What you see in movies and what really goes on are two different things. Hollywood gets a few tidbits and turn it into a big to do. Use that A&P for example let's put try it a little different outside of Hollywood. Stores closes 3-4 guys a scanner and a couple of radios if your really just a starter crew maybe you opted for a simple car horn instead of a radio. 1 guy stays outside and monitors the perimeter for random patrolling cops and keeps his ears on the scanner. The other guys bypass the alarm enter the building thru a back door. They find the safe and cut it open with a K-12 saw and a diamond carbide blade. Bring an extra blade & rubber belt it the event either break. That's it no swinging from the ceiling or using Semtex.

A number of posts on this thread touched on it, a lot of the time a ransom payment by insurance companies is paid over to the gang,

It is less money to pay out over all,the owner would have got A LOT MORE of insurance companies.

http://www.ivanfoster.net/pdf/Oct0502.pdf

Northern Bank robbery.

The Northern Bank robbery was a large robbery of cash from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Carried out on 20 December 2004, the gang seized the equivalent of £26.5 million in pounds sterling and small amounts of other currencies, largely euros and US$s. This makes it one of the largest bank robberies in UK history. Although the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the British and Irish governments claimed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was responsible (or had permitted others to undertake the raid), this is denied by the Provisional IRA and the political party Sinn Féin. Although one person has been convicted of money laundering, the investigation is still ongoing, and the case remains unsolved.

Of course. These big insurance outfits have entire divisions dedicated to that kind of thing. And they're often ex-cons themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Bank_of_Ireland_robbery

2009 Bank of Ireland robbery.

The 2009 Bank of Ireland robbery was a large robbery of cash from the College Green cash centre of the Bank of Ireland in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, on 27 February 2009. It was the largest bank robbery in the Republic of Ireland's history. Criminals engaged in the tiger kidnapping of a junior bank employee, 24-year-old Shane Travers, and forced him to remove €7.6 million (US$9 million)[1] in cash from the bank as his girlfriend and two others were held hostage.[2]

Ireland's Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Dermot Ahern, criticised the bank for its failure to follow what he termed "established protocols" during the robbery, as the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána, was not informed of the incident until the money had been removed from the bank. A manhunt is under way for the perpetrators, with seven people being arrested and €1.8 million of the stolen cash located, scattered across Dublin, on 28 February

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas_depot_robbery

Securitas depot robbery.

The Securitas depot robbery was the largest cash robbery in British history. It took place on the evening of 21 February 2006 from 18:30 GMT until the early hours of 22 February 2006. Several men abducted and threatened the family of the manager, tied up fourteen staff members and stole £53,116,760[1][2] in bank notes from a Securitas Cash Management Ltd depot in Vale Road, Tonbridge, Kent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Alfred_Beit,_2nd_Baronet

Art thefts

In 1974, an IRA gang led by Rose Dugdale broke into Russborough House, making off with nineteen paintings, including a Goya, a Vermeer and a Gainsborough.[5] The stolen paintings were notionally valued at more than IR£8 million.[6] In the process, the Beits, though elderly, were pistol-whipped, tied up and pushed down a flight of stone stairs. The IRA intended to hold the paintings to ransom in exchange for the transfer of Dolours Price and Marian Price, IRA members who had been convicted of car-bombings in England. All the stolen paintings were recovered in County Cork a few weeks later.[7]

In 1986, the house was robbed again, this time by the Dublin criminal Martin Cahill (known in the tabloid media as "The General"). Cahill and his gang stole 18 paintings notionally valued at IR£30 million, all but two of which were recovered in police operations in Britain, Belgium and Turkey.[6][7]

In 2001, two more paintings (a Bellotto and a Gainsborough) were stolen in another robbery. Both were recovered in 2002.[7] In 2002, another robbery took five paintings, including two Rubens.[7]

A sad but necessary outcome of the thefts was that the Irish state had to move the unique collection to Dublin, making Russborough less attractive to tourists.

That makes sense, I get it now, thanks ABC.

I found an article on that here. http://blogs.artinfo.com/secrethistoryofart/2012/10/16/rotterdam-art-heist-likely-for-ransom/ Alright guys, when do we knock over this place? http://www.louvre.fr/en Just kidding!

Private detective agency, is the way insurance companies go to gang-people and make an offer, its all about financial figures.

Insurance companies just want the stuff back so they do not pay out more money to the owner.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0714/630690-art-heist/

Four Romanians behind a spectacular art heist in the Netherlands have been ordered to pay over €18m, with the fate of the stolen masterpieces by Picasso, Monet and Gauguin still a mystery.

Seven masterpieces temporarily on display at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam were stolen in 2012 in a raid that lasted only three minutes, in what the Dutch media called "the theft of the century".

A court in the Romanian capital ordered the heist's mastermind Radu Dogaru, his mother Olga, Eugen Darie and Adrian Procop to reimburse the museum's insurance company.

"We will contest the ruling," Catalin Dancu, the Dogarus' lawyer, told AFP.

"In the first place, we don't believe the stolen paintings were the originals and secondly it is up to the museum to pay because it took the stupid risk of displaying the artwork without a proper surveillance system," he added.

Among the paintings estimated to be worth €18.1m were works by Picasso, Gauguin and Monet that belonged to the Triton Foundation.
None of them was equipped with an alarm.

The canvases were transported to Romania hidden in pillowcases and prosecutors think they were destroyed after a failed attempt to sell them.

Olga Dogaru told investigators she burned the paintings in her stove in the sleepy village of Carcaliu in eastern Romania, seeking to destroy evidence against her son.

She later retracted the statement but a separate investigation is under way to determine if the masterpieces did end up in ashes.

Radu Dogaru, 30, who admitted planning the heist, was sentenced to six years in jail in February, and his accomplice Darie to five years and four months in jail.

Procop was handed a jail sentence of four years and eight months while Dogaru's mother jailed for two years.

A question: is my impression correct or not, that the mafia was often involved in heists mostly just at the beginning of the century? It seems to me that robberies and thefts are more typical of relatively small-time criminals, while racketeers and mafiosi prefer semi-legal methods like extortion which can make more money anyway and is harder to prove, since the victim can always say "it was a completely voluntarily contribution to my business partner".
For example, in Sicily the zones with a large number of thefts are considered ones with weak mafia influence, while robberies were often committed by the Stidda but rarely by Cosa Nostra, as far as I know.
Of course, there were exceptions in later years, like the Lufthansa robbery, when it was especially lucrative.

The mob will bankroll certain heists if they are financially worth it. More often, they will (or did) take a tribute or cut for any heists happening in their area.