GoodFellas – The 10 largest cash heists in US history, ranked by the total amount stolen.

The GoodFellas Behind the Lufthansa Heist

• Source: Britannica / Today in History

• The Mastermind: Jimmy “The Gent” Burke (Lucchese Crime Family)

• The Score: $5.875 Million ($5M cash, $875k jewelry) — Roughly $28 million in today’s value.

The Play-by-Play

At 3:12 a.m. on December 11, 1978, a black Ford Econoline van backed into the ramp door of the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK. The crew, armed with pistols and inside info provided by airport worker Louis Werner, moved with surgical precision.

• The Vault Trick: They forced a manager to navigate the complex double-door vault system, which required specific timing to avoid silent alarms.

• The Efficiency: In just 64 minutes, they loaded forty 15-pound cartons of untraceable bills and jewels. Not a single shot was fired.

The “Goodfellas” Reality Check

While the movie portrays the heist as a moment of triumph followed by chaos, the reality was much darker:

1. The “Stacks” Blunder: Parnell “Stacks” Edwards was supposed to take the getaway van to a New Jersey junkyard. Instead, he got high, went to his girlfriend’s place, and left the van in a no-parking zone in Brooklyn. The FBI found it within two days.

2. The Killing Spree: Paranoid that the heat from the van would lead to him, Jimmy Burke ordered the execution of nearly everyone involved. Over the next six months, bodies were found in garbage trucks, meat lockers, and shallow graves.

3. The Lone Conviction: Out of the entire crew, only Louis Werner (the inside man) was ever convicted for the robbery itself. The money was never recovered, and most of it likely ended up kicked up to the Lucchese and Bonanno crime families.

“To be a wise guy was to own the world.” — Henry Hill, who later became the FBI’s star witness against the crew.

1. Thieves steal $30M in Easter Sunday Heist (2024)

• Location: Los Angeles, California

• The Take: ~$30 million

• Summary: In what is now the largest cash robbery in U.S. history, burglars breached a GardaWorld money storage facility in Sylmar. The crew entered through the roof and cracked a massive vault without triggering any alarms. The theft wasn’t discovered until employees opened the vault the next morning.

2. Historical Heists – The Dunbar Armoured Robbery (1997)

• Location: Los Angeles, California

• The Take: $18.9 million

• Summary: Masterminded by an insider, regional safety inspector Allen Pace III, six men ambushed guards during their lunch breaks. They used a U-Haul to transport the cash, which consisted mostly of non-sequential $20 bills. Pace was eventually caught after a co-conspirator used an original currency strap to pay a friend.

3. March 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery (1997)

• Location: Jacksonville, Florida

• The Take: $18.8 million

• Summary: Driven by employee Philip Noel Johnson, this heist involved overpowering two co-workers and hiding the cash in a North Carolina storage shed. Johnson fled to Mexico but was caught five months later while attempting to re-enter the U.S. through Texas.

4. October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery (The Hillbilly Heist) (1997)

• Location: Charlotte, North Carolina

• The Take: $17.3 million

• Summary: Vault supervisor David Ghantt loaded over 17 million dollars into a van and fled to Mexico. The gang was famously caught after his accomplices began spending the money extravagantly—including buying a luxury mansion and a velvet Elvis painting—drawing immediate FBI attention.

5. Inside Job: Arrests made in Sentry heist (1982)

• Location: Bronx, New York

• The Take: $11 million

• Summary: On the night of December 12, a guard named Cristos Potamitis claimed he was overpowered by masked men. In reality, it was a staged “inside job.” Most of the money was never recovered, though Potamitis was eventually arrested while vacationing in Puerto Rico.

6. United California Bank burglary (1972)

• Location: Laguna Niguel, California

• The Take: ~$9 million

• Summary: A professional crew from Ohio used dynamite to blast through the roof of the bank’s vault. They spent hours looting safe deposit boxes. They were only caught because they performed a similar heist in Ohio and left unwashed dishes at their California “clean house,” which provided fingerprints to the FBI.

7. Wells Fargo “Águila Blanca” (1983)

• Location: West Hartford, Connecticut

• The Take: $7 million

• Summary: Carried out by the Puerto Rican independence group Los Macheteros, the robbery was aided by an insider employee, Victor Manuel Gerena. He tied up his co-workers and injected them with a sedative before loading the cash into a car. Much of the money was allegedly used to fund the group’s political activities.

8. Lufthansa Cargo Heist (1978)

• Location: JFK Airport, New York

• The Take: $5.8 million ($5M in cash, $875k in jewelry)

• Summary: Famous as the inspiration for the film Goodfellas, this mob-led heist was orchestrated by Jimmy Burke of the Lucchese crime family. Nearly every participant was murdered by Burke afterward to keep the loot and silence potential witnesses.

9. October 21, 1974 — Purolator Armored Express Heist (1974)

• Location: Chicago, Illinois

• The Take: $4.3 million

• Summary: Three men, including a Purolator night watchman, stole over 700 pounds of cash from a vault. They attempted to hide the money in the Grand Cayman Islands, but the bank there refused to accept it because they didn’t have enough staff to count such a massive amount of loose bills.

10. How Bandits Got Away With the 1972 Heist of the Pierre Hotel (1972)

• Location: Manhattan, New York

• The Take: $3 million

• Summary: In what Guinness World Records calls the largest unsolved hotel robbery, eight gunmen took over the Pierre Hotel at 3:00 a.m. on New Year’s weekend. They took 19 hostages and methodically looted safe deposit boxes. While some suspects were identified, most of the $3 million ($27M today) in jewels and cash was never found.