Home Safes are Magnets for Thieves

Seachange

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Jan 13, 2004
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These days having a home safe is like hanging a sign on the front door that says, "Rob Me!"

Given all the recent robberies we've been hearing about, the urge to hoard all one's valuables in a home safe might be pounding mightily. And you wouldn't be the only one, judging from grocery to hardware stores doing brisk business selling them.

However, keeping loads of money and other valuables around the house in a home safe remains an ill-advised step.

While you may think your home safe is a secret, generally it's not. There's the maid or housekeeper, gardener or handyman, and perhaps others who witnessed you bring in the safe and perhaps even helped you install it. Of course, like most folks, they like to talk about their jobs and who knows where the information that you have a home safe ends up.
 
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Bronxboy

Well-known member
Jul 11, 2007
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These days having a home safe is like hanging a sign on the front door that says, "Rob Me!"

Given all the recent robberies we've been hearing about, the urge to hoard all one's valuables in a home safe might be pounding mightily. And you wouldn't be the only one, judging from grocery to hardware stores doing brisk business selling them.

However, keeping loads of money and other valuables around the house in a home safe remains an ill-advised step.

While you may think your home safe is a secret, generally it's not. There's the maid or housekeeper, gardener or handyman, and perhaps others who witnessed you bring in the safe and perhaps even helped you install it. Of course, like most folks, they like to talk about their jobs and who knows where the information that you have a home safe ends up.

Another option is furniture with hidden compartments!!!!

Of course, you have to keep this a secret. There are pieces of furniture that you would never know has a secret compartment.

Just a thought.
 

heldengebroed

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Mar 9, 2005
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Another option is furniture with hidden compartments!!!!

Of course, you have to keep this a secret. There are pieces of furniture that you would never know has a secret compartment.

Just a thought.

There is even e type of furniture named after it a "secretaire" a bureau type of furniture with hidden compartements
 

Chip

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Jul 25, 2007
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Yes one has to be careful with home safes. I bought a strong box after we let our last housekeeper go for stealing and had it locked up in my office where the new housekeeper is forbidden to enter (only the wife and I) and thought everything was chevre until one day I was downstairs and my wife takes the strongbox out of the office and braings it downstairs right in front of the housekeeper so that I could show her the combination again. Oh well so much for planning.

The next step is to have it recessed in a wall in my office or the armario. BTW, if anybody needs this done let me know and I will send my Dominican brother to do it for you cheap. He lives here in Santiago and will travel all over and I guarantee his work and confidentiality.
 
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May 12, 2005
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Just try to be discreet as possible with your wealth and valuables. A strong box or safe can be lag bolted into the floor and or a wall making it extremely hard to remove. Be creative when placing these items in your house or condo. Put them in unusual spots.
 

suarezn

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Just try to be discreet as possible with your wealth and valuables. A strong box or safe can be lag bolted into the floor and or a wall making it extremely hard to remove. Be creative when placing these items in your house or condo. Put them in unusual spots.

It reminds me of something Chris Rock once said, in one of his comedy specials, that if you want thieves not to find your stuff put them inside a book. Books are like cryptonite to thieves...

So maybe putting it behind a bookcase full of books.
 

MikeFisher

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first of all:
if you are a gringo living in a good area, you are considered rich.
if you are a business owner, you are considered rich.
if you are a gringo-business owner you are considered even richer.
with or without a safebox installed in your house you will be on the list of the bad guys who check out the hood for the best/easiest/most lucrative targets.
if you want to install and use a safety box in your house buy it in a shop far from your neighbourhood, buy it alone, bring it home alone, install it on your own. install it at a location which is not easy to spot, where visitors and your maid will not see it.
leave always a small amount of pesos in smaller bills in a easy to find place around the closet, 20K Pesos in 500's and hundreds spread in such box look like a lot more, even if your family get's taken hostage or a gun pointed on you, let them know where you store your money, they see that bunch, pack it in and run.
an other possibility is a 'fake' safety box with just smaller amounts of money in it, you store your real money somewhere else in the house. that safe should be installed where visitors aso can see it, employees know it, you sometimes 'use' it, so nobody would expect that there is money somewhere else in the house.
even that thieves will not check every book in your library to see what is inside, heck, a simple book can not hold amounts of money/jewlery aso. you would need to make fake books, like little safe boxes, ha ha.
Mike
 

Bronxboy

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Jul 11, 2007
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even that thieves will not check every book in your library to see what is inside, heck, a simple book can not hold amounts of money/jewlery aso. you would need to make fake books, like little safe boxes, ha ha.
Mike

The have books with secret compartments, lol. The secret is out now!!!!!
 

AlterEgo

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Jan 9, 2009
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Alternatives

Just this week on the Today Show out of NYC they did a segment on alternatives to bulky safes that are available. One looked just like a gallon can of paint, others were hollow books, soda cans - all sorts of items out there. They said success depended on where you kept them - a can of paint sitting on a shelf in the master bedroom would stick out like a sore thumb, it would have to be mixed in with real cans of paint, etc.

My parents always had everything in this little floor safe they covered with a pretty shawl. Just sitting there. I always used to tell them that the crooks would just pick it up and take it with them, but they never listened to me. Their house was robbed when they lived on Long Island, and the robber was so intent on rifling through their drawers and closets and her jewelry box [only costume stuff in there] that he actually overlooked the safe sitting right there. I'd never have that luck. A few years ago my husband brought home this huge commercial floor safe some guy at work gave him, and it sits in our basement. Mostly papers in there, nothing of value. I have trouble opening it. I keep telling him to get rid of it because if someone breaks in and puts a gun to my head I probably still wouldn't be able to open it, and I'll end up dead defending nothing. And at the other end of the basement is my parents' little old safe. Also empty. Which I also can't open :paranoid: I was going to send it down to SD in our next 'tank', but after reading this thread I think I'll leave it where it is.
 

suarezn

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Feb 3, 2002
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You can always do like the character played by Denzel Washington in American Ganster...he stashed his money in a safe under the floor of the dog house, right underneath where the dog slept. They still found it in the movie, but I thought this was a pretty clever place to hide it.

Mike: I like your ideas. Whenever I'm in The DR and I carry a lot of money I always carry a few thousands in a couple of my pockets just in case, whereas the real money might be somewhere else...Not that I often carry large amounts of money with me so those of you reading this don't be getting any ideas.
 
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MirianAmor

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You can always do like the character played by Denzel Washington in American Ganster...he stashed his money in a safe under the floor of the dog house, right underneath where the dog slept. They still found it in the movie, but I thought this was a pretty clever place to hide it.

Mike: I like your ideas. Whenever I'm in The DR and I carry a lot of money I always carry a few thousands in a couple of my pockets just in case, whereas the real money might be somewhere else...Not that I often carry large amounts of money with me so those of you reading this don't be getting any ideas.

We have a safe and only 2 of us in the house know where it is and to find it, like like the treasure on Oak Island in the far west Atlantic, you would need a road map to find it. When we were robbed at gun point late last year they never found it but took lots of valuable that were not in it.
 

MikeFisher

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Feb 28, 2006
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You can always do like the character played by Denzel Washington in American Ganster...he stashed his money in a safe under the floor of the dog house, right underneath where the dog slept. They still found it in the movie, but I thought this was a pretty clever place to hide it.

Mike: I like your ideas. Whenever I'm in The DR and I carry a lot of money I always carry a few thousands in a couple of my pockets just in case, whereas the real money might be somewhere else...Not that I often carry large amounts of money with me so those of you reading this don't be getting any ideas.

that's the right way to carry money on the streets, everywhere, not just DR, yeap.
so when you pay for your hamburger, guagua, beer at the colmado or what ever you do not need to show a big roll of bills, nobody expects big stuff from you, everything is fine.
to the fancy and funny places to hide money, heck, that's funny but not practical.
b/c if you have money in the house/property, you do use it unless you are not the kind of person who wanna live poor and die rich, lol.
that means you need access to the stuff, same for your jewlery or such, when the wifey wanna put on those fancy expensive earrings or that beautiful collial or you need some money for a nice weekend down in town you sure don't wanna digg first a hole under the dogs house, ha ha ha.
means it needs to be invisible but accessible.
the spots to do so depend on everybody's location/furnitures/behaviors/needs aso aso.
but i think with the given advices everybody may get an idea for the basics, the details i would say for "nearly" sure nobody will write down somewhere.
Mike
 

J D Sauser

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Nov 20, 2004
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If I remember right, a few years ago a resident family got assaulted in their home only hours or a few days after having a safe delivered to their home. The thieves directly asked for the safe.
The obvious deduction was that either someone at the store, around the delivery driver or maybe, but only just may a "lucky" observer of the delivery had alerted the thieves.

If I'd buy a safe, I'd buy it a couple of cities away, cash (no card), transport it myself and unload and installed it so nobody could see it.

The idea of a "secondary safe" with some junk and a little money seems also a viable one.

And lets remind ourselves that one has to be extra cautious about whom we befriend and especially whom we let into our homes. People talk, especially around here, and walls have ears... even wooden walls.

... J-D.
 
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gmiller261

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Dec 29, 2002
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MikeFisher the only one correct

first of all:
if you are a gringo living in a good area, you are considered rich.
if you are a business owner, you are considered rich.
if you are a gringo-business owner you are considered even richer.
with or without a safebox installed in your house you will be on the list of the bad guys who check out the hood for the best/easiest/most lucrative targets.


There is NOTHING to keep the cockroaches out.

You have a safety deposit box in a bank, someone there will be 'forced' to give you up. Then it is either the car or once you get home.