LSC_144 Safe Cracking Criminals
===

[00:00:00] Charles Current: Welcome to Locksports Cast, your weekly source for Locksports News. This is episode 1 44, recorded May 15th, 2023. I'm your host, Charles Current. And in today's episode, 78% spike in postal robberies, locksmith scams, and how to avoid them. 3D printed three Ks keys, experiment driven Lock picking, safe cracking criminals, videos, products, events, meetups, sales giveaways, and more.

[00:00:40] You can subscribe to the audio version of the show on most podcast apps and at the Lock. Sportscast dot com. You can subscribe to the video version on YouTube, Odyssey Rumble, or Apple Podcast. Links to stories discussed will be in the show notes. You can always find full show notes with all the links at The Lock Sportscast dot com.

[00:00:57] All right. First up, I would like to just clarify things and apologize a little bit when I'm collecting stories for the podcast out of the stuff people sent in to me, I credit. Under the name that it was sent under on most cases, unless I happen to know that there is another name that is preferred, I don't always make the connection between people's different handles on different services.

[00:01:24] So if I use a handle that you don't prefer, please just let me know. I will try to keep track of who uses what on different, uh, social media services, but I can't guarantee I will always use the correct name. With that said onto the first story and the first story of the week is postal carriers are outraged.

[00:01:45] Over a 78% spike in robberies, often at gunpoint, multiple news outlets are reporting that robberies of postal carriers surged 78% to nearly 500 in 2022. According to data provided by the US Postal Inspection service, robberies have more than quadrupled over the last decade. Weapons were used in most of the robberies, and 31 postal carriers were injured during those robberies in the last year.

[00:02:16] Paul Barner, the Union's Executive Vice President, says that the National Association of Letter Carriers is outraged and angered by the assaults, armed robberies, and even murderers that America's letter carriers increasingly face as they deliver mail. These attacks are completely unacceptable. The postal service has said that it is adopting and implementing new measures to address these robberies.

[00:02:38] Many of these criminals are targeting the keys that carriers use to access collection boxes and to deliver mail in apartment buildings. The U S P S Spokesman Dave Part Inheimer said that the services working to enhance collection box key and Lock technology. Implement dual authentication to make keys less attractive for criminals and harden blue collection boxes to prevent tampering while continuing to work closely with law enforcement agencies to bring criminals to Justice Parton.

[00:03:09] Heimer added that the U S P S is in the process of briefing congressional committees on its response to postal crime. This is something that we've covered a few times on this podcast, and I just thought I'd give an update on the statistics. As this article says, postal carriers across the country have been increasingly facing armed robberies to get keys and what they're generally after are checks.

[00:03:35] They are looking for checks that are mailed that they can wash and right for different amounts. It is a big industry making a lot of money, and there's a lot of motivation for these people to do horrible things to postal workers. So if you're a postal carrier, be careful. If you have to pay bills by check, be careful where you deposit those checks and when you deposit them, don't let them sit in any box for any length of time, and preferably, don't drop 'em in a group collection box or your mailbox outside of your house.

[00:04:06] If you happen to still have one of those, it's probably better to drop 'em off at the, the collection at the actual post office, or just don't use checks at all if possible. Next up is a story that was sent in called Five Common Locksmith Scams in How to Avoid Them. The main scams that they mention are the fake locksmith scam.

[00:04:26] Their description says that this particular scam is people who are not necessarily licensed locksmiths advertising on Google and other marketplaces as locksmiths, quoting prices for jobs, showing up and charging a lot more, and quite probably doing a terrible job. The next is the bait and switch scam.

[00:04:48] Debate and switch scam is similar to the fake locksmith scam they say, but it's just basically they give you a quote over the phone. They arrive, they say the job is much more complicated than expected, and you need other services performed and the price is going to go way up. The third is unnecessary repair scam.

[00:05:11] In this one, the locksmith shows up claim that, uh, your locks or something else is damaged, needs to be replaced entirely. May claim that they need to drill locks and then replace them. Pretty common way for these, uh, scam artists to make money, most of these are very similar to each other. The first three are very similar to each other, and frankly, so is the fifth one.

[00:05:33] But, uh, number four, duplicates key scam. This is one where they say that locksmiths will make a key for you as you requested, and also make a copy for themselves for nefarious purposes. Fifth is the emergency lockout scam. Uh, this is very similar to a lot of the others, but, uh, you have your, you're locked outta your vehicle or your home.

[00:05:58] You go looking through Google ads on your phone, trying to find a local locksmith. You get a call center and they send out a locksmith. The locksmith then wants to charge an exorbitant fee to let you back into your house or your vehicle. Well over what the, uh, the normal charge would be. The article also gives some tips on how to avoid scams.

[00:06:22] Uh, I will give my own here that I personally use, but may not work for everybody. Find out who your friends or your employer or somebody else uses as a, as a locksmith. In this case, this applies to locksmiths, auto mechanics, whatever. Find out who they use and who they trust. And for me, for locksmiths, my employer has a contract with local locksmith service for many different things, and I'm lucky in that that particular locksmith also does all the other commercial, residential lockouts, um, all that kind of stuff.

[00:07:00] So I can just use them. If they didn't, then what I would probably do is contact that locksmith service that we deal with at work and ask them for a recommendation of somebody who could do residential or lockout service. A lot of companies, I know when I worked in the automotive industry, you have people that you work with regularly that you trust.

[00:07:24] You develop a list of people that you trust to do things that you don't, you don't wanna send your customers off to. Some scam artist, so you know who does a good job in your area. And when a customer asks for a referral, you are gonna send them to somebody that you know is gonna treat them right, cuz you wanna maintain them as a customer, you wanna make them happy.

[00:07:46] It's all about customer service. And the same thing happens in a lot of different industries. So that's where I would start. We do business with the local locksmith. If they didn't do residential and lockout service, then I would ask them. Who do you know? Who do you trust in this area to do this type of service?

[00:08:05] And you probably wanna figure that out before you run into an emergency. Moving on to community news, we have a Reddit post called First Open of a three K s with a 3D printed key generated from a photo to code the pass. This was posted by Norland and it says, Reinder asked me for a high resolution scan of my three Ks key for a project he was working on.

[00:08:28] He created a tool to produce STL files to code generate keys for the three Ks. After a few iterations back and forth with him on tweaking dimensions to the key. I got one printed today that had to be forced a little bit into the Lock, but opened on the first turn. Quite a few comments under this one too.

[00:08:47] I recommend you go check it out. Pretty interesting idea. We've known for a long time that you can take a photo of a normal pin, Tumblr Lock key, and as Deviant showed us easily determine the code and get one cut to code with it. But here is that same principle being applied to more high security locks, and I love the ingenuity here.

[00:09:13] Anyway, I thought this was an interesting project and thought you should all know about it. We have some updates from Oak City Locksport on Kaon, uh, the Lock Picking Village. They put up a post saying, we wanna thank Kaon for having us run the Lock Picking Village again, and our volunteers for donating their time and talent for free.

[00:09:33] It was amazing to see old friends we hadn't seen in years and meeting new ones. They followed up with a couple more posts. One saying, ordinarily we might cry foul if a staff member wins a contest. But ours were purely games of skill with no prior knowledge of the contests. Our staff member and panel speaker Alex Sun absolutely crushed the competition winning both of our trophy contests.

[00:09:58] He opened six locks in 15 minutes while blindfolded to win the Lock pick wizard. And got through all three nested layers of the Lock picking dead challenge box in one minute and 29 seconds. The image shows a picture of him with his two trophies, which were evidently a Kiara, which he's wearing on his head, and a skull planter with zombie picks.

[00:10:23] If you want, uh, to know more, you can check out the links to the tweets in the show notes. We have. Also one tweet here that I will include in the links that has closeups of both of the trophies. If you wanted to know more about those, DEFCON 2023 has their Lock Pick Village. Call for staff out according to the schedule on the signup form.

[00:10:46] May 15th is the call is the opening of the call for staff. The call for staff closes on June 24th. Volunteer selection, notifications start to go out on July 1st, and roommate assignments will be announced on July 15th. Link to the signup form will be in the show notes for anybody who's interested in, uh, helping out over there.

[00:11:08] Moving back to Reddit, I normally don't cover people selling locks, but this one is a little different. So it was a post locks for sale in the uk and it's by user vi. It says I'm having a bit of a clear out. I'm based in the UK and selling everything on the list, and there's a photo of a list. I also have some generic euros and a few other stuff not on the list.

[00:11:32] Can be flexible on some prices and open to deals. Since this is a pretty big list, I thought it might be mentioning there might still be something available by the time you hear this episode. And the other thing that came out was in the comments, somebody suggested that they also post this post on the R slash Lock lot Reddit, and I thought that was something to bring up for everybody.

[00:11:56] A lot of people know about the r slash Lock picking and the r slash locksmith Reddit's, but the Lock lot Reddit is, uh, specifically for. Posting information about sales of locks, so you might wanna go over and check that out if you are in the market for locks. Right. Next up we have videos. First we have a video by mc Explorers, and this is a tutorial video on picking and gutting and reassembling.

[00:12:25] The Abus Plus the video is heavily captioned and has voiceover. It has broken up into chapters to make it easy to find the section you're looking for. Those chapters are, look at the key. Look inside what the strategy is for a front tension open, what makes those butterfly discs in first and last position?

[00:12:47] Interesting mental model of setting the discs where they need to move. Leveraging the sidebar better to feel those gates using spacers for progressive disking with working example. Practice open with spacers tips, review. Picking gut and putting it back together. So if you're new or you're looking into getting into disc detainer picking, then uh, this might be a good video to check out, give some, uh, good information for you.

[00:13:18] And last week on the product section, I stated that the 13th edition of the ICO keylan directory was finally available, and now it's mostly sold out everywhere. But if you wanna know a little more about it, Jason over at SE Lock and Key made a review video on the directory itself. Um, a lot of good information he puts out there the, uh, the good and the bad.

[00:13:44] So be sure to, uh, check that out while you, uh, wait for them to come back in stock. And also, last week I covered the new multi pick Aris system and Lock New has put out a detailed video on that system. So I recommend you head over and check it out. It is a really cool setup and I can't, honestly, can't remember if I mentioned it last week, but this system was a collaboration between multi pick and Captain Hook number one.

[00:14:11] So good work by Captain Hook number one. It is really cool looking set, so I recommend everybody go check out the video and uh, check out the amazing work they did on developing that set. Moving on to blogs and articles. We have one this week. It is on the tool Black Bag blog. It is experiment driven Lock picking.

[00:14:29] It's not really much of a blog post actually. It's really an embedded video of, uh, Jan, Willem, Marcus talking at Hacker Hotel 2023. And, uh, also the slides in the presentation are embedded in the article. The talk is about uncovering information leakage in mechanical locks and the techniques he uses. It includes specific details on his work on the Boley, Roon and Kromer protector.

[00:14:56] So really interesting stuff. Some really interesting techniques being discussed there. So, uh, definitely worth checking out. I think Moving on to products, first up we have a book recommendation from Good Guy or uh, B and e A to Z. The book is Stealing Manhattan, the Untold Story of America's Billion Dollar Gem Heist Masterminds.

[00:15:21] And is by written by Burr Bear bearer and punch Stan, if I can't pronounce the last name, I apologize. Good guy says I often post a thing or two related to safe cracking Ys and they're true crime sagas. Well, this is out and it's packed full of heists. Get yours today. It does not disappoint Amazon Description says.

[00:15:48] Punch Insists. My father known as Mr. Stan is the greatest gentleman thief who ever lived a true genius punch was raised to be an exceptional diamond thief. He can work magic on a safe that would have sent Mandrake in the magician back to the novelty store and Dr. Strange back to medical school. He and his family risked it all to make the patriarch, Mr.

[00:16:12] Stan proud. Punches pop culture sensibilities. His father's proven skills and his mother's artistic input merged to create cinema style capers, elaborately, planned and executed, including a spectacular 1992 New York mega heist of over 1 billion in diamonds, gold and precious gems, and they got away with it.

[00:16:34] Many of the crew members went on to invest in real estate, helping to build the New York skyline while others moved to Europe and became a. The Pink Panthers, they had one rule. No one gets hurt from daring Heist to the ultimate escape. Discover the true story of punch his extraordinary crew and his high society family.

[00:16:56] Sounds like an interesting book. I'm might actually have to order that one. Anyway, comes recommended by, uh, good guy Beanie A to Z. So that's a good recommendation for me. And while we're on the topic of products, Over at Hazardous Manufacturing, they put out a tweet that says that they've been informed that the multi pick Aris dis detainer tips will fit in the hazardous manufacturing resin bullet.

[00:17:20] They say this gets you into the rear tensioning DD pick game for about $60, and so if you're interested, contact them for more. I will have linked to the specific tweet in the show notes. All right. Moving on to events and meetups. We have a new one here. It's actually taking place tomorrow, but I think this is probably a reoccurring event, and it is pick locks on the east side.

[00:17:47] It takes place May 16th in Redmond, Washington. I will have a link to the meetup page in the show notes in case you are interested. We have the. Military Cyber Professional Association, hammer Con, taking place, May 18th in Laurel, Maryland. Hack for Kids Chicago, June 3rd in Chicago, Illinois. Circle City Con.

[00:18:09] June 23rd in Indianapolis, Indiana. Lock Fest, eu. September 23rd in Carlo. Very Czech Republic. Hack for Kids. Grand Rapids, September 29th, grand Rapids, Michigan. Besides Augusta, October 7th, Augusta, Georgia. Besides Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida, October 14th, M A Expo, October 20th in St. Quentin. Gate Telford, Stratford Shire St.

[00:18:40] Con, October 24th in Provo, Utah. I S S A. Columbus, October 21st in Columbus, Georgia, and Defcon 31, August 10th. Las Vegas, Nevada. And don't forget that they have the call for volunteers for their Lock Picking Village link. In the show notes, be sure to sign up if you are at all interested.

[00:19:08] Moving on to Lock Picker's Night at Belts. This week we have several new belts to announce. First off, we have Virginia Dave earned purple, so congratulations. Probably gonna say this one wrong, but Zeman earned Brown this week, so congratulations to you. We have two new red belts. We have Al Palma and Insanity Zero.

[00:19:31] Insanity Zero, or was announced as a brown belt last week and Red Belt this week. Congratulations to both of you and on the quick advancement for Insanity. And we have a new black belt as well. So congrats to Lock Fumbler, who definitely fumbled through safe manipulation, impressioning, and picking assets 700 s to earn black belt last week.

[00:19:54] And kidding aside, um, very well done. Takes a lot of skill to, uh, get through those. You can't just fumble through that. So I think Lock, fumbler needs to change their name. They obviously are not fumbling their way through this system. For those of you not already familiar with the Lock Pickers United Belt system, you can find links in the show notes that will describe the whole system and let you know how to participate and why it's fun to participate.

[00:20:20] And now it's time to take a quick break. Say thank you to the people that made this particular episode possible. I'll start with financial supporters. We have Panda-Frog, Michael Gilchrist, Starrylock Williams Brain, Dave, to be deciphered Levi's Locksports Journey, paten Tactical through raccoons. And a coach Terrell, AK Anthony.

[00:20:36] Dr. Hog Master Clayton Howard aka. Cool tune MOG Rat. Yo, Mr. Picker. Cranky Lock Picker, barebones, Lock picking Snake Paracentric and John R. Content producers Chief Content producer is Chirael, aka a Anthony. Other content producers are Barebones, Lock picking Chris Capon, good guy, AKA Beanie A to Z, gravity, karma.

[00:20:57] I Fisk. I'm Gumby, Jimmy Longs. Joshua Gonzalez. Lady Locks, Lock Picking Dev Open Lock Pocket Woman Tequila Dave. The Lock Picker, 1969, Antonio Veli, thank you to all of you for your support. And remember, this show is only possible because of your information and support. So if you value this podcast, please support it.

[00:21:16] The number one most important way you can support it is by sending in your news links, events, giveaway information, anything you have that's happening in the Lockport community or happening to the Lockport community. Doesn't matter if you think everybody knows it or it's not that important, send it in anyway.

[00:21:33] I guarantee you everyone does not know it's happening. Uh, a lot of these things stay in little groups. You know, the discord knows this is happening. The Reddit knows this is happening. People on YouTube know that's happening, and they don't necessarily get disseminated through the rest of the group.

[00:21:47] Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But sharing it with me so I can share it with the community will help get the word out. You can send all that information to either podcast, Locksports cast.com. Or any of the other methods listed in the show notes. Tagging me on social media is the easiest way to do it and the most popular way.

[00:22:07] If you don't have information to share, there are other ways you can help. And those include sharing the podcast with your Lock. Picking friends. Spread the word, uh, if you spread the word. More people listen. More people listening means more people send in news. You can also help the algorithm by leaving a comment.

[00:22:24] Thumbs up. Review whatever the platform you listen on allows. Uh, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform. If you wanna help financially, you can. It does not require, but it is always appreciated. And you can do that via PayPal, Patreon, or Subscribe Star. If you support the show with information that I use in an episode or donation, I will give you credit in the show and in the show notes.

[00:22:49] Moving on to criminals. Our first story is Thieves Blow Church Safes with explosives to steal perish silver. They say The thieves are believed to have broken into four churches so far. Items stolen include cell's, candlesticks, crucifixes, and plates locked away in safe storage in one raid, 25 pieces of communion silver, including a 450 year old Elizabethan chais worth 30,000 pounds.

[00:23:19] Were stolen from a safe in vestry of Lady St. Mary's Church in Whereham, Dorsett. They say burglar smashed the lead window to get into the grade one listed 10th century building and used angle grinders to break open heavy oak doors. They then drilled a hole in the door of a three foot tall safe before placing explosives inside to force it open.

[00:23:44] They say similar thefts have taken place in two churches in sofa. And another in Lancashire. Please have confirmed that they're looking into whether the incidents are linked. They're describing the raid on Lady St. Mary's as very professional crime. The gang struck overnight on April 14th through and into the 15th.

[00:24:06] They cut the power in case the church had cameras, and then they broke every locked door inside the church before finding the safe in the storeroom. Hall included a seven inch tall Elizabeth and Cellis, and another one from the time of Charles ii. Several items belonging to neighborhood churches were being stored at Lady St.

[00:24:28] Mary's, as they did not have their own safes. Those were also taken, there are fears that the thiefs might melt down the religious artifacts, destroying them for eternity, they say. The thieves also used lubricant to prevent their fingertips from being discovered. The article states that they tried drilling out the locks of the safe when they didn't have any joy.

[00:24:50] They drilled a hole in the middle of the door and put a small explosive charge below the mechanism. It didn't blow the door off its hinges, it just blew the locking mechanism. They say that the stolen Elizabethan cellis, which is engraved with the church's name is seven and a quarter inches tall and dates to 1574.

[00:25:11] Some details on the other two related crimes here. We have Thieve stole Victorian Cross and lectern from St. Mary's Church in Bural between April 9th and 11th and St. Michael's Church in Wolver Stone had a number of brass items stolen on April 18th. Five candlesticks two vases, two small organ candle bra and candlestick cups in Lancaster.

[00:25:37] Criminals targeted St. Mary's Church in goons. On April 10th and 11th there, they drilled out the locks on two safes and stole cash and several silver items of significant value. So sounds like some, uh, knowledgeable and organized thieves have found an underprotected segment of the market, uh, with a lot of value.

[00:26:03] So hopefully they don't melt them down and they just attempt to sell 'em on the black market. It's, uh, sad to see heirlooms like this being, uh, potentially destroyed. Uh, this next one don't have a lot of details. It was shared by, uh, good guy on Twitter and it's by, and I don't know how to pronounce the name, the restaurant that posted it, but it's, uh, Zien Famous Foods.

[00:26:30] Um, just my best guess. And it was a picture of security camera f footage of somebody in the business and. The comments that they put on it are This fellow broke into our DT BK location at 3:00 AM Spent a few hours drilling the safe, finally opened it, reached in and found no cash left empty handed, and then they add X F F.

[00:26:55] Would like to offer you a free dish for all your wasted effort. Must have broke a sweat. Feels bad, man. Just DM us. They have a good sense of humor. Gotta love it. He walked away empty-handed, so gotta love that too. All right, moving on to sales. We have some new ones, so pay attention. Jimmy longs.com. You can save 20% if you use the code.

[00:27:21] The, Lock, Sportscast, all one word, no spaces. The Lock Sportscast, 20% off@jimmylongs.com. Highly recommend those picks. I use some myself and I do. Really like them, so I can recommend those. Check out jimmy longs.com. Multi pick several discount codes. I believe we have currently four of them. Take your pick, 10% off.

[00:27:45] Just depends on which community member you wanna support the most. So, uh, go to the links in the show notes to find out which codes are available if you're gonna shop at multi pick. If you're looking for the book on antique locks and keys, their history uses and mechanisms. Then you can check out Artisan Ideas and use the code, Jason to save some money on that or any of the other books they have, I think.

[00:28:13] But, uh, Jason recommends you check out their antique Lock and Keys book. So check it out and if you wanna get it, use his code, vent or Zix, uh, has a current offers page for the items that they have on sale, and you can, uh, access that via the link in the show notes. Barebones Lock picking their May code is Prince Returns 10 for 10% off the month of May, and that is good through May 31st.

[00:28:41] Over at 3D Lockport, you can save 10% off if you use the code Ls cast 10. And thank you to Tony Verli for keeping that code active for so long. Over at South Ward, they have both a sale items page. And a cosmetically blemished page, both of which can save you some money. So be sure to check there first. If you are shopping@southward.com, if you're gonna shop over at Law Lock Tools, you can either use the coupon code provided by Review Guru, which you can find a link to in the show notes for 10% off or while supplies last.

[00:29:18] They have their pouches 50% off, and the Ridgeback set 50% off. And codes for both of those are in the link in the show notes. Mako Locks. You can save 15% off. You've used the code by Mako and uk Lock Pickers dot co uk. 10% off with the code gift. Moving on to giveaways. We have a new one this week as well.

[00:29:39] The Lock Picker 1969 Locksport bundle giveaway featuring Sparrows, started on May 10th and runs through June. Third, so be sure to check that one out. Lock Picker 1969 Doing, doing a lot of great things for the community, including these giveaways. So be sure to check out his channel and show him some love and be sure to check out Pocket Woman's Channel and the hashtag Lotto Lock Tuesday playlist she has, which has the Lotto Lock Tuesday videos from all the different creators that are participating.

[00:30:16] And quite often does giveaways over there as part of that. Um, I believe it's every month or something like that. I forgot the details at the moment, but she does regular giveaways for the lot of Lock Tuesdays, so be sure to check those out. Picking time live with Lady Lock and friends. They quite often do giveaways over there, so good one to check out and just join in the fun.

[00:30:42] And of course there is clk supplies with their Lock boss giveaways that they run every week. So be sure to check those out. And that's it for this week. I know it's a shorter episode or expected to be a shorter episode once it's edited up, I guess we'll see. Anyway, uh, didn't have a lot of time this week for prepping and recording, so I apologize for the shorter episode, but I wanted to be sure to get one out.

[00:31:05] Thank you for sending in your news links information, anything I didn't get to this week that I think is important. I will try to slip into another week. And thank you for your continued support. Thank you for listening, and remember to keep it legal.