No. No you shouldn’t.

Not because of ethical reasons mind you, Centives would never presume to know right from wrong, especially since we spend a fair amount of time helping budding evil overlords understand their financial needs. Rather, it’s simply not worth your time to rob them. John Timmer reports on a study that proves this is the case:

• The average haul from a bank robbery is just £20,330.50 for the team and £12,706.60 per person. Since the average annual wage in the UK for a full time worker is ~£26,000 you’d have to rob banks twice a year to make the average.
• The average bank job nets you about £20,000, but the standard deviation on that is £53,510.20 – this makes the returns extremely uncertain. Around a third of all robberies fail entirely.
• In the United States bank robbers do even worse – they can only expect to make $4,330.00
• Every additional member who takes part in an operation raises the expected returns by £9,033.20. Having firearms can increase it by £10 300.50.
• It seems that robbers have some sophisticated econometricians in their midst. They seem to be aware of this and bank robberies have been declining.

To read more fascinating details about the study, including why it was done, how many operators are involved in an average bank robbery, the hunt for patterns in the types of banks that robbers choose to rob, a security measure that – mathematically speaking – would lead you to expect the robbers to hand the bank money, and what successful criminals should do, click here.

Source: Arstechnica