- All those movies.
Ocean's 11, that's a good example.
You recruit these guys 'cause this guy was this.
It's a cool concept but no,
it really wouldn't ever happen that way.
(upbeat R&B music)
- [Narrator] For Anthony Curcio,
he pulled off the perfect crime, almost.
- I planned out an armored car robbery where I dressed in
blue shirt, blue hat, safety vest, and a wig basically
to look like a city worker and before the crime happened,
I posted an ad on Craigslist and
I don't know how many people showed up to the bank,
but I requested that they wear a blue shirt, blue hat,
safety vest so everyone looked uniform.
On Tuesday at 11 o'clock on September 30th '08,
the Brinks armored car pulled in
and there was 10, 15 people in one corner
and then another six or seven people in the other corner.
Then there was one person that was on his own.
As soon as they wheeled in the money,
I came in from behind and pepper sprayed
the armored car driver, took the money,
ran across the highway and stripped off all of my clothes,
threw it on the ground.
I'm known for escaping on an inner-tube because it was
separating, there was a little stream that
went underneath the freeway.
I could go underneath the stream on the inner-tube,
come out the other side and even though
distance wise they're very close,
in order for a vehicle to get from here to there,
it would probably be about 15, 20 minutes.
When the police showed up at the scene,
here there was 16, 17 of these people
all dressed in a blue shirt, blue hat,
safety vest, and matching the description.
The purpose of that was just to create
enough confusion just to buy me a little bit of time.
I did actually get away.
I was actually caught before the crime even happened.
About a week prior to the crime,
I wanted to know how long it would take me
to get from the bank down to the river
on the inner-tube across to the other side of this freeway.
During that time run, it was a hot day for Seattle
so I took off the blue shirt, blue hat,
and I was wearing different clothes underneath
and I put these items behind a dumpster by a grocery store.
A homeless man, he started saying, I know what that is.
What's the wig for?
I get my items, I go back to the car,
and I drove off and I sat in the car
and I just remember thinking geez.
In the middle of the console,
I had magnetic dealer plates that were just bogus
and I remember thinking, I'm not doing anything illegal.
I don't need to put these on.
They just sat there and I remember
looking at them after I saw that homeless man.
I'm like, aw man.
Why didn't I put these things on?
In 2008 when the market crashed,
I had been buying and flipping properties
and it was like you couldn't lose.
It didn't matter what I buy,
by the time the whole deal closed,
maybe I made $50,000 just because
the equity was rising that fast.
Then all of a sudden I have all these properties
even though I had interested buyers in them,
I couldn't sell them.
No one could get a loan anymore.
I kept thinking, I'm gonna get out of this.
Eventually someone can get a loan,
but then they were requiring it went from 0% down,
they'll give anybody a loan.
Overnight it went to basically 25%.
Who the hell's got 25% down?
My point is I was unable to sell
any of the properties that I owned at the time.
Pretty soon, my savings was totally depleted.
My wife and I were having another baby at the time
and being the man I guess,
in my head it's like all my value came from providing.
The week later,
the robbery happens and the difference here was that
normally when people are watching about a bank robbery,
most of the time people are like, scumbag this and that,
but that was a different time.
It was literally a day after the $700 bail out
of the banking system by the government.
The banking system that got this money interest free,
it's not like they bailed out all of the
people that were losing their homes
so people were pissed, really pissed off.
That changed the public perspective of all of this
and it created this thing when they
couldn't catch whoever this guy that did this was
and people were rooting for whoever it was to get away.
(upbeat R&B music)
- [Man] What do you got?
- The holy grail.
The union depository and they say it cannot be hit.
- But I gotta make a big take.
- Jim's it is then.
- It's gonna be kind of hard to do
a mission without the cheat codes though.
The thing is, it makes the game funner.
It's kind of like real life.
When you get the cheat codes,
I can get this faster, I can get that,
I have all this money.
Then it totally deflates the game funness though.
- [Man] Okay, let's get this done.
- Press to enter.
Glasses, hidden camera.
It's like you can record whatever
you're looking at but guess what, they're recording you too.
You don't think they're gonna look back?
(man laughs)
Thank you sir, thank you.
- [Man] Thank you.
- [Man] This shot is useless.
- Shut up man.
- [Man] What we got?
A security camera and the alarm system.
- Which I'm all on.
- [Man] Good work.
Now speak to the assistant and see
if there's anything else we need to know.
- Exactly.
That's a good idea.
Just lie enough so she remembers me.
Look at me, remember this face.
- [Man] I'm gonna take a look around, think about it,
come back to you baby.
- I'm gonna go look around, think about it,
then I'll come back baby.
She'll never remember that.
- [Man] I'm on the roof!
- [Man] Use the glasses to get me a shot of
Angelico's roof unit.
It'll be right above the store.
- Wait, I'm on the building of?
Get (bleep) out of here.
Why did I go into the store?
The dude already knew the (bleep) was in there.
Why did I go in there?
The reason for committing this crime is because
the dude owes the money to the guy.
$2.5 million, and he has no insurance.
They're all talking tough here but you know what,
as soon as the feds come knocking,
throwing 20 years at you, guess what?
All your homeboys will sell you out in a heartbeat.
- [Man] There's two ways I see of doing this.
We go in smart or we go in loud and dumb.
- The more stuff you got, the more complicated it is
like in my crime.
Any time that you involve too many things,
it's a lot of things that could go wrong
and nothing ever goes right,
but because I would like to try to do it smart.
- [Man] Select personnel with that in mind.
As ever, the better they are, the bigger the cut.
- It's ridiculous picking somebody
you don't know to do something.
The chances of one of these guys getting caught,
is this dude a drunk, is he gonna go?
They're talking about driving and composure.
The stuff they should be asking about is,
how solid has this dude been?
Has he ever done time before?
Because it will increase my odds of getting away,
I'll go with Christian Feltz,
but that dude is a snitch.
You ever seen five pesticide people come in?
And these guys have never met before.
This is so unrealistic.
All those movies.
Ocean's 11, that's a good example.
You recruit these guys 'cause this guy was this.
It's a cool concept, but no.
I don't think it's ever happened that way.
It comes down to loyalty really and trust.
At the higher levels of that type of stuff
from my experience,
we're actually the people that were
more trustworthy than a lower level person.
The guys that are in it for the long haul I guess,
if you're screwing people over all the time,
they're not gonna stay in business.
It's no different than any other business.
Yeah, you can get a quick lick on somebody,
but then in the long run,
you're gonna end up losing money
and the people that are willing to
screw people over for nothing are the
ones that are gonna stay as a low-level whatever.
If I miss though, it just creates a smoke signal for cops.
- Think about it like this.
I told them to fix that (bleep) AC!
- Good.
Pull out the guns before you go in there.
- [Man] Let's do this!
We gotta walk!
Come on!
(alarm rings)
- Five-0.
- For the last time, move it!
- Man, get the (bleep) up out my face.
It's go time!
- How much does it say I made?
$5 mil?
That's another thing,
anything you try to steal like an item.
It someone steals a painting or whatever,
that's another unrealistic thing.
Say he owes dude 2.5, what is gonna sell this for?
I stole $4.95 mil worth of jewelry
that I'll be able to sell for about $30,000.
Uh oh, lost my crew.
If someone's willing to get into a tunnel,
they most likely would've already gotten away.
We're all good here.
Really, we should just be dropping off
all of this (bleep) somewhere.
Get rid of these freaking outfits, man.
We're free.
They send 50 cops cars but no choppers.
- [Man] Lester's waiting for us at the lock-up.
- Let's go see Lester.
They already have a buyer lined up or what?
Where are we meeting?
- Get out of here.
Keep our heads down.
- This warehouse.
It's like you got the money to
buy a warehouse that's right in the city?
- I want you to stop by the house a little later on.
We'll celebrate, alright?
We're back in action.
- In reality, one of those guys that you did it with
would've been an undercover cop.
Heist passed, yay!
(slow piano music)
Because of the homeless man and
what he saw that day during the trial run,
I was eventually sentenced to six years in federal prison
for armored car robbery.
It was considered a nonviolent type of robbery
only because I did not use an actual deadly weapon.
I signed for five,
but the judge ended up giving me an extra year
because of those people that I brought to
the scene of the crime dressed the way I was.
I basically put them in danger, you know?
I spent seven months in solitary confinement
and I still don't really know the reason why.
I went insane, I really did.
I was fighting and I had this rage in me.
I don't know.
I finally just took accountability.
Hey Anthony, you only have you to blame.
You're the one that got you here.
I just kept thinking about my kids
and how they're growing up without a dad.
That was one thing that I just could not accept.
I started drawing pictures, just little pictures or whatever
and if they liked Elmo, I draw pictures of Elmo
saying happy birthday or whatever it was
and then these pictures got more and more in depth
and the way that I looked at it was
they may be able to look back 10 years from now
and say you know what, my dad made a mistake,
but one thing I do know is my dad loves me
because even though those drawings suck,
my drawings weren't very good,
there was no doubt that I put a lot of effort into it.
That's how everything kind of started and
when I was released after the seven months,
I was transferred to a prison in Florida
and when I came out of there, I was never the same.
I didn't talk to anybody.
All my time was spent on basically
making these books for my kids.
Then it was just like, it brought me at peace.
Finally I was doing something that wasn't for me.
I fell in love with it.
I came home and I tried to get a lot of these works
I guess published.
I was laughed at, pretty much made a fool of.
I'd stay up until three in the morning
trying to learn these programs on
how to get my paper illustrations into
factory illustrations.
It took five years but it was some luck.
I all of a sudden hit a best seller.
My kids were in elementary school and
parents of their friends,
there was no hiding from who I was or what I did.
The number one instincts we all have
is to protect our young so of course
they're gonna be cautious around me.
I don't blame them for that.
Just knowing that, it didn't make it any easier
because as much as I had changed, no one knows that.
All they know is my past.
When playing this game,
of course I look back and I'm like
I used to be involved with this kind of stuff
and guys in organized crime.
When I think back to that,
it doesn't seem real, but it was.
Really, I am just blessed to have been
given a second chance, to be able to see my kids grow up,
eventually someday see them get married
and all of these first things that I'm still a part of
and I value my time.
I value my time with them so much because I lost that time.
(mellow guitar music)