There have been many incredible crimes committed over the years, some that even seem impossible to commit. Some of these crimes might not make any sense to us, but I guess they did to the people that committed them or they wouldn't have done the deed. My personal feeling is that some of the greatest crimes ever committed took place, when grave robbers broke into the pyramids and gained access to some of the greatest treasures in the known world.

I just read a report about a roller coaster in Germany. It seems that everything was fine with the coaster the night before, but when the employees came to work the next day something didn't look right. What was different in the park? I know, it was the fact that the roller coaster was gone. As unbelievable as it sounds, thieves had dismantled the coaster and taken it away. I don't know how big it was, but it must have required several large trucks at the minimum, to move it. Just when you think that you have heard everything, a story like this comes along. Where was the coaster going, perhaps to another park in Europe? You would think that it would be easy to spot. Maybe some rich dude was going to put it in his private roller coaster collection?

The San Francisco Police, along with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Department, had a storage depot where they kept things, sometimes these things were very dangerous, more precisely, explosives. Hey they were the police and anything they had in the depot was as safe as in a bank vault, right? Wrong! It seems that a thief went there and helped himself to over 200 pounds of high explosives. To get in they had to jump some fences and cut several locks Where were the guards? It seems that the police thought that the location of the depot was so secret that they didn't have to worry.

A former felon was hired by the Olympic Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This felon had an extensive career in crime. As part of his duties as a janitor, he had exclusive access to where the medals were on display. What were the people who hired this guy thinking? Surprise, surprise, medals began to disappear. He wasn't caught right away because when he removed a medal, he would replace it with a medal from somewhere else that was of lesser value. The thief turned out to be a heroin addict and was caught after a collector sent a photo of a medal he had purchased to the Hall of Fame. They identified it immediately and he returned it. Why wasn't a background check preformed before hiring this felon for such a sensitive position?

There is a painter in London that is so talented that he can paint using the techniques of several different artists and most experts will think that these are originals. He is so good in fact, that between the years 1986 and 1994 he managed to knock out over 200 paintings that were, in fact, sold as originals. His talents allowed him to create cubist paintings, impressionist paintings and surrealist paintings. Two of the most famous auction houses in England were fooled by the works and auctioned them off for hundreds of thousands of pounds. Scotland Yard has an antiques squad and they finally solved the case in 1995 and tracked down the artist. It is said that today there are at least 120 of these counterfeit paintings in circulation.

The biggest art heist in U.S. history took place in 1990. Two men disguised as police were let into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the middle of the night. They wasted no time in tying up the security guards and helping themselves to some of the most valuable paintings in the world. They stole 13 paintings, including three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Govaert Flinck and Manet painting, a bronze Chinese beaker, five sketches by Degas and a bronze eagle from the top of a Napoleonic flag. It was estimated that the value of the paintings was $200 - $300 million at the time. Here is the weird part, the thieves were never heard from again and none of the stolen items were ever found. Police speculate that the stolen art was sold as copies because it would have been too hard to get rid of originals.

Since we are on the topic of big art thefts, the biggest has to be the theft of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. It is hard to believe, but on August 21, 1911, the great work of art was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris, France. It seems almost impossible to imagine doesn't it? What makes it more unbelievable is the fact the thieves stole it from the Louvre. It was actually taken off the wall and many workers saw it missing but assumed that the museum was taking photographs of it as was the custom with paintings, from time to time. The police had to search the entire building which is 49 acres in size. It took over a week and I am surprised that they could thoroughly search it in that time. Picasso was questioned because he had purchased artwork that turned out to be stolen from the Louvre the week before. I am not saying that he knew this. The police wanted to talk to him because they suspected the person that stole those statues that were sold to Picasso might have stolen Leonardo's great work. It turned out that the Louvre had hired four men to put it's great paintings under glass. One of those men was Vincenzo Perugia and he stole the painting by staying in the museum after it was closed. He took the painting out of it's frame and when he encountered a locked door, he just unscrewed the door knob and opened it, leaving the museum. He was caught 27 months later trying to sell the painting for $100,000.

The greatest bank robbery, if figured in today's money values, was the Northampton Heist in 1876 of 1.6 million dollars. In today's money this would have been about 27 million dollars. One robber was Robert C. Scott from Illinois who had a criminal record in that state. He befriended Billy Dunlop a cell mate. They joined up with Billy Connors the best know criminal of the bunch who hailed from New York. It is believed that they were responsible for the bank robbery in Louisville, Kentucky that netted over $200,000. Their gang got bigger as several new men were added to the crew. One of their number was captured during a failed robbery and the gang paid his trial expenses and helped out his family. Then they scouted for another bank to rob and got away with $820,000.