Tthe filmmakers behind Netflix’s latest documentary—How to rob a bank– I don’t want viewers to take the title literally. Although the film, which will be released on June 5, features accounts of real bank robbers who explain how they got people to hand over money, directors Seth Porges and Stephen Robert Morse hope no one has any ideas after watching it.
“This is a movie about how you shouldn’t be a bank robber,” says Porges. “This is a story about what it means to live a double life, what it means to live a life of lies, and how that is unsustainable.”
Here, the story behind How to rob a bank.
How bank robbers successfully stole money in Seattle in the 1990s
How to rob a bank begins with Seattle journalists who covered robberies in the 1990s, discussing how banks were opening across the city at the time, as the number of successful companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks grew in the area.
“Money from the tech boom was fueling this,” says KIRO-TV news anchor David Kerley in the film. (Curiosity to Succession fans, Kerly played a news anchor who is hosting ATN on election night.)
The film centers on the stories of Mark Biggins and Steve Meyers, two men behind 19 confirmed bank robberies in Seattle that netted them more than $2.3 million. In the film, they appear explaining their tips and tricks and talking about how they took orders from a guy who lived in a treehouse named Scott Scurlock.
Based on interviews with friends and family, it’s clear that Scurlock became a bank robber because he always wanted to make a lot of money. He graduated from the progressive liberal arts college in Washington state called The Evergreen State College, but to make quick money, he started producing meth. He was expelled.
But his sister says in the film that the family knew something was wrong with him long before, when he stole a car as a teenager to go to the beach. It’s especially surprising behavior given that he came from such a strict family, with a father who was a minister and a mother who taught children with learning difficulties. The family gave the filmmakers access to Scurlock’s diary, in which he admits, “my mind is like an undisciplined child gone mad.”
In the film, people who worked with Scurlock detail how much research he did before robbing banks. At one bank, they managed to befriend a teller and she gave them copies of employee handbooks, with protocols for tellers, managing cash safes and delivery procedures. Thieves wanted to be well versed in banking language to be taken seriously. They waited for the arrival of the armored vehicles that delivered the money and carried out the robberies when the cars left because that was when there was more money in the bank. They also took note of when the cops came to patrol them, timing their robberies for when the coast was clear. If one of Scurlock’s accomplices saw the police during a robbery, they would say, “Mommy’s coming.”
In the film, one of Scurlock’s accomplices, Biggins, explains how they would use a bank customer’s car as a getaway vehicle. He wore a Ronald Reagan mask during the robberies, while Scurlock wore a prosthetic nose, chin and cheeks that disguised his identity. Authorities nicknamed him “Hollywood” because his disguise made him look like a Hollywood movie thief. Another accomplice, Meyers, waxes poetic about the experience of planning and executing bank robberies with Scurlock, calling it “the most creative thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He compares finding the perfect bank to rob to “finding a piece of marble that is perfect for some image I have and want to carve.”
After each withdrawal, Scurlock and his accomplices examined the money, holding each bill up to ultraviolet light to see if it had electronic trackers. The equipment to carry out the robberies was buried in the ground and the thieves burned their clothes after each robbery. Scurlock lived in a treehouse when he was in Washington and used the stolen money to travel to distant parts of the world. He gave money to any friend who needed money and also to establish goodwill in case he needed to ask a favor of them later. He donated to Earth First, seeing himself as a Robin Hood figure who stole from the rich and donated to a worthy and needy cause.
What happened to the bank robbers?
One reason robbers catch banks by surprise is that they rob the same bank several times in a row when the bank doesn’t expect them to return so soon. But they were caught on November 27, 1996, the day before Thanksgiving, when the thieves unknowingly stole stacks of cash with electronic trackers that the FBI built in specifically to track their whereabouts. A shootout ensued between police and Scurlock. Scurlock shot himself to death and his accomplices Meyers and Biggins were sentenced to 21 years and 3 months in prison.
Both Biggins and Meyers served time for about a decade before agreeing to participate in the documentary. Meyers left in 2013 and Biggins left in 2015, and they both lived quiet lives. For both men, the Netflix documentary ends up being a moment in which they can reflect on how addictive the robberies were. As Biggins says, “Once you cross the Rubicon and start living this life, you have to lie to everyone about everything, everyone you care about, everyone you know.”
Meyers has no regrets about leaving that life behind, calling the moment they were caught “the end of a certain life I had. He and Scurlock were like “two comets” that started out “flying through the fucking universe and then suddenly exploded,” he says. “It’s all destroyed in a second. It’s gone.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
