Tempting the Devil

Just after 6 one morning last week, Marseille police burst into the homes of three men, roused them from their beds and hustled them off to jail. Thus ended one of the most picaresque exploits in the long history of Marseille gangsterism. The three prisoners were members of a ten-man gang that had managed to rob 27 banks in less than a year. Said Robert Mattei, the top-ranking police commissioner in the region: "They hold the undisputed record as the gang that pulled off the greatest number of holdups. We've never seen anything like it."

Despite their success, however, the holdup men were essentially amateurs. In all their jobs, they managed to steal a total of only $275,000. And when the three men were caught last week, they were so eager to boast about their exploits that they implicated the other seven gang members, four of whom had already bungled their way into jail on other charges.

Gallic Courtesy. The spree began in December 1969, when the working-class young men, all between the ages of 19 and 27, gathered in a local bar to drink and grumble about their poor-paying jobs. "What'll we do tonight?" one of them asked. "Let's rob a bank," another answered.

With a curious combination of Gallic courtesy, reckless abandon and careful planning, the impromptu bandits --generally operating in two-man teams --thereupon hit seven Marseille banks in 57 days. They never wore masks or gloves. They never fired a gun or struck anyone. When an elderly lady fainted during a holdup, one gang member, Antoine Nitti, gave her a glass of water and embraced her before fleeing.

The operation branched out to other towns on or near the Riviera. They knocked over two Grenoble banks in ten minutes, three Dijon banks in less than two hours. Their amateurism seemed to baffle the police. In making their getaways, the boys shunned fast cars. They would check railroad timetables, buy tickets in advance, drive a stolen car to the station, and board a train. Meanwhile, the police were usually checking automobile traffic on the roads out of town. The trains were not always safe, however, as one of the bandits learned after robbing a bank at Brives. When gendarmes began searching the Paris-bound train, Antoine Diez, carrying a satchel containing $14,000, hid outside one of the cars by holding on to two hand rails. Nearly 300 miles later, just outside Paris, the exhausted Diez threw the satchel into a field, jumped off the train, and walked into the city. When he returned for the money the next day, he could not find it; he assumed it had been stolen.

Government Bonds. The Marseille mob did not lavish its loot on the usual frills. They invested it in 4% to 51% government bonds, which the police found in last week's raids, prompted by tips from police informers. Said one sympathetic Marseille cab driver, who earned less than $5 for eleven hours of work the previous day: "When it's so hard to earn a living, you sometimes tempt the devil." For tempting the devil, the Marseille boys face possible prison sentences of 15 to 20 years.

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