Gold heist in Gifu! (Video)

I would have thought that the gold’s weight would have been a fairly good security system. It should be hard to make a speedy get away with 100kg of gold.

Yeah, the weight would only have been a deterrent if there were any kind of human security around at all…(the hapless museum worked obviously didn’t count as ‘security’).

Put some handles on it and I’d deadlift it out to the car easily enough, but it’s still not conceivable that there was no better security than one museum worker standing there.

My god, it’s even slacker than Reuters gives the impression:
http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/00/sya/20070319/mng_____sya_____007.shtml
According to this, the female worker (age 59) was on the first floor and went up the second as she heard a noise. This was at 12:45 PM, ie in broad daylight. Here’s the security details: “観光シーズン中は、手を差し込んで触れる透明な半球状のプラスチックケースに入っているが、冬季は扉が開いたままの金庫で展示していた。二、三階の展示スペースに防犯カメラはあるが、警備員は配置していない。” (“During tourist season [ie probably not now], the gold was displayed in a transparent hemispherical case which allowed people to put their hands through and touch it, but in winter was displayed in a vault with the door left open. There were security cameras on the second and third floors, but no guards were posted.”)

A damn easy way to be rid of an entirely useless 200,000,000 yen lump of gold and collect its equivalent in insurance payouts, perhaps…..