Bumbling Bigg City burglars got $12K

The two burglars had door keys, pass codes and combinations for the safes at a Colorado Springs indoor amusement center.

But when it came to actually opening a combination lock, they did what most of us do when we’re stumped — they called Google to the rescue.

The burglary at Bigg City, formerly Mr. Bigg’s Family Fun Center, turned into a comedy of errors early June 10. The burglars tried to disable a security camera by repeatedly spraying it with WD-40 — it only cleaned the lens — and spent an hour and 15 minutes trying to open three safes, apparently unaware that some types require the dial to be turned two or three times.

They finally did a Google search for “how to open a safe” and “how to crack a safe” on a computer in the next room.

“They’re not professional safe people,” said Colorado Springs police detective Chuck Ackerman. “No, they’re not.”

On the other hand, the Google query apparently worked: The burglars haven’t been caught, and they did get about $12,000.

Police say evidence points to an inside job. It started about 2 a.m. when two white males clad in black with their faces covered entered the empty business with keys. They went straight to where the safes are kept and had the correct codes for a security keypad.

But if they had done their homework on Bigg City, they hadn’t studied other principles of burglary. The WD-40 dripped off the camera within 30 seconds, Ackerman said. They did it eight or nine more times.

“The first few times it actually cleaned the lens and made it a better picture,” Ackerman said.

They also sprayed a fire alarm, apparently thinking it was a camera.

The real camera recorded the next 75 minutes of frustration as the burglars tried in vain to open the safes. The video shows them bouncing from safe to safe, becoming increasingly agitated and at one point seeming ready to give up.

“It looks like they were going,” Ackerman said. “They got to the point where they said, ‘The hell with this. We’ll talk to somebody and come back and try again.’”

Then one left the room, and a check of an office computer showed the Google search. They easily opened the safes, escaping with cash, plus a laptop computer and a PlayStation, Ackerman said.

Investigators have interviewed managers and employees and are now trying to talk to former employees, Ackerman said. No suspects have been identified, and no employees were working at the time.

“If they didn’t work there, they knew somebody who did,” Ackerman said.

Managers at Bigg City have given six employees polygraph tests and hired a private investigator. They have identified areas where pass code and safe combinations were not kept as securely as they should have been, said Chief Operating Officer Matt Van Auken.

Although he acknowledged it affects the morale of about 100 employees to know a coworker may have been involved, they’re trying to laugh.

“The two most important questions when you get robbed are, ‘Did anybody get hurt and did anybody get hurt,’” Van Auken said. “If the answer is ‘no,’ you tend to quickly find humor in whatever you can.”

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call police at 444-7000 or Crime Stoppers at 634-STOP.

SAFECRACKING ON THE WEB

A few of the thousands of Google results for “how to open a safe” and “how to crack a safe”:

- A book on Amazon.com titled “Techniques of Safecracking”

- A guide to opening a safe-deposit box

- “How safecracking works” at www.howstuffworks.com

- A news story about Paris Hilton wanting to open a safe house for female former jail inmates

- A guide on how to open safe files after downloading from a Web site

- A message board posting at www.locksmiths101.com indicating the experts won’t share information on how to crack a safe

- Many, many step-by-step guides to cracking safes