Three decades after the Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy Airport, authorities are charging one man in connection with the infamous caper as well as four others for unsolved crimes, according to court records.
Authorities expected Vincent Asaro, Jerome Asaro, Jack Bonventre, Thomas
Di Fiore and John Ragano—who allegedly have links to organized crime—to
be arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
of New York. The charges include racketeering and conspiracy.
The investigation dates back to December 1978, when thieves stole $6
million in cash and jewelry from a Lufthansa cargo building at the
airport—the largest heist in American history at the time.
The heist took just over an hour in the early morning hours of December
1978. A group of masked men stole cash that was supposed to be passing
through the airport from a bank in Frankfurt, Germany to Chase bank
headquarters in Manhattan, according to published reports at the time.
One of the robbers held a firearm to the head of a Lufthansa employee—several were bound, the reports said.
It seemed to be an inside job. The robbers knew details about the
security systems and the workers’ names. They knew how long it would
take for the airport to be completely closed down. What they didn’t know
was how much money they would come up with: nearly $6 million, instead
of the reported $2 million they were expecting, according to reports at
the time.
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