Four members of New York’s Bonnano crime family were pinched in the early morning raid.
Vincent Asaro, Jack Bonventre, Thomas Di Fiore and John "Bazoo" Ragano were taken into custody for stealing more than $5 million in cash and another $1 million in jewels from a Lufthansa cargo building in 1978.
The New York Times reports It was the biggest theft in U.S. history up to that point.
In today’s economy that equates to more than $20 million in goods.
The robbery was bold enough but was made bigger than life after the movie “Goodfellas”
The heist was a big part of the film’s plot and its main character James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, played by Robert DeNiro.
Burke was said to have planned the job.
Jimmy the Gent died in prison in 1996 after being convicted on a separate murder charge.
But a raid and search of his home in 2013 turned up information used to make the arrests.
Until now the only arrest in the case was a Lufthansa employee who was found to have facilitated the job from the inside.
The indictment is for several unsolved crimes but the Lufthansa robbery has grabbed most of the headlines.
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