Today's video is about a young man with a promising future falling to the dark side,
carrying out a meticulously researched bank robbery, and getting away with it. That is
until a bizarre circumstance of the robbery's planning proved to be his undoing. His downfall
was a complete random event. Like you know those strange encounters you have sometimes
that just wouldn't have happened if you'd left the house a minute earlier or later?
One time I was gifted a bottle of wine on my way to work by a man with a sack full of
alchoholic drinks hidden in the bushes. That was at 6AM. Another time, one of my friends
got on an empty bus and at a following stop a blind man got on and sat on his lap. It
was one of those types of totally random unpredictable events that messed up this man's bank heist.
Anthony Curcio was born in Monroe, Washington in 1980. In high-school, his identity came
to revolve around sports, and he became captain of both the football and the basketball team.
He even dated a cheerleader. Sounds like he modelled his life after the antagonist from
an American high school movie. After high-school, he kept dating Emily, who
he would eventualy marry. Cute childhood sweetheart thing there. He also fullfilled his childhood
dream of playing college football at the University of Idaho, where his father had played.
So really, everything was working out for this chap. Until it all fell apart. One day
in practice, Curcio tore his ACL, threatening to end his career in football before it had
really began. To deal with the injury, Curcio was prescribed the painkiller Vicodin.
Vicodin is already well known for its addictive qualities and Curcio was suffering a sort
of crisis of faith, given his entire life was based around sports, which he could potentially
never play at the same level again. It seemed his whole future had been taken away from
him, and he fell into painkiller addiction. On the outside, Curcio still appeared to have
an ideal life. He graduated college, had two daughters with his wife Emily, and worked
in real estate. In reality, Curcio was living a double life. As his addiction continued,
he began forging prescriptions and using fake identities. On one occassion he even took
of his shoes to kick the shit out of an oak table, intentionally injuring himself so he
could get more pain pills. As his condition worsened, Curcio was spending
obscene amounts of money on his addictions. This put strain on his finances, which lead
him to numerous get-rich-quick schemes, like forging baseball cards to sell on eBay. When
the economy crashed in 2008, Curcio's legitimate income was severely hit, and, not having the
wisdom to sell Pokemon cards, which is where the real money is, his financial situation
was looking very grim. And that's when he hatched his master plan.
Anthony Curcio had just walked out of Bank of America when he thought; "hey, you know
who has a lot of money? Bank of America!" In his desperate situation, robbing the place
seemed like a good idea to him. For months, Curcio cased out the bank. He
disguised himself as a landscaper which allowed him to loiter around the premises and get
close to the armored cars and guards without arousing suspicion. The drugs allowed him
to become engrossed in the plan and focus on all the little details. He drew diagrams,
mapped out plans, took note of the schedules for the armored cars transporting the money
and timed out each step of his imagined robbery. He knew for his getaway he couldn't simply
hop straight in a car and piss off. He knew there were plenty of cameras and there would
likely be witnesses too - that'd make tracking a car very straightforward. He would have
to first disappear out of sight, before he could take off with the money.
Inspecting a nearby creek, Curcio reckoned he could sprint down here after the robbery,
and escape the scene with a jetski. In practice, he found the water was too shallow to support
a jetski, so he dedicated 6 to 8 hours every day digging out the creek.
Of course that was absolute madness. He wasn't going to terraform an escape route by hand
- jayzuz you'd struggle to do such a thing in minecraft - and he soon realised it. Instead
he decided, if he couldn't modify the creek to suit the vehicle, he'd modify the vehicle
to suit the creek, and he got rid of the jetski in favour of an inner tube. Yeah one of them
donut boat yokes. The first idea is starting to seem a lot brighter in comparison but this
was actually the way to go. Once Curcio had escaped downstream, he could
have an associate pick him up in a getaway car. All he needed now was a diversion. Something
that would allow him to slip away to the creek without being pursued. And this is where things
start to get bizarre. Curcio put an ad up on Craiglist looking for
a few dozen laborers to do some clean up work in the area. All you had to do to earn some
decent cash was show up to the bank's carpark wearing jeans, a safety vest and a painter's
mask, and some supervisors would come and organise the crowd into groups for a day of
work. Nothing suspect about that, except the fact it was advertised on craigslist, that's
a godless place.
And so, on the 30 September, 2008, 15-20 workers showed up to the Monroe Bank of America car
park, and so did an armored car transporting money, and so did Anthony Curcio, dressed
identically to the craigslist workers. Curcio was blending in with the crowd when
he spotted the gaurd carrying sacks of money into the bank, right on time. Curcio sprinted
to the guard and sprayed him with a heavy dose of pepper spray. The gaurd was armed,
but was incapacitated by the pepper spray, and Curcio snatched two bags and bolted.
For a brief moment, Curcio got to relive his football glory days, as he sprinted towards
the creek with bags underarm. It was as if all the years of training had not gone to
waste as he had once thought, he could finally put his uncanny speed to good use again. He
almost got hit by a truck. Then he jumped into the creek, hopped in the donut and the
whole football anaology kinda falls apart, there.
Curcio ripped off his disguise during his escape, and made a clean getaway. When the
police showed up to the scene of the crime, there was a crowd of people all matching the
robber's description.
Curcio had made off with around 400,000 dollars. Some would have to be paid to associates who
helped him get away and launder the money. But the rest? Well, it's a trip to los vegas
baby. Booze, gambling and drugs, hell yeah brother. He also cheated on his wife, aw jeez,
and attended a Britney Spears concert. The bank robbery had fueled Anthony Curcio's demons,
and now they were out of control.
A month of investigation was proving fruitless for the police. There just wasn't a lot to
go on. Well, except for one little thing. You see, during the time Curcio had been scouting
out the bank and timing his heist, he had been noticed by a homeless man. The homeless
man had seen Curcio retrieve his disguise by a dumpster near the bank, and found it
odd enough to take down the registration of the car he was driving. He passed this information
onto police. First of all, that is a strangely attentive
homeless person. Why would he give a shit about a man hiding disguises? Even if he figured
it was part of a planned robbery, why would he care? Surely he has more important things
to be worrying about. Secondly, why would he rat him out to the
police like that, what the fuck. You'd think being a homeless person he'd have some affinity
for a man taking on the establishment and coming out on top. What did the fucking bank
ever do for him?
The authorities were able to trace the vehicle's registration to find out it belonged to Curcio.
The FBI began surveilling Curcio, and in doing so, collected a bottle he had thrown in the
trash at a gas station. They retrieved his DNA from it and compared it to the DNA samples
found on his discarded disguise. Bingo. To make matters worse for Curcio, one of his
associates turned informant and gave him up. When Curcio was arrested, he was found with
17,000 dollars in cash. Anthony Curcio was sentenced to six years in prison.
While in prison, Curcio got clean and sobered up. He missed his wife and kids and regretted
the decisions he made that took him away from them. He decided to turn his life around,
and get back on the straight and narrow. He began writing and illustrating children's
books - one example was aimed at kids of incarcerated parents and amusingly titled "My Daddy's in
Jail". He sure is, Timmy, he sure is. On his release, Curcio was a reformed man.
He began publishing his books and became a bestseller. He used his experiences of drug
addiction and crime to warn young people of the dangers of such in talks all around the
country. But most heartwarming of all, he rekindled
his relationship with his wife Emily. Despite his all his wrongdoing, she was able to forgive
him. Very loyal woman, going to a Britney Spears show without me would have been the
final straw for me. Emily said she was, in a strange way, glad Anthony wound up in prison.
He was no longer the man she knew and the life he was leading was inevitably going to
lead to prison, or death. She was thankful it was the former, and that the man she loved
had finally returned.
So there you go. It convolutedly all worked out in the end, and all it took was a well-planned
bank heist being foiled by an unusually civic-minded hobo - by the way, your medal's in the post,
buddy. So it just goes to show, love always finds a way.... Or something. I don't know.
I'm not good at gleaming messages from these things. I think this is a pretty cool redemption
arc for the high school movie antagonist. And I kinda wanna rob a bank now.