Today in History - May 2: More than a billion dollars stolen in knifepoint street mugging
The equivalent of $A1.4 billion was stolen in the largest street mugging in history on May 2, 1990.
Finance broker employee John Goddard was walking down a London laneway when he was robbed at knifepoint.
The young robber made off with Goddard's briefcase, which happened to be carrying 301 bearer bonds.
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The staff member was mugged on this laneway in central London. Supplied
A bearer bond is essentially a piece of paper issued by a corporation or a government worth a certain amount of money.
The unregistered bonds can be sold for whatever they are worth by whoever has them in this possession.
The bearer bonds stolen in the mugging had a value of £292 million, which is about $1.4 billion in today's money.
While it may have seen like a purely opportunistic mugging, the robbery was planned well in advance.
An organised crime syndicate hatched upon the idea when a courier dropped £4 million in bonds in January of that year.
When those bonds were returned in exchange for a bottle of champagne, it made national news.
The syndicate realised they could conduct a major heist and make it look like a mugging.
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UK Treasury bonds are now transferred electronically. Supplied
But the robbery was the easy part.
While the bonds may have been worth $1.4 billion, finding someone willing to buy them was a big issue.
One of the gangsters, Mark Osbourne, tried to sell the bonds to a New York mafioso.
But the mafioso turned out to be an FBI agent, and Osbourne was arrested.
A few months later, Osbourne disappeared and was later found murdered.
The suspected mugger also met a grim demise, murdered on the front door of the council estate where he lived.
Eventually all but two of the 301 bonds were recovered.
The Bank of England switched to electronic transactions for bonds in 2003.
The mugging remains the second biggest robbery in world history.
It was trumped for top spot by the Central Bank of Iraq robbery in 2003.
In that robbery, Saddam Hussein's son Qusay and an assistant arrived at the Central Bank of Iraq at 4am that morning with a note from the leader.
The handwritten letter from the dictator authorised Qusay to take as much money as he wanted from the bank.
Three tractor-trailers were brought in to take $900 million in American cash - all $100 notes, as well as tens of millions worth in euros.
READ MORE: With a note from his father, he conducted the biggest bank heist of all time
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