Many sneak robberies were formerly committed in medium-sized towns
on circus days, while most of the employes were at windows or
doors watching the circus parade. This offered "sneak" thieves the
opportunity to enter the building by some unguarded door or window,
or having, prior to the parade, concealed themselves in the bank or
store, to commit the robbery while the parade is passing, virtually
behind the backs of the employes.
A favorite scheme, especially in savings banks, is for one thief to
attract the attention of a customer who is counting money, to have a
bill purposely dropped in front of him on the floor by the thief and,
while he stoops down to pick it up, believing it part of his money,
another thief steals the then unprotected money he, the customer,
was counting. Often professional "sneak" thieves have posed as bank
clerks or porters, wearing office coats or porter's uniforms and, when
the opportunity presents itself, committed robberies of considerable
magnitude.
Some of the old-time "sneaks" used specially made steel instruments
of various shapes to move packages of money from one section of the
teller's cage to a point nearer the teller's window, so that it could
be more readily extracted. This practice, while the utmost caution is
necessary to avoid suspicion, has been quite successful.
At times thieves have used large satchels or dress-suit cases to stand
upon and, with a long wire hook, extracted money by reaching over the
wire screen surrounding a paying teller's cage.
A method sometimes used to commit money drawer or "till" robberies
in stores is to select some innocent-appearing storekeeper, usually
a foreigner, whom one of the thieves wearing a silk hat would
approach, informing him that they had just made a wager that the hat
would not hold more than a gallon of molasses, and requesting that
the storekeeper measure a gallon of molasses into the hat at their
expense, to decide the wager.