Too many onions: the Lufthansa heist and the grim reality of the Italian mob
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
[On October 8, 1976, a shipment of $22,000 in foreign currencies arrived at Kennedy Airport on Lufthansa flight 493. The shipment, locked in a blue “val bag,” was received by Louis Werner, a Lufthansa employee whose job was to meet all flights carrying valuables and secure these shipments in the cargo building. Werner met flight 493 and obtained the flight manifest, which indicated the existence of a valuable shipment. The val bag was accidentally retrieved by an employee of Serv-Air, which Lufthansa had chosen to unload planes. The employee, after realizing his mistake, returned the val bag to a shipping container at 11:05 PM. Werner reportedly passed the unattended containers at 11:15 PM, before the midnight shift of freight handlers arrived to bring them inside. By the time staff completed an inventory on flight 493 the next morning, the $22,000 in currency had disappeared. Werner was later indicted in the Eastern District of New York, but the focus was not for his theft of $22,000 in foreign currencies in 1976. Werner pulled off a much bigger score. Though the Lufthansa story begins with a lone insider quietly stealing $22,000, it would swell into the largest cash robbery of its era – and, once the Lucchese family took hold of it, a crime whose aftermath left one of the bloodiest trails of bodies in modern American criminal history.]