(glass shatters)
- This guy is stealing my package from a car,
and this guy took my package off a porch,
but what they don't realize
is this is the final glitter bomb, Glitter Bomb 5.0.
And for the final year, when you lift the lid,
the glitter is delivered by drones.
(drones whirring)
(drones clattering)
Five years ago, when these two stole a $6 package
from my porch, little did they know that singular act
on an otherwise unremarkable lovely spring morning
would set in motion a series of events
that would unleash buckets of glitter in the homes
of would-be porch pirates nationwide
and eventually lead to the takedown
of a $60 million international crime ring.
So today, not only will I show you what happens
when you combine autonomous drones and glitter,
and then what happens when you get into a chess match
with a bunch of car thieves, but I'll end the whole series
with an update on what happened
to those massive scam call centers we infiltrated
and exposed in India.
Now, if you're new here, the 10-second recap
is that after that package was stolen from my house,
the police wouldn't do anything about it
even when presented with the evidence.
So at that point, I knew that to avenge the theft,
I was gonna have to use my engineering skills
to go full "Home Alone."
- Ow!
- Yes!
- [Mark] And seeing how this is the final
glitter bomb video, I think it's worth a brief recap
of how the box design has naturally evolved over the years.
Out of the gate in year one, it was a simple concept,
where when you took the lid off the bait package,
this cup would spin,
unleashing a pound of the world's finest glitter,
and then hidden inside to record all the action,
we had four phones, plus a canister fart spray,
in an effort to encourage the thief
to get rid of the box, so we could go and retrieve it.
And that went pretty well.
So we spent the entire next year working on version 2.0,
where we doubled the amount of fart spray
and drastically improved the formula,
which ended up nearly killing Macaulay Culkin.
(Macaulay coughs)
- Oh, I still smell it.
(Macaulay coughs)
God.
- [Mark] We also switched to biodegradable glitter
and added a meaningless countdown-
- [Computer] Five, four.
- [Mark] And some fake police chatter-
- [Police] Seems the package may be in motion as well.
just to make things more exciting.
Then, for year three,
we doubled the fart spray canisters once again
to a total of four and added a handle
the thief would be tempted to grab,
which we covered in that super sticky mousetrap goop.
And for the previous two years,
the package thieves would often shove the lid back on
right away, which covered up the cameras.
So we added these posts near the top of the box
that would passively pop out,
which made it impossible to put the lid back on
once you'd removed it.
- [Computer] 14, 13.
- [Mark] We also added flashing police lights
and made a doormat
that had these conductive charging contacts
so we could keep the whole box fully charged
until the moment it was stolen.
Then for Glitter Bomb 4.0, as soon as you touched the lid,
it would get shot straight up into the air,
complements of these two boxing gloves
attached to pneumatic pistons.
We also added an actual car horn
(horn beeping) to make things more exciting
and redesigned the cup
so that by using the centrifugal force
generated from spinning,
you could passively get three chances to shoot some glitter
instead of losing it all in one single shot.
Then for the porch, we built a fake planter box
that would slide over and hide the package at night
so the homeowners wouldn't have to worry
about bringing it in.
And we were guaranteed to get it stolen in the day
when the light was better.
And all of that brings us to year five, Glitter Bomb 5.0.
I knew this was gonna be the last year,
so I decided to go for broke
and attempt the biggest redesign to date.
And this is a terrible idea, by the way.
In engineering, if something is working well enough,
conventional wisdom states
you should basically change nothing
but pretend like you changed a lot.
So for starters, last year, we had four vials of fart spray
for a total of 20 milliliters,
and for this year, because we're not messing around,
we have a one-liter tank.
And for those of you keeping track at home,
that's 50 times more fart spray.
To pull this off, instead of using a rotating-cam system
like before, now, we have a peristaltic pump
that continually forces the fart spray through two nozzles
and basically never lets up.
And because I can't exactly explain
how much worse something smells over video-
- Aww!
- [Mark] ...this is a sensor that measures the number
of particulates in the air, and the more particulates,
the more intense the smell.
And if we place last year's glitter bomb in the chamber,
it measures 250 particulates of nastiness per liter,
whereas this year's tops out at 750,
which means it's not only gonna last a lot longer,
but it's gonna be three times more intense.
Now, to house that massive reservoir of fart spray,
we had to expand the footprint for the box,
which means we add room underneath it
to house the brains of the system
on an upgraded custom printed circuit board
that communicates directly with all four phones.
And quick shout-out to my friends at T-Mobile,
'cause last year, we found they had the best coverage
where we were placing the boxes.
So this year, they hooked us up,
and let us put them all on their network.
Then for the glitter delivery mechanism,
the idea was to hack some of these mini drones
and rewrite their code to make them autonomous,
where they could fly themselves
without needing to be in communication with the computer.
So the idea for this year
is the thief would bring the bait package
back to their house, then remove the lid,
which would lower these two doors,
allowing the drones to wake up and take off.
And so instead of a single concentrated area of glitter
from a spinning cup like before,
the drones would just meander all around the house,
leaving millions of tiny shimmering reminders
not to take stuff that isn't yours.
And as part of our code rewrite,
if the proximity sensors register someone approaching,
they'll just casually fly themselves
to a different part of the room.
And all of that perfectly sets up the checkmate,
because while they're fully distracted
dealing with the drones,
the box starts to drastically change the room's air quality
at a rate of one liter per minute.
This design was ambitious
and arguably at a much higher risk of failure in the field,
but then we took it one step further
by designing a sister box
that could be used for a car break-in.
Since I live near San Francisco,
which is the smash-and-grab capital of the world,
two years ago, we went right into the lion's den,
which placed the box in a somewhat alarming predicament.
- [Thief] I could bang it. I could bang...
(alarm blaring)
(color lines beeping)
- [Mark] And while tempting, it seemed irresponsible
to have a couple drones flying around
inside a moving vehicle,
so this box could be triggered remotely via text message
and can activate the fart spray without needing to be open.
And then right before the nozzles kick in,
this 360 cam pops up to cover all the action.
And if at any point the camera senses
it's being tampered with,
just like one of those fancy hood ornaments,
it will retract itself back inside the box.
So after about 10 months of designing, building,
and testing, we set them out on a bunch of porches
and in a bunch of cars, and we waited.
And we didn't have to wait long.
(glass smashes)
(upbeat music)
- [Thief] Brand new in the box, bro.
- [Man] It's your guys's now!
- [Thief] Huh?
Check it out. I guess it's mine now.
- [Man] Yeah. (laughs)
- [Thief] Guess this (beep) is nice, homie!
- [Man] I forgot I was gonna ask him what happened,
but they just pulled out a gun?
- [Thief] Yeah, they said I pulled out a...
(box beeping)
(alarm blaring)
I don't think we can...
(machine whirs)
- [Computer] 15, 14, 13.
Three, two, one.
(alarm blaring)
Activation complete.
Recovery sequence initiated.
(police radio chattering)
- [Mark] And I really appreciate the hustle from these guys,
especially because when all is said and done,
they just decided to make this their neighbor's problem.
(color lines beep)
When we retrieve this next box, as you can see,
it was completely destroyed, and the phones were gone.
But thanks to those blazing T-Mobile network speeds,
we're able to recover the following footage from the cloud.
- [Woman] But our neighbor here...
Put it down a little.
Our neighbor here, he has a camera.
That's what I was gonna give you for Christmas last year.
(woman laughs) - Yeah.
No way. - What?
The new one, huh?
- [Man] Yeah, it's the new version.
- [Woman] Can we just leave it in the car for now?
- [Man] Yeah, we'll leave it in the car for now.
- [Woman] 'Cause we're not trying to-
- [Man] Bring attention to us.
- [Woman] I'm not saying that I did anything wrong.
- [Mark] So they eventually took this home
and were apparently pretty upfront with their kids
about where they got it from.
(kid gasps)
- [Kid] It's a VR. That's really what it is.
It has the handles and everything.
- [Kid] So they go for like 400 bucks?
- [Kid] Keep it. Keep it. They can get another one.
- [Kid] Yeah, you can make money, or you can give it back.
- [Kid] I kinda wanna open it.
Do you wanna open it?
- [Kid] Let's open it.
(alarm blaring) - Oh my God. It smells!
- [Kid] They were (beeps) lying!
- [Kid] Mom!
Mom, I think it is a bomb.
- [Both] Mom!
- [Woman] Get it out of there!
(camera clattering)
(color lines beep)
- [Mark] And in addition to porches,
just like in years past,
we placed some boxes by group mailboxes, so that way,
we can track the number of good Samaritans
that will call the number on the box from year to year.
- [Kid] It's for me?
- [Woman] It's for you.
- [Kid] Yay!
- [Woman] Yah, yah. (sighs)
(alarm blaring)
(machine whirring)
- [Computer] 15, 14, 13, 12...
(color lines beep)
(alarm blaring)
- Mom! I think it's a scam!
It's a (beep) scam. I knew it.
- Scary. - It's a (beep) scam!
(beep) you, YouTubers.
(machine whirring)
- [Woman] What do you think this is?
- [Kid] Yeah, (beep) this is a YouTuber.
They do this to scam people.
- [Computer] 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10,
nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Activation complete. Recovery sequence initiated.
(color lines beep)
- [Mark] Switching gears for a minute,
for the past two years,
I've experimented with placing a glitter bomb
in a parked car up in San Francisco
because it's considered the car-breaking capital
of the world, and things are so bad now,
it's not even just the parked cars
that are getting targeted.
They average 73 car break-ins per day, and at this point,
people have resorted to just leaving their doors wide open,
hoping the thieves can verify for themselves
that there's no valuables inside,
so they won't smash the glass just to check.
And for the past two years,
while we did get the glitter bombs stolen,
all we could really do
was just play an alarm sound so they throw them out-
- [Thief] Hell naw!
- ...'cause they never actually open them in the car.
And after doing some research,
it turns out there's a reason for that.
It's actually a fairly organized system
called a fencing operation,
where the cards will go out in groups,
and then immediately afterwards,
they'll bring it to a middleman who will pay cash
in exchange for the most valuable things they steal
like laptops.
But the gut punch is that important documents
like a passport or pictures or plane tickets
don't really hold value for the thieves,
so they just get thrown in the trash.
And now that we knew they didn't plan on opening the box
in the car, we designed the nozzles to poke through the lid,
so that even if they just threw it in the back seat,
once the proximity sensor on the bottom registered
it was stolen and the box texted us,
we could track them using the embedded GPS,
and a simple text message back would raise the camera
and activate the fart spray for two minutes straight.
So we headed up to the city
and placed our modified car box nice and visible in the car
and commenced our stakeout.
And you can see this first black car rolls up,
and this guy gets out and spots it but doesn't take it.
And then a little while later, this beige car rolls up,
and he sees it, too, and the same thing happens.
Then not too long after that, this white car rolls up,
and once again, they clearly see the box,
but they just leave it sitting right there
without even breaking a window.
And after observing all this, our best guess was
that it was the size of the box that was spooking them.
So we removed the heart
and all the other critical components from the large box
and placed them into a smaller box.
And while it occupied a smaller footprint,
it maintained all the same functionality of the bigger box,
while still looking like an enticing item to steal.
So the next day, we put it back out on the street,
but this time, someone came by
and actually smashed the window,
only we didn't see them leave with the box.
And our working assumption
was that he just wasn't able to open the door to take it,
but when we checked the footage, it told a different story.
Not only did he once again intentionally
not steal a smaller box,
but the real reason for breaking the small window
was to pull the backseat down and check the trunk,
which means if you take nothing else away from this video,
you should know putting your luggage in the trunk
is not a solution to keep it from getting stolen.
The reason they break these little windows so often
but it seems like nothing is missing
is because they're pulling down the seat
to quickly check what's hidden from view in the trunk.
And at this point, it was pretty disappointing,
but we realized they'd adapted.
Word must have gotten out from stealing our glitter bombs
in previous years that a juicy-looking box like this
sitting out in plain sight is nothing but trouble.
(alarm blaring)
And as an engineer, I never claim to have all the answers,
but I know the process to get to all the answers,
and that's trying and failing
and tweaking over and over again.
So while we did have a couple useless car boxes
and a busted window, we also knew their MO,
which meant we now had a plan,
and that plan was to shrink the box down even further
to fit it into a backpack.
That did mean we had to make some compromises
like losing the camera and reducing the fart spray reservoir
down to this improvised pouch.
But to make sure that it was still adequate,
we sprayed it on this chair,
and not only did it still last for two minutes,
but we left that chair outside to air out
and confirmed a few days later
it was still in real bad shape.
So with renewed hopes, we once again hit the street,
this time with two backpacks in two separate cars
parked in two different spots, and as fate would have it,
they both got hit within about five minutes of each other.
(glass shatters)
Once again, you can see they're checking the trunk.
And there's two interesting things to point out here.
Number one, if you look at the jacket on this guy
and compare it to the jacket from the previous break-in,
you can see it's the same guy,
suggesting they probably work the same routes,
which means they probably recognize regularly parked cars
versus a new visiting car.
So I felt especially honored
that a trained professional like this fell for our backpack,
even if it was possibly in a desperate attempt
just to find a belt.
And number two, you can see just how quickly it all happens,
even breaking the glass.
The thing with tempered glass is it's really hard to break
until it isn't.
And while this guy looks like Iron Man here,
just casually pushing his hand through,
what you don't see on his palm embedded in the glove
is a sharp ceramic chunk or a spike of hardened steel,
sort of like this.
And as you can see here, if you have the right tool
to concentrate the force on a really small point,
(glass shatters)
it safely crumbles to nothing almost instantly.
But more importantly than all that,
now we had both boxes registering they'd been stolen,
while we tracked them both on their embedded GPS,
watching as they made their way around,
stopping periodically to hit more cars.
- [Thief] We could go around,
or you could get in this car right now.
- [Thief] All y'all seeing that Nissan?
- [Thief] Go go go. Go go go go.
- [Thief] I thought that was gonna be the one, no catch.
They had two big (beep) suitcases,
and they let me steal their stuff.
- [Mark] And after they each drove around
for about 10 minutes, we sent a command
to commence Operation Air Freshener.
(spray whirring)
And unfortunately, because we had to condense everything
down so small sort of last minute,
the mic was in the same small box as the pump.
So we don't know exactly what was said,
but what we do know is that about 90 seconds
after the pump started,
they tossed the whole bag from the car.
And the best part about this is that outside the backpack,
the pump and spray are actually really quiet,
so the only possible way
they could have located the source
is if they sniffed their way to the answer.
And as our test showed,
they'll continue sniffing it for weeks.
(color lines beeping)
And in the second car, it was a nearly identical outcome.
- [Thief] This is a weird (beeps) backpack.
I'm not doing it if it's a purse 'cause God put that to me.
- [Mark] Only in this case,
because the pump ran a little quieter at one point,
we got to hear them close in on the source.
- [Thief] What the (beeps) is that?
- What is that? - I dunno.
- What is that? Look at it.
I dunno what to do.
- [Mark] And about 20 seconds later, their backpack
(camera clatters)
met the exact same fate as the first.
(color lines beep)
All right, so to wrap up, I'll just say that year over year,
we've seen a decreasing number of package steals
and a steadily increasing number of Good Samaritans.
And maybe people are becoming more considerate
or perhaps everyone just knows
what a glitter bomb looks like now,
but I love the idea that at some point,
someone's package wasn't stolen
because a would-be porch pirate remembered these videos
and had second thoughts.
One thing that's not conjecture, however,
is after so many of you actively shared our video
where we infiltrated and glitter-bombed
those three terrible scam call centers in India,
it got the attention
of some international law enforcement agencies,
and from the press and because of your efforts,
those three centers that had each been in operation
for more than a decade, doing upwards of $20 million a year,
scamming the most vulnerable amongst us
of their life savings, all got shut down,
with their top officials arrested.
So thanks to all of you for watching and caring,
and of course, thanks to these two, because without them,
none of this would've ever happened.
Being an engineer is the best,
because you can make whatever you can dream up.
But what's the first step?
How do you get started down that path?
Well, I'll tell you exactly how.
It's called the CrunchLabs Build Box,
and it gets delivered right to your doorstep every month,
and then we build it together,
while I teach you all the juicy physics that make it work.
It's basically like unlocking your own personal
Mark Rober video every month
where you learn a new engineering principle
that will have you not just building like an engineer,
but more importantly, thinking like an engineer.
So you're developing resiliency and problem-solving skills.
- Yes!
- [Mark] On top of that, the toys themselves are really fun,
like this super dope art machine
where we learn about linkages,
or in the spirit of the glitter bomb, this trip wire,
which you can use to prank your family,
or I suppose, in some cases, yourself.
So if you wanna embark on this yearlong journey with me,
while there's still time to get it before Christmas,
just head on over to crunchlabs.com
or use the link in the video description,
where we're giving it away two months free
as a holiday special.
(logo chimes)