Sep 24, 2010 11:18 GMT  ·  By

A gang of thieves has repeatedly raided a French store chain for the past four years and stole money from its safes by using powerful vacuums.

The Sun reports that the burglars have recently pulled the fifteenth such hit against Monoprix supermarkets located around Paris.

Their routine involves drilling a hole into the pneumatic duct used to carry rolls of money from checkout to the safe and then literally suck the cash out with a vacuum.

The most recent raid took place last Monday at the Monoprix store on Garibaldi Street in Saint-Ouen. The thieves, which the police now call the "Vacuum Burglars," broke in through an emergency door.

This time, the vacuum-armed plunderers did their thing and walked away with over 70,000 euros (almost $100,000).

The CCTV cameras captured everything, but since they were wearing ski masks, identification from the footage is unlikely.

"They spotted a weakness in the company's security system and have been exploiting it ever since," a French police spokesperson told The Sun.

"Since 2006 they have stolen more than 500,000 euros and caused damage to alarm systems and other property totaling thousands more.

"It is clearly time Monoprix addressed this loophole and changed the way it guards its money," he added. The supermarket chain refused to comment on the incidents.

Apparently, on one occasion the thieves were unintentionally caught by a employee, who returned to the store after hours.

However, they escaped after threatening him with a handgun, which suggests that they are experienced and prepared to deal with unforeseen situations.

This case stands to show that criminals will not hold back from exploiting any little security hole or business logic flaw they can in order to make a profit.

The most recent similarly ingenious crime we reported involved a group of UK fradusters, who bought iPhone subscriptions using stolen identities and then shipped the SIM cards to other countries where they were used to call premium-rate numbers non-stop.