How Hurricane Sandy Inspired a $7 Billion Heist on New Series ‘Kaleidoscope’
Move over, Bandersnatch, Netflix has a new choose-your-own-adventure show out for viewers. Kaleidoscope, a new series that premiered January 1, follows an expert crew as they try to pull off a $7 billion robbery (and like most good heist stories, possibly right some family wrongs along the way). Netflix created the show for a non-linear experience, which encourages viewers to watch the episodes leading up to the season finale in different orders.
The series, starring Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, Paz Vega, Tati Gabrielle, Peter Mark Kendall, Rosaline Elbay, and Jai Courtney, spans 25 years of history surrounding the crime. But most interestingly, it pulls its lore from real-life events. Showrunner Eric Garcia said Kaleidoscope is based on the real-life flooding from Hurricane Sandy that almost destroyed billions of dollars worth of bearer bonds.
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“That’s a perfect cover-up for a heist,” Garcia said. “If I’m doing a heist, I’m going to use Hurricane Sandy as my excuse.”
So here’s what really happened.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast in October 2012, the power of the storm caused devastation to several states. In New York, a combination of high winds, flooding, and heavy rain left 44 residents dead, thousands temporarily displaced, and caused almost $19 billion in damages. But in downtown Manhattan, another number was on some people’s minds. An underground vault, owned by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp, was flooded during the storm, Reuters reported. The problem? The vault wasn’t filled with cash, but with paper bearer bonds and stock certificates potentially worth billions of dollars, according to the New York Post.
Bearer bonds are paper certificates issued by the government that allow the holder to turn in an attached coupon for cash and interest after a predetermined date. Their lack of required registration and the ease at which they can be redeemed makes them easy fodder for fraud and money laundering, which is why bearer bonds were phased out of use in the U.S. by 1990. While the bonds are no longer issued by the U.S. Treasury, existing bearer bonds still carry monetary value and can function similarly to cash. But their age and physical properties also make them susceptible to another danger: destruction.
At the time of the flood, DTCC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS and CitiBank did not say how much money they had in the flooded vault, but Goldman Sachs said the flooding impacted less than $10,000 worth of their bearer bonds. The spokesperson added that if destroyed, the bonds would be “nearly impossible to redeem.” According to the New York Post, which called the story “the biggest mystery on Wall Street,” a source said the flooding put $70 billion worth of bearer bonds at risk.
In order to try and save the bonds, a recovery project was launched to collect the papers, freeze-dry them to remove moisture, and then clean them individually, the Post reported. And according to DTCC, over 99% of the bonds were able to be recovered. But don’t worry. If that ending doesn’t seem as fun, fans can always watch Kaleidoscope, which features a similar amount of flooding in an underground vault, but goes full in on the scheming, drama, betrayal, and high stakes-high rewards moments of a classic heist series.
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