The Hafiz family was desperate to get their money back from Blom Bank SAL. They had the $20,000 for Nancy Hafiz’s brain cancer treatment in the family savings account, but the bank wouldn’t let them withdraw it. When Nancy got too sick to lobby the branch manager on her own behalf, her sister Sali took over. Please, Sali begged, my sister is running out of time. The manager said he could draw the equivalent of $200 a month in Lebanese pounds from the account, adding insult to death sentence. The rest of the family had no better luck. Sali contemplated selling a kidney. Instead, she and a third sister, Ikram, decided to stick up the bank with a fake pistol and a canister of gasoline.
One morning last September, Sali livestreamed the family heist. She charged toward the counter of a Blom branch in Beirut, brandishing her nephew’s plastic toy handgun. The clerks screamed and took cover. Standing atop a table, tucking the dummy weapon into the waistband of her black jeans as though she did this every day, Sali yelled: “I came here today to get my sister’s money.” To show they were serious, Ikram poured the gasoline over her own head and threatened to set herself alight if the employees didn’t hand over the cash. Soon, she was holding a clerk by the collar as he fed fistfuls of US dollars into a money-counting machine. The sisters stuffed $13,000 into bags—enough to get Nancy’s treatment started—and fled the scene, ditching the fake gun outside.
