Page 73 - All About History - Issue 16-14

10 Daring Heists

The taking of the

Grand Mughals Fl t
1695
The attack that led to
pirates being deemed
AROUND ‘enemies of mankind’
£1,000,000 Henry Every was, by all
accounts, one of the most feared
pirates that ever lived. He may
not have had the timeless appeal of Blackbeard
or the barbaric legacy of Charles Vane, but his
audacity captured the imagination of the civilised
world. In fact, his path of piratical dominance only
lasted two years, yet he captained the most daring
and bountiful raid of all time. In the early months
of 1695, Every and his ship, the Fancy, gathered
a fleet of some of the most able-bodied captains
of the Indian Ocean and beyond. The prize? The
roving fleet of the Mughal Empire. The Mughals
ruled trade in Asia and were, as such, rich beyond
measure. Every year, the empire would send a royal
fleet on the Hajj Pilgrimage to Mecca. This 25-ship
fleet would be filled with riches and was led by
the Ganj-i-Sawai, a fearsome 1,600-tonne warship
with 80 broadside cannons. With a fleet of six ships
and a collective crew of 440 men, Every hit the
fleet hard, driving the more vulnerable ships away
from their protectors and ripping into them with
a precise wave of cannon fire. Even the powerful
Ganj-i-Sawai was brutalised in the attack and Every
quickly took the fleet and plundered it for all it was
A depiction of Every and his worth. Some historians estimate the treasure on the
ship attacking a treasure ship Ganj alone to have been in the region of £200,000
of the Grand Mughals fleet
to £600,000. © Alamy
11 Dec 1978
The Lufthansa heist

The heist that inspired Scorsese’s Goodfellas

With a total haul of around $6,000,000, from a contact within the airport itself,
the Lufthansa Heist of 1978 was, in its was enough for Burke to approach the
time, the largest and most notorious theft don of the Lucchese family, who in turn
ever on US soil. It started with a tip; a provided the cash and contacts needed
simple, crazy idea to hit an air haul to pull off the job. In the early hours
of foreign currency, and it led to of 11 December 1978, a black van
one man killing ten of his associates backed into the loading area of the
just to keep the cash out of the airport. Masked and brandishing
authorities’ hands. ESTIMATED TO pistols, a large group of robbers
It all started when Jimmy BE $5 MILLION entered a high-security depot
IN CASH AND
Burke, an associate of the $875,000 IN with a one-of-a-kind key
Lucchese crime family, JEWELLERY provided by their airport
learned of a shipment of contact. Afterward, the staff
untraceable US currency. at the depot remarked how
According to his sources, a the robbers knew every procedure,
consignment of cash exchanged by every secret alarm and every room of
US servicemen and tourists in West the site – they even knew the names of
Germany was flown by the German each member of staff. In the space of 64
airline Lufthansa into JFK Airport every minutes, the criminals pulled away from Vincent Asaro was charged by the FBI for his
connection with the 1978 Lufthansa heist
month. The information, which came the depot with 40 packages full of cash.

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