Man robbed inside Virgin Active Mill Hill Gym in UK

by Special Correspondent
June 26, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/822/man-robbed-inside-virgin-active-mill-hill-gym-in

On June 25, 2010 almost £1000 in cash was stolen from the wallet of Brian Sacks, a journalist and social activist in United Kingdom. The amount was locked in one of the gym lockers at Virgin Virgin Active Mill Hill.

Brian Sacks told Weekly Blitz that he entered the gym at around 5:15 pm and left about one hour later. He presumes that the theft took place shortly after he locked the cash away, at around 5:30 pm.

The cash consisted of £805 which was wrapped in two pension receipts that the culprit considerately left in place in the wallet. This sum represents two weeks pension for Brian's mother aged 90 and her friend Ada Tomlinson [81]. The remaining £160 pounds or so was his personal cash.

The sequence of events leading up to this was that Brian Sacks had obtained the pension money immediately before 5 pm, as recorded on the receipts, 5pm being, he believes, the closing time for the post office. He had put the cash in a pocket of his gym trousers, which he was already wearing. He immediately then went to the gym. In the changing room, Brian decided that he should not have this wad of cash in the pocket, so he transferred it to his wallet and put the wallet and cap in the top compartment of a locker.

As always, Brian Sacks locked the locker with his Virgin Active 4-barrel combination lock, and as always, checked that the numbers left on display bore no relation to the correct combination. He was aware of two people nearby who could have spotted his transferring the cash, but he assumed that the Virgin Active combination lock was safe.

He only discovered the loss at home because the culprit had left everything as before, except that the cash was missing. At the time of leaving the gym he was concerned to meet a friend, and was not thinking about the weight and thickness of the wallet.

Later, Brian went back to the gym at 9 pm and reported the matter to staffs who were present. The male staff assured him that the lock was impossible to open if one did not know the correct combination. At home, Brian Sacks tried to testing whether the lock could be opened with one's eyes closed, purely by feel. He found that indeed it could. He then looked online, and immediately found a video one minute long, teaching one to open such a lock within a minute. The video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlJ8a5GZT1U

Brian assumes that due to the World Cup, the gym was less busy than usual and the perpetrator had more than usual opportunity to open the lock unobserved.

Following this theft and subsequent finding of the problems with the lock, Brain Sacks has sent a letter to the manufacturers of Virgin Active 4-barrel combination lock requesting them to make reasonable ex-gratia payment to ease the burden of their loss. Till filling this report, Brian has not received any response from the manufacturers.

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