Robber and Record-Breaker?

“Twenty million? And he’s still out there?” marvels Mark Young, U.S. editor for the Guinness Book of Records, from his desk in Stamford, Conn.

“These are the kinds of records that don’t get broken,” he says.

Johnson has set the new domestic robbery mark by a country mile. His take dwarfs the $11 million five robbers stole from an armored car vault in New York City 15 years ago. (Four of the five were caught, but only $1 million was returned.)

Worldwide, Johnson’s caper approaches even what Guinness calls the biggest bank job of them all. In January 1976, someone took between $20 million and $50 million from the vaults and safe deposit boxes of the British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut. That someone was a guerrilla task force, armed with bombs.

Johnson, by every appearance, did it all by himself.