CASE STUDY

The Great Brink's Robbery (1950): The True Story of the "Crime of the Century"

By Domonique Luchin · Published October 30, 2026 · 18 min read

Watch: 5 Days From Getting Away With It: The Brink's Robbery (1950) #shorts

▶ Subscribe on YouTube

Shortly after seven o'clock on the evening of January 17, 1950, five employees of Brink's, Incorporated, were finishing their nightly count on the second floor of the company's building at 165 Prince Street in Boston's North End. Sacks of cash, checks, and money orders collected from customers that day were going back into the vault. Then a group of men in Navy-type peacoats, chauffeur's caps, and Halloween masks walked in through doors that should have been locked. They didn't break anything. They had keys. About twenty minutes later they were gone with $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities. At the time it was the largest robbery in the history of the United States. The newspapers called it "the crime of the century." The FBI says it was billed as "the perfect crime." For almost six years, it looked like it was.

This is the true story of the Great Brink's Robbery: who planned it, how eleven men pulled it off without firing a shot, why the case stayed unsolved through a federal grand jury and hundreds of dead ends, and how a double-cross, a hit man with a machine gun, and a ticking statute of limitations finally broke it open, just five days before the gang would have been home free.

On The Sealed Docket, host Domonique Luchin works from the record: real names, real documents, real news coverage. The Brink's job sits in the show's archive next to the bank-robbing legend of John Dillinger, the 1971 skyjacking of D.B. Cooper, and the 1974 SLA bank robbery in the Patty Hearst case. If you want the short version first, watch the minisode on the Brink's Robbery episode page. The long version follows, built mainly on the FBI's own published history of the case.

Brink's, Boston, and a Gang That Had Known Each Other for Years

The target: an armored-car company's counting room

Brink's moved cash for banks and businesses. Every evening its Boston employees checked and stored the money collected from customers that day, so the vault on the second floor of the Prince Street building held huge sums overnight. The company had moved there from Federal Street in December 1948. The new building sat in a crowded tenement neighborhood next to a playground, with rooftops on Prince Street and Snow Hill Street that looked right into its windows.

The men behind it

According to the FBI, the robbery was "basically the 'brain child'" of Anthony Pino, a Boston burglar born in Italy in 1907 whom the underworld regarded as an excellent "case man." It was said that the casing of the Brink's offices bore his "trademark." The FBI identified eleven men in all:

Most had long records. Baker had been paroled from the Norfolk, Massachusetts, Prison Colony on August 22, 1949, only five months before the robbery, and Pino was there to drive him back to Boston. Geagan was on parole for armed robbery. Faherty and Richardson had pulled an armed robbery together in 1934. These were professionals who had known each other for years, and that turned out to be both the gang's strength and its weakness.

Planning the Brink's Job: Rooftops, Binoculars, and Copied Keys

A plan that started in 1947

O'Keefe later told the FBI that the gang first thought about robbing Brink's in 1947, when the company was still on Federal Street. That plan, to grab a truck carrying payrolls, never came together. When Brink's moved to 165 Prince Street at the end of 1948, the gang started over.

Watching from the roofs

Gang members climbed onto roofs on Prince and Snow Hill Streets and watched the Brink's offices through binoculars. They got so good at it, the FBI says, that they could tell what was going on inside just by watching which lights were on, and they knew how many people were on duty at each hour.

Five locks, five keys

The most famous part of the preparation was the locks. Over a period of months, members of the gang slipped into the building after hours on several occasions and removed the lock cylinders from five doors, including the street door on Prince Street. Each cylinder was taken on a separate night. While some men stayed inside to watch for trouble, others rushed the cylinder to a locksmith, had a key cut, and put the lock back before anyone noticed. For the outside door, where a missing lock might catch a passerby's eye, they installed a substitute cylinder until the original was returned. FBI agents later found a key-shop owner who remembered making keys for Pino on four or five evenings in the fall of 1949, after keeping his shop open late at Pino's request. He said he knew nothing about the robbery.

Stealing the alarm plans, then giving them back

A few months before the robbery, O'Keefe and Gusciora broke into the offices of the protective alarm company that serviced Brink's and took a copy of the building's alarm plans. The plans turned out to be no help, so the pair broke in again and returned them. Nobody noticed either time.

A brand-new truck and a dozen rehearsals

The gang decided it needed a truck big enough to carry the loot, and that it had to be new, since a used truck might break down or have distinguishing marks. On November 3, 1949, a Ford dealer near Fenway Park reported a green 1949 Ford stake-body truck stolen. Through November and December the gang practiced the approach and the getaway route. In the month before the robbery they made about half a dozen runs at Brink's and called off every one because conditions weren't right. The last false start was on January 16, 1950, the night before the robbery.

The Night of January 17, 1950

The ride to Prince Street

Around 7:00 p.m., the gang met in Roxbury and climbed into the back of the stolen Ford truck. Banfield drove. In the back, Pino handed out peacoats and chauffeur's caps, along with a pistol and a Halloween mask for each man. Everyone had gloves. O'Keefe wore crepe-soled shoes, and the others wore rubbers so their footsteps wouldn't make noise. Costa was already on a tenement roof on Prince Street with a flashlight, having arrived in a Ford sedan the gang had stolen from behind Symphony Hall two days earlier.

The truck passed the Brink's building, and the men saw that the lights were out on the Prince Street side. They stopped at the end of the playground next door. Everyone except Pino and Banfield got out and waited for Costa's signal.

Inside the vault area

When the signal came, seven armed men walked to the Prince Street door, opened it with their copied key, pulled on their masks, and used the rest of the keys to reach the second floor. The five Brink's employees were forced face down at gunpoint, their hands tied behind their backs and their mouths taped. Then the robbers started filling canvas bags.

Partway through, a buzzer sounded. The robbers pulled the tape off one employee's mouth and learned that the buzzer meant someone wanted to come into the vault area. It was the attendant from the Brink's garage next door. Two of the gang headed for the door to grab him, but he simply walked away, never knowing a robbery was going on. The FBI says the scare made the gang work faster.

They had one more problem. Before leaving, they tried to open a metal box holding the payroll of the General Electric Company. They'd brought no tools and couldn't get it open. According to Wikipedia's account, drawing on contemporary Boston Globe coverage, the gang also left behind roughly a million dollars in coins and silver they weren't equipped to carry. One employee's glasses got scooped into a loot bag by accident. The gang found them that night and destroyed them.

The FBI puts the robbery between about 7:10 and 7:27 p.m. The men loaded the bags into the truck parked near the door and drove off. Costa left in the stolen sedan. Behind them, the employees worked themselves free and called the Boston police.

The haul

The take was $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities, a total of more than $2.7 million. Most of the cash was in small bills, which made serial numbers almost useless for tracing it. Because the loot included cash, checks, postal notes, and U.S. money orders belonging to the Federal Reserve Bank and the Veterans Administration's Boston office, the FBI had jurisdiction. Special agents joined Boston police at the scene within minutes, and Director J. Edgar Hoover took over supervision of the investigation.

Splitting the money

Banfield drove the truck to the home of Maffie's parents in Roxbury, where the gang unloaded and counted the money. Geagan, who was on parole and expected to be a top suspect, jumped out early to start building an alibi. McGinnis, who'd been at his liquor store during the robbery, showed up about an hour and a half later. Baker carried off roughly $380,000 in a coal hamper for safekeeping. The next night, O'Keefe and Gusciora got $100,000 each, which went into the trunk of O'Keefe's car.

Six Years of Dead Ends

"An inside job"?

Boston police picked up well-known local criminals within hours. Police Superintendent Edward W. Fallon told reporters, as quoted by Smithsonian Magazine, "There is no doubt it was an inside job. It was probably planned for weeks—even with blueprints and rehearsals." He was right about the planning and wrong about the insider. No Brink's employee was involved. Brink's offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Almost no evidence

The robbers left behind just three things: the rope, the adhesive tape, and a chauffeur's cap. None of them led anywhere. Tips poured in from around the country, including one from a Californian who suggested the money was hidden in the Atlantic Ocean. The FBI checked out a man of modest means in Bayonne, New Jersey, who was suddenly spending big in nightclubs (he wasn't involved), revisited old Prohibition gangs and members of Detroit's "Purple Gang," and canvassed race tracks and gambling halls for unusual money. One Massachusetts racketeer told agents, "If I knew who pulled the job, I wouldn't be talking to you now because I'd be too busy trying to figure a way to lay my hands on some of the loot."

Two real breaks: a gun and a truck

On February 4, 1950, boys playing on a sand bar in the Mystic River in Somerville found two revolvers. One ended up in a trash barrel and went to the city dump. The other was recovered by a Somerville police officer on February 5 and identified as one of the four guns the robbers took from the Brink's guards.

Then, on March 4, 1950, pieces of a green 1949 Ford stake-body truck turned up at a dump in Stoughton, Massachusetts, cut apart with an acetylene torch and smashed with a sledgehammer, stuffed into fiber bags that had once held South American beef bones. It was the truck stolen near Fenway Park. The bags led nowhere, but the location mattered: O'Keefe and Gusciora's families lived near Stoughton. O'Keefe would later say he was furious that the truck had been dumped so close to home.

Alibis that all said 7:00 p.m.

The FBI noticed a pattern in the suspects' stories. Pino said he'd walked to McGinnis's liquor store around 7:00 p.m. and chatted with McGinnis and a Boston police officer, an alibi the FBI called "almost too good." O'Keefe said he left his hotel at about 7:00 p.m. Baker said he went out at 7:00 for a two-hour walk and spoke to no one. Costa said he went back to work at about 7:00. The robbery happened between about 7:10 and 7:27. To the FBI, a gang this well drilled would have met at a set time and covered themselves right up to the last minute.

A grand jury that couldn't indict

A federal grand jury in Boston heard the case from November 25, 1952, to January 9, 1953. In a report released January 16, 1953, it said it couldn't positively identify the robbers because they had been disguised, there were no eyewitnesses to the crime itself, and certain witnesses refused to testify. No indictments were returned. The FBI was convinced it knew who the robbers were. It just couldn't prove it.

The Double-Cross: How "Specs" O'Keefe Turned

Jail in Pennsylvania, and a missing share

On June 12, 1950, O'Keefe and Gusciora were arrested in Towanda, Pennsylvania, carrying guns and clothing stolen in burglaries at Kane and Coudersport. O'Keefe got three years in the Bradford County jail and a $3,000 fine on a firearms charge. Gusciora got five to 20 years in the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary. From jail, both kept pressing the Boston gang for money to fight their cases.

O'Keefe's share was the sore point. After the robbery, he told the FBI, McGinnis returned his money in a suitcase that held $98,000, $2,000 short. O'Keefe kept $5,000 and gave the rest to Maffie for safekeeping. He said he never saw it again. Maffie claimed part was stolen and the rest went to O'Keefe's legal bills. Other gang members said Maffie had blown it.

Kidnapping, a shootout, and "Trigger" Burke

Out on bond in 1954, O'Keefe went back to Boston looking for money. On May 18, 1954, according to underworld reports the FBI cited, he and a racketeer associate held Costa in a hotel room for ransom. The gang paid a small part of what he demanded, and Costa was released on May 20.

Then someone tried to kill O'Keefe. On June 5, 1954, a car pulled up beside his in Dorchester and shots pierced his windshield. On June 14, he and Baker traded shots in Dorchester, and nobody was hit. On June 16, in a third attack in Dorchester, more than 30 shots were fired, and O'Keefe was wounded in the wrist and chest but escaped. The next day Boston police arrested Elmer "Trigger" Burke, a professional killer, with a machine gun later identified as the weapon used to shoot O'Keefe. Burke escaped from the Suffolk County jail that August, was arrested by FBI agents in South Carolina on August 27, 1955, and was later convicted and executed for a murder in New York. O'Keefe's racketeer partner disappeared on August 3, 1954, and was never found.

"All right, what do you want to know?"

By late 1955, O'Keefe was serving 27 months on a Massachusetts probation violation in the Hampden County jail in Springfield, where he'd been placed for his own protection. He was bitter about the money, about the "dead wood" in the gang who hadn't gone into the building, and about the attempts on his life. FBI agents kept visiting. On December 27 and 28, 1955, he began to warm up.

At 4:20 p.m. on January 6, 1956, he made his decision. According to the FBI, he told two agents: "All right, what do you want to know?" Over the following days he walked them through the whole robbery, and agents worked into the night checking every detail they could. As the FBI puts it, the gang had agreed beforehand that anyone who "muffed" would be "taken care of." O'Keefe decided most of them had muffed, and talking to the FBI was his way of taking care of them all.

Five Days From Getting Away With It: The 1956 Arrests

Massachusetts had a six-year statute of limitations on the robbery, which meant the clock would run out on January 17, 1956. On January 11, the U.S. Attorney in Boston authorized FBI complaints against all eleven men. On January 12, 1956, five days before the deadline, FBI agents arrested Baker, Costa, Geagan, Maffie, McGinnis, and Pino. Bail for each was more than $100,000. On January 13, a Suffolk County grand jury indicted the eleven, with O'Keefe as the main witness.

The other five were already accounted for or on the run. O'Keefe and Gusciora were in custody on other charges, and Banfield had died of natural causes in January 1955. Faherty and Richardson fled and were added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Agents caught them on May 16, 1956, in a Dorchester apartment, as the two men rushed for three loaded revolvers they'd left on a bathroom chair. O'Keefe pleaded guilty to the armed robbery of Brink's on January 18, 1956.

The Money in the Wall

Even with the gang in custody, more than $2.7 million was still missing, and O'Keefe didn't know where the others had hidden their shares. The first real money surfaced by accident. On June 3, 1956, an amusement-arcade operator in Baltimore told a police officer that a man had just passed him a counterfeit $10 bill. The bill was real, just musty. The man, a small-time Boston criminal, had more than $1,000 in his pocket and $3,780 in his hotel room. The FBI identified $4,635 of it as Brink's loot.

He told agents that a man he knew only as "Fat John" had pulled a panel off an office wall on Tremont Street in Boston and taken out packages of bills wrapped in plastic and newspaper. "This is good money," Fat John said, according to the FBI, "but you can't pass it around here in Boston." On June 4, agents searched the office, pulled off the wall partition, and found a picnic cooler with more than $57,700 inside, of which $51,906 was identified as Brink's money. The bills were moldy and falling apart. The FBI Laboratory concluded they'd been wet and had probably been buried in a canvas container in sand and ashes before someone moved them into the wall. Fat John and two others pleaded guilty to state charges. None of the money was traced to a specific gang member's hiding place.

Even after that, more than $1,150,000 in Brink's cash remained unaccounted for. In total, less than $60,000 of the loot was ever recovered.

The 1956 Brink's Trial and Sentences

A death before trial

Stanley Gusciora, transferred to Massachusetts to stand trial, fell ill in July 1956. On July 9, during a visit from a clergyman, he got up from his bed, collapsed, and hit his head. He died two hours later. The cause was a brain tumor and acute cerebral edema. That left eight defendants.

The trial

The trial opened August 6, 1956, before Judge Felix Forte in the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston. Picking a jury took weeks. Nearly 1,200 prospective jurors were eliminated in the first two weeks as the defense used its 262 peremptory challenges, and about 500 more were considered before a 14-member jury was seated. More than 100 witnesses testified in September. The most important was O'Keefe, who laid out each defendant's role.

The jury went out at 10:25 p.m. on October 5, 1956, and came back three and a half hours later. All eight were guilty.

Life sentences

On October 9, 1956, Judge Forte sentenced Pino, Costa, Maffie, Geagan, Faherty, Richardson, and Baker to life for robbery, plus additional terms. McGinnis, who hadn't been at the scene, got a life sentence on each of eight indictments as an accessory before the fact. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected their appeals on July 1, 1959, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on November 16, 1959. The FBI's history ends with a line that reads like a headline: "In the end, the 'perfect crime' had a perfect ending—for everyone but the robbers."

What Happened to the Brink's Robbers?

According to Wikipedia, which cites contemporary news reports and obituaries, every convicted man except McGinnis and Baker, who both died behind bars, was paroled by 1971. Baker died in prison in 1961, and McGinnis on October 5, 1966. Costa, Geagan, Faherty, and Maffie were paroled in 1969. Pino died in October 1973, Richardson in 1980, and Maffie, the last surviving member of the gang, in September 1988. O'Keefe, who cooperated, received four years, was released in 1960, and died in March 1976. He told his side of the story in The Men Who Robbed Brink's, an "as told to" book with writer Bob Considine published in 1961.

Some of the gang never stopped talking about it. Almost 30 years after the holdup, Smithsonian Magazine reports, Maffie told The Washington Post that the Brink's job was "an adventure" but he wouldn't try it again. Richardson disagreed: "Sure it was worth it. Hey, have you ever had a hundred grand all your own for six years?"

Why the Brink's Robbery Still Matters

The Brink's job became the template for the modern heist story: a crew of specialists, months of surveillance, copied keys, rehearsals, and a clean getaway. It inspired at least four films: Six Bridges to Cross (1955), Blueprint for Robbery (1961), Brinks: The Great Robbery (1976), and William Friedkin's The Brink's Job (1978). Writer Noel Behn interviewed several surviving gang members in 1972 for The Big Stick-Up at Brink's, which Wikipedia calls the most comprehensive record of the robbery. The Prince Street site is now the North Terminal Garage.

The case also shows why "perfect crimes" fall apart. The gang beat the locks, the alarm, the witnesses, the grand jury, and six years of FBI pressure. What they couldn't beat was each other. Eleven people had to keep a secret and trust each other with money, and one shortchanged, shot-at partner sitting in a jail cell was enough to bring it all down, five days before the deadline. It's the same thing that undid Leopold and Loeb's "perfect crime" in 1924: the plan was good, but the people weren't.

Brink's Robbery Timeline

Watch the Brink's Robbery on The Sealed Docket

Domonique Luchin breaks down how close the gang came in "5 Days From Getting Away With It: The Brink's Robbery (1950)" on YouTube, and the minisode audio is on the Brink's Robbery episode page. For another real case where FBI tape and a bank job decided everything, read the true story of Patty Hearst. Then browse the full Sealed Docket case index, every episode, and more about the host. New real-case files drop every week on the @TheSealedDocket YouTube channel.

Related Case Studies from The Sealed Docket

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Great Brink's Robbery?

On the evening of January 17, 1950, masked gunmen robbed the Brink's, Incorporated, building at 165 Prince Street in Boston's North End, taking $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders and other securities. It was the largest robbery in U.S. history at the time and was called "the crime of the century."

How much money was stolen in the Brink's robbery?

More than $2.7 million: $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders and other securities. Less than $60,000 was ever recovered, and the FBI says more than $1,150,000 in cash remained unaccounted for.

Who committed the Brink's robbery?

Eleven Boston criminals: Anthony Pino (the planner), Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe, Stanley Gusciora, Joseph McGinnis, Adolph "Jazz" Maffie, Henry Baker, James Faherty, Michael Geagan, Thomas "Sandy" Richardson, Vincent Costa (the rooftop lookout) and Joseph Banfield (the driver). Seven of them went inside.

How was the Brink's robbery solved?

Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe, jailed on other charges, shortchanged on his share and wounded in a June 1954 attempt on his life by hit man Elmer "Trigger" Burke, agreed to talk to the FBI on January 6, 1956. Six gang members were arrested on January 12, 1956, five days before Massachusetts's six-year statute of limitations ran out.

What happened to the Brink's robbers?

Gusciora and Banfield died before trial. On October 5, 1956, a Boston jury convicted the other eight, and Judge Felix Forte sentenced them to life. O'Keefe pleaded guilty and testified. McGinnis and Baker died in prison; the others were paroled by 1971.

Was the Brink's money ever found?

Only a small part. In June 1956, $4,635 surfaced in Baltimore and $51,906 was found in a picnic cooler hidden behind a wall panel in a Tremont Street office in Boston. The rest of the cash has never been found.

What movies are about the Brink's robbery?

At least four: Six Bridges to Cross (1955), Blueprint for Robbery (1961), Brinks: The Great Robbery (1976) and William Friedkin's The Brink's Job (1978).

Sources

← All articles · Case index · All episodes

Watch every case file on YouTube. New episodes and shorts from The Sealed Docket.

▶ Subscribe on YouTube