Hello and welcome to the very first improve your vocabulary video.
Today we will talk about crime
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Okay so today's topic is crime.
To improve our vocabulary on this topic,
we will explore three very interesting true crime stories.
Our first story is the story of the Hatton Garden heist.
This burglary took place in London.
Hatton Garden to be specific which is the diamond district of London.
It was there that a group of elderly men, some in their 60s and 70s,
carefully planned to break into a vault.
They decided to do the heist over the Easter weekend of 2015,
which was a four-day holiday
This was an ideal time for the burglars,
since they could take advantage of the quiet period to carry out their plan.
They used heavy-duty equipment to drill through 50 centimeters of reinforced concrete walls
to access the secure underground vault.
Once inside, they forced open dozens of safety deposit boxes,
stealing jewelry, cash, and other valuables.
In total, the stolen items were estimated to be worth around 14 million Pounds
making this one of the largest heists in British history.
This story became famous not only because of the huge amount stolen,
but also because who the thieves were.
The burglars were mostly older men, very different from who you would imagine a criminal to be.
An unexpected detail, for example, to the heist was that one of the men,
76-year-old Brian Reeder, had a number of health issues,
so he had to bring his diabetes medication with him on the heist.
The whole story seemed like something out of a movie.
The men had spent months planning each step.
They used special tools to disable alarms and used heavy-duty drills to get into the vault.
Of course, they ran into some problems,
but they still managed to successfully enter and leave the vault without anyone noticing.
But despite their success in stealing from the vault,
this story didn't have a happy ending, at least not for the thieves involved.
In the end, the police were able to track down the burglars using CCTV footage.
And to gather evidence for conviction, the police put them under surveillance,
that means they watched the suspects closely over time.
They followed them, recorded their conversations, and watched the places they visited.
All of the four men were arrested, pleaded guilty, and received prison sentences
in March 2016.
As for the stolen items, despite the burglars getting arrested,
only about 4 million pounds of the 14 million pounds in stolen valuables was ever recovered.
The rest is still unaccounted for.
Now that is our first story for this video, and as you have probably noticed,
there were quite a few words related to crime.
I'm not going to explain each and every one of them,
because you can easily and quickly look up the meaning of any word you want in this video
on ESLSherpa.com
It's what makes this channel special, so give it a try, it will change your life.
Maybe.
But I wanted to briefly draw your attention to
a few words related to this topic and the difference between them.
If you noticed, the criminals in this story were referred to as burglars,
and the crime they committed was burglary.
The words rob or robbing were not used in this story,
and that's because there is a difference between burglary and robbery.
When it comes to burglary,
we are talking about entering a building with the goal of committing a crime,
usually theft, usually stealing something.
With robbery, the criminal is still stealing something,
but they are using force, violence, or the threat of force or violence.
That is why the words rob and robbery weren't used.
It is because the criminals in this story did not use violence,
or the threat of violence to commit the crime.
One more thing by the way
The object for the word burglarize or burgle is a house or building.
For example, we say
when she got home from work, she discovered that her house had been burgled.
The object for the word rob on the other hand, can be both a building or person.
For example, we can say Four armed men robbed a bank yesterday
or we can say A young man was attacked and robbed as he walked home from work last night.
And if you wonder what about the word steal, well, it can be used for everything.
But the key word here is everything.
When we use the word steal, the focus is on the thing that is taken.
For example, They burgled into my home and stole all my watches.
He attacked me and stole my wallet.
Okay, that's it for our first story.
Now, for our next story,
let's shift from a classic heist to a different type of crime, hacking.
While heists involve breaking into physical spaces,
hacking is all about breaking into digital spaces,
often with the same level of planning and precision.
Our next story is the Ashley Madison hack in 2015.
Ashley Madison was a dating website specifically for people looking to have affairs,
romantic relationships outside of their marriage.
Basically, cheating.
Stupid if you ask me.
But the website had a lot of users and was very popular.
One reason people used Ashley Madison instead of other dating websites was that
it promised to keep user data private and secure,
which was important for anyone who tries to cheat
because they want to keep these relationships a secret.
But in July 2015, a group of hackers calling themselves the Impact Team,
broke into Ashley Madison's systems and stole the personal details of millions of users
including their names, addresses, and even private messages.
The hackers were not interested in financial gain.
They had another goal.
They demanded that Ashley Madison shut down its website claiming it was unethical.
When the website didn't do that,
the hackers released the stolen information on the internet.
making it available to anyone who wanted to see the information.
This story became famous
not only because of the scale of the hack, with millions of users affected,
but also because of the nature of the website itself.
Since the website was for people looking to have affairs,
the leak of their personal details and all that information led to
public embarrassment for several celebrities and politicians.
And of course, it also had serious personal consequences for many of the ordinary users
There was also a lot of public debate about whether
the impact team, the group that had hacked the website, were criminals or heroes.
What they did was illegal, yes,
but many people believed that the group was making a moral statement,
discouraging infidelity and also exposing some public figures in positions of trust,
who pretended to be of good character.
I'd be interested to know what you think about this one.
Share your comments below.
Now, for our final story, we will leave the world of heists and hacking
and explore a completely different kind of crime, financial fraud.
Unlike heists or hacks that involve physical or digital break-ins,
financial fraud is all about deception, convincing people to invest in schemes
that seem legitimate but are actually built on lies.
Our story is about one of the most infamous cases of financial fraud,
the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
Bernie Madoff was a well-known and respected investment advisor in the United States,
managing billions of dollars for wealthy clients, celebrities and even charities.
But in 2008, it was discovered that Madoff was running a massive
A Ponzi scheme is a type of scam where the person running it
tricks people into investing money by promising them big profits.
But there aren't any real investments or profits.
Instead, the scammer just uses money from new investors
to pay returns to earlier investors, making it look like people are earning money.
When people see friends and family making money, they want to invest too
which draws even more investors.
But this scam only works if new money keeps coming in.
If too many people want their money back or if new investors stop joining,
the scheme stops working and most people lose their money.
In Madoff's case, his scheme fell apart during the financial crisis in 2008,
when many of his investors tried to withdraw their money.
He didn't have enough to pay back all his clients. So the truth came out,
And he was arrested, eventually receiving a prison sentence of 150 years.
He scammed investors out of approximately 68 billion dollars.
To put that into perspective, that was more than the GDP of many countries at the time.
So the amount he stole was greater than what many countries make in a whole year,
making this one of the largest financial crimes in history.
And that's it. Thank you. Thank you for watching this video.
And if you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe.
And also, please let me know in the comment section below,
which topics you would want me to cover in my next videos.
And there's also one last thing.
And this is something I want you to do for you, not me.
Watch the videos here on ESLSherpa.com so you can click
on any word you want in the subtitles
and see the meaning, examples, and translation right away.
This is something that helped me reach a high level of English proficiency.
And I'm sure over time, it will help you too.
Now, that's really it. I'm done. I will see you in the next video. And until then,
keep studying, keep improving, and stay motivated. Bye.
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