The Great Nanaimo Bank Robbery

Back in 2007 the Nanaimo Star ran a look-back piece on the city’s ‘Costco Caper’ robbery of Mar. 7, 1996.

This was a rather ingeniously planned heist of Loomis Armoured guards as they made a delivery of cash to Costco’s ATM machine. The lone robber escaped with seven cassettes of currency; the amount stolen has never been released to the public.

As of 2007 the file remained open, according to RCMP but now, 24 years later, it seems highly unlikely that this ‘cold case’ will be solved.

Not so Nanaimo’s great bank robbery of December 1924, one of the province’s all-time classic heists. In this remarkable case the bandits, all Americans and professional criminals, were soon identified and arrests began to follow.

But, as you’ll see next week, this audacious hold-up with its connections to notorious gangsters of the Roaring ‘20s remains one of the more outstanding cases in our criminal annals.

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