No one really appreciates the art of theft anymore. When I was a kid I remember the constant romanticizing of it all. The Michael Mann movies like The Thief and Heat, The Driver, even Steven Spielberg got on the train with Catch Me if You Can. Right now the closest thing we have to the appreciation of thieves is the Payday video game series. I never considered it stealing. Stealing is what a common crook does. Theft takes time and patience. You can argue with me over the semantics but being a thief is a whole different league than just take, take, take. There's always a right and wrong way to be a thief.

To give an example: What seems like the best time to, let's say for example's sake, rob a house? During the night when no one can see you? Nope. During the day. But that sounds pretty risky. I mean who's to say somebody's home or not. Well you're the one who needs to figure that out. This is the part where patience comes in. Me, I normally stake out a house for minimum 10 days. It allows for any sort of variance to be accounted for. I clock in whenever someone leaves the house and the second they come in. Being routine is common nature and often times guys like me do see a change in schedules that might throw us off. Maybe it's hot date, a chance meeting, visiting relatives. So in a sense it's still a gamble when anyone's going to be home.

But really that's not the only hard part about all this. Here's a another question to anyone who has been robbed: What exactly gives away the fact that you've been robbed? For me it was having my door wide open, seeing my TV, computer and blu-ray player ripped from the shelves, my drawers ransacked and my closet absolutely cleaned out (lost a fireproof safe with $1,500 and several priceless family heirlooms). Eventually the guys did get caught, thankfully. They were sloppy like most B&E stars usually are and were pulled over a couple towns over in a U-HAUL (stolen mind you) and with the valuables of what seemed like damn near every homeowner within a 20 mile radius.

The funniest thing about me getting robbed is that if they had stolen just my fireproof safe, I would have never known it was gone. They could've just made off with that and maybe have shut the door to my apartment I'd be none-the-wiser. That's the key to making any heist into a perfect one. The best heist will always be the heist where no one knows anything was stolen. It's almost baffling how damn near everyone from a common crook to the people who make careers out of breaking into places can just overlook simple things like making it seem like you were never there. I want you guys just to follow my thought process here and see if you're thinking the same thing.

I come home and the door's closed but unlocked. Personally, I wouldn't cry foul right there. I'd say to myself "Well shit, I must've left the door unlocked. Fuck!" I walk in and see everything looks alright, nothing out of the ordinary. "Alright, no one came in here. Thank God." Then I'd come into my room and see that my closet is open (It was summer when I got robbed and I only put my coats and hats in my closet). "Hey that's weird, I know I didn't open that. Better make sure everything is there." I then check, see I'm missing my safe, I go nuts, etc. It's these little things that make or break getting away with your heist. If that closet door had been closed it maybe would've been months if not years before I noticed I was missing my safe. Even at that point I wouldn't think I was robbed. I would've just thought I misplaced the damn thing years ago and expect it to just turn up somewhere.

That's the critical part into pulling this off. The hardest part is the victim placing the blame on their own negligence. Once it happens you're pretty much scott free. This is because that the whole "getting robbed" mentality is basically how my apartment was: a state of disaster. The typical John or Jane American will never expect anyone breaking into their homes to have the common decency to just leave things untouched. It's just unheard of. As a kid I was able to figure the whole thing down to a science...