11, 2016. Employees opening the bank Monday morning found a tunnel through the ceiling into the vault and hundreds of thousands of dollars missing.  Photo: NYT

Pedestrians pass a HSBC bank branch that was robbed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, April 11, 2016. Employees opening the bank Monday morning found a tunnel through the ceiling into the vault and hundreds of thousands of dollars missing. Photo: NYT

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NEW YORK — It seemed like something out of a big-budget heist movie.

Blowtorches were used to cut holes through the roofs of two bank branches in Brooklyn and Queens this spring. Ladders were lowered into the bank vaults, allowing the burglars to have their way with safe deposit boxes.

Oxygen and acetylene tanks were found on the roofs. At the Queens bank, the investigators also found a grinding wheel, a tool to cut through steel or concrete.

In all, the burglars made off with about US$5 million (S$6.8 million) in cash and valuables from the two banks.

And then the three men returned to their lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn — seemingly unaware that they were already under surveillance.

“This is some of the best investigative work I’ve seen,” Mr William J Bratton, the New York City police commissioner, said at a news conference on Tuesday (July 26) announcing the arrests of the three men charged.

In one way or another, the men — Michael Mazzara, 44; Charles Kerrigan, 40; and Anthony Mascuzzio, 36 — were all known to law enforcement, officials said.

Mascuzzio’s father was fatally shot in 1988 at age 43 at a Manhattan discotheque. The father, also named Anthony, had been a friend and associate of John Gotti, then the head of the Gambino crime family, the police said at the time.

Another defendant, Mazzara, was shot and wounded in 2009 after what was then described as a dispute at a Brooklyn marina. (A police official, at the news conference, confirmed the links to both men.)

Mr Diego Rodriguez, who leads the FBI’s New York office, said the three defendants had used money they stole to finance “lavish lifestyles”, including buying new cars and motorcycles, water scooters and boats, and taking trips to Las Vegas and Miami.

“These guys hit banks in their own neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,” Mr Rodriguez said, “the same banks their friends and neighbours and their families liked to use”.

Mr Rodriguez seemed struck by how much the crimes resembled a movie plot: “Masked men wearing gloves and hoodies and slinking along bank rooftops in the dead of night,” he said.

Mr Bratton had his own Hollywood parallel. “These heists reminded me of one of my favourite movies: Heat”, the 1995 cops-and-robbers movie starting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

A ladder and two portable fire extinguishers were found inside one bank vault. Mazzara even went to a Home Depot store in Brooklyn, where he bought four sheets of plywood and a tarp, which the men used to build on top of one bank a small structure that shielded them from view as they bored through the roof.

The first bank broken into was the HSBC branch on 13th Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, on a weekend in early April. The burglars stole about US$330,000 in cash and valuables, said Mr Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“By the time the bank reopened on Monday,” Mr Bharara said, “the men were long gone, leaving a jagged hole in the bank’s roof and many victims in their wake.”

The second burglary was in May at a Maspeth Federal Savings Bank branch on Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens. There, the burglars stole about US$300,000 in cash and more than US$4.3 million in valuables.

But as carefully as their crimes were planned, they were also painstakingly investigated, according to law enforcement officials and a criminal complaint unsealed in US District Court in Manhattan.

During the past several years, the police and federal agents have been investigating a pattern of bank burglaries where the buildings were broken into via roofs or walls. As part of that investigation, a surveillance camera was mounted on a pole outside the Brooklyn residence where two of the men, Mazzara and Kerrigan, reside.

The surveillance camera enabled law enforcement to compare images taken at the banks with those taken by the house.

All three men were each charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of bank burglary; Mazzara and Kerrigan were also charged with a second bank burglary count.

Mazzara’s lawyer, Mr Sanford Talkin, said his client “denies the charges and maintains his innocence”.

Kerrigan’s lawyer, Mr James Froccaro Jr, said of his client, “He’s not guilty and plans on being vindicated at trial”.

Mr Jonathan Marvinny, the lawyer for Mascuzzio, who was held without bond, had no comment. Mazzara and Kerrigan were detained pending satisfaction of various bail conditions.

In announcing the bank charges on Tuesday, Mr Bharara said that search warrants had been executed at seven locations and that the authorities hoped to be able to recover some of the stolen items and money, which would in hopes it can be returned to the proper owners. He said the investigation was continuing. THE NEW YORK TIMES

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