Here are some of the best robberies ever done!
Just wait until you find out how one crime was solved because of a sandwich left behind!
12 - Banco Central This robbery at Banco Central remains the
biggest bank heist in Brazil!
Allegedly, it involved at least 25 people who planned it out intensely for three months.
And in 3 months they came up with one of the most ingenious operations.
They rented a building near the bank, posing as a landscaping company.
That way it didn’t tip off the neighbors when they saw trucks carrying dirt and other
sorts of debris everyday from the building.
However, the debris was actually coming from a tunnel that the group was digging that led
right to Banco Central’s vault!
On August 6, 2005, the group finally hit the jackpot.
As usual, they transported the $71 million hard cash in their trucks like they would
with the debris they dug.
And since it was a weekend, this mega-heist wasn’t discovered until Monday.
To this day, much of the cash remains unaccounted for.
Just a few of the gang members were ever arrested 11 - Dunbar Armored Facility
The Dunbar Armored Robbery remains the largest cash robbery in the US.
The amount stolen in 1997, was close to $19 million dollars in cash.
But adjusted for inflation, it’s slightly over $30 million dollars in 2020!
The heist is also notable since anyone that participated in the robbery were all caught.
All thanks to one of them being too reckless with the cash.
Much of the heist’s success can be pinned on Dunbar Armored’s employee, Allen Pace.
Pace took the time to write down every security detail of the premises and he shared it with
his accomplices.
Coincidentally, he actually got fired just a day before the robbery after he was caught
messing around with the vehicles.
When they decided to do the robbery, they knew exactly what to do and where to go.
Pace knew exactly the right bags to pick, which are the bags with the highest denominations
and non-sequential bills.
The entire operation was over in just roughly half an hour!
They made a clean escape and it seemed like they’d completely get away.
They laundered the cash through various things such as new homes, cars, and even a Texas
business venture!
But their freedom and new-found fortune were immediately cut short just 2 years later.
One of the robbers stupidly gave out a stack of cash to his real estate broker with the
original currency bands on the cash, raising suspicions!
10 - Carlton Cannes In 2013, a number of French cities were hit
with a whole bunch of jewelry heists.
The Carlton hotel exhibition was one of them – and by far the largest.
It also happened right under everyone’s noses in broad daylight.
The daring thief turned up with his face covered with a hat and a scarf, all the while holding
a pistol at guests and exhibitors at a private hair salon.
The jewels were simply put on display by Israeli billionaire, Lev Leviev.
Interestingly, none of the guards at the exhibit were armed so the robber peacefully made away
with his loot that was estimated to be worth 136 million dollars!
To this day, not much progress has been made in their recovery – at least not in the
public eye.
No one knows who the lone gunman was and where he took the jewels.
A $1.3 million dollar reward was offered for anyone with information about the stolen jewels
but nothing has turned up yet.
There were speculations that the heist might have been orchestrated by a high-profile member
of the Pink Panthers, Milan Poparic, who had just escaped from jail a few days prior!
9 - Northern Bank Carried out just days before Christmas in
2004, this robbery is among the biggest so far in British history.
Instead of using their smarts, these thieves went for the good old fashioned method of
intimidation to get what they wanted.
Posing as Northern Ireland police officers, the robbers abducted two Northern Bank officials
and their families a day BEFORE the big robbery.
The gang kept the two families hostage but released the family members that were bank
officials.
They ordered the two to go to work as usual the next day.
On the day of the robbery, the two bank officials remained at the bank premises after-hours
and let in members of the gang.
From that point on, it was early Christmas for the robbers!
They gained access to the bank’s cash storage room.
This room had a much larger amount of cash ready for ATMs in preparation for the festivities.
For the robbers, it was just a matter of transporting the cash to a nearby waiting van.
As soon as they got the cash, the gang released the abducted family members of the bank employees.
Not a single one of the thieves has ever been convicted for the robbery.
8 - Hatton Garden Safe Deposit The April 2015 burglary of the Hatton Garden
Safe Deposit in London was widely speculated as the largest in British history.
The loss quoted in court was just £14 million pounds, but some media sources quoted it to
be well over £200 million pounds.
A major part of this operation was all about drilling through walls and vaults.
First, to access the premises, the gang drilled through a wall and then another wall that
took them to the building’s elevator shaft.
From the elevator shaft, they traveled down to the building’s basement using ropes.
Once they were in the basement, they grabbed the drill again this time drilling through
the vault to where the jewelry was.
Aside from the jewels, the gang managed to make away with millions in cash and gems by
going through a total of 73 deposit boxes!
The recovery has been tough, as just £4.5 million pounds of the stolen assets have been
recovered as of 2020.
7 - Knightsbridge Security Deposit Pulling off a heist worth close to $100 million
requires meticulous planning.
But for the 1987 Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery in London, this wasn’t the case.
Considering it’s one of the biggest bank robberies in history, the theft was executed
quite casually.
On that day, the two main suspects entered the bank as any other customer would.
They requested to open an account for a safe deposit box and that’s when their plan kicked
in.
Once they were into the vault, they drew their guns and held the bank’s occupants hostage.
Immediately, they put a closed sign on the bank’s door while letting in other heist
members to assist with the operation.
The gang managed to open a majority of the safe deposit boxes and made away with close
to $98 million dollars in cash and other valuable items!
However, a fingerprint discovered at the bank led the police to Valerio Viccei, already
a notorious bank robber before this robbery.
Several of his accomplices were arrested but he escaped to Latin America to enjoy the loot.
He was later arrested though when he went back to England just so he could ship a Ferrari
Testarossa he left behind!
Was that worth the 22 years in prison he got?!
6 - Antwerp Diamond Heist The Antwerp Diamond Heist is one of the most
popular and largest jewelry robberies ever.
It’s been called the “heist of the century” at that time, but bigger jewelry robberies
have happened since.
It remains one of the most famous diamond heists to date because of how it was stolen
with an advanced security system.
The vault housing the jewels was protected by infrared heat detectors, a magnetic field,
a seismic sensor, and a hi-tech combination lock!
That’s it?
Oh no, there’s more.
On top of all this, there were 18-inch steel doors to get through.
Maybe the owner watched too many Ocean’s 11 movies?
However, on Valentine's Day of 2003, a gang led by Leonardo Notarbartolo breached this
high tech security system in Belgium’s diamond district.
They had a $100 million payday in diamonds and other precious jewels!
In addition to getting through such an advanced security system, they also had enough time
to change the security tapes to avoid being identified.
Despite all that, guess how they got caught?
They left behind a half-eaten sandwich.
That was more than enough DNA for investigators to use.
After months of chasing across multiple countries, the group of five was arrested.
The jewels however, were never recovered!
5 - Dar Es Salaam Investment Bank The Dar Es Salaam bank robbery in Baghdad
is one of the biggest ever, but so little is known about the theft!
With over $280 million dollars in US cash gone, the heist hardly received any news coverage.
Local police authorities couldn’t even seem to agree on what really happened.
The morning after the robbery, employees of the bank came to work simply only to find
the doors unlocked and the vault wide open with the money completely gone.
Guards that normally slept at the bank had also disappeared!
The local police claimed the heist was orchestrated by the two guards.
The Interior of Ministry, on the other hand, insisted that the cash was stolen by at least
three people.
None of the stolen cash has ever been recovered.
Also, none of the people involved has ever been found or arrested!
4 - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum If you had over half a billion dollars worth
of art, you’d have really good security wouldn’t you?
Apparently the security situation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston the security
was extremely lacking for the amount of value inside the museum.
The security measures were at least on par to that of regular museums.
But improvements were needed for a museum with so many valuable collectibles.
Somehow, the museum couldn’t afford the improved measures.
And making major renovations to the museum was against the late owner of the art works,
Isabella Stewart Gardener’s wishes.
In 1990 during St. Patrick’s Day, two thieves disguised as police officers stole 13 priceless
art pieces from the museum.
The heist was so clean that thieves left no evidence whatsoever.
The museum has offered as much as $10 million dollars for information that leads to the
recovery of the paintings.
The theft is unsolved to this day and the frames where the paintings once hang remain
empty as homage to the missing pieces!
3 - Securitas Depot This heist remains the biggest known cash
robbery in British history.
In the world, it’s dwarfed by only two other cash heists.
In total, a little over £53 million pounds were stolen back on in February of 2006.
The cash could have been much more but the robbers actually ran out of time and space
to carry away all the cash.
According to reports, they had to abandon over £150 million pounds!
Here’s an interesting fact.
This robbery was masterminded by ex UFC fighter Lee Murray!
So how’d they do it?
Two of the thieves dressed as police officers.
They abducted the manager and his family before taking them to the cash depot.
Here, they tied up the staff members, and forced the manager to open cash cages.
The whole operation took slightly over an hour with none of the hostages harmed.
Too bad for the robbers, most of them were caught, with the first arrests coming just
a few days after the robbery.
A considerable part of the loot has also been recovered over the years.
2 - Berliner Volksbank Not much is known about this 2013 heist or
the people that did it!
Even the $10 million loss is just an estimate.
However, how the robbers accessed the bank is known.
They dug a 120 foot tunnel into the bank’s vault from a nearby garage they had rented.
After reaching the wall of the bank vault, they drilled a huge hole in the bank’s steel
wall!
They opened close to 100 safety deposit boxes, stealing millions of dollars in cash and other
valuables.
Their tunnel was discovered after they set it on fire.
This was done apparently to destroy any DNA evidence.
Very little is known of who did it, or what happened to the thieves!
1 - Central Bank Of Iraq While most heists depend on smarts and a bit
of violence, the Central Bank of Iraq was different.
It was more of a withdrawal ordered by the highest authority in the country back then.
Yep, Saddam Hussein.
This was a few hours before the US invasion of Iraq.
Saddam was probably sensing defeat even before the operation.
So he gave his son a signed note.
On it was an order for the bank to give his son a little over a billion dollars worth
of cash total.
900 million in US dollars and 100 million euros.
And the bank did just that.
For close to five hours, Saddam’s son along with other unnamed individuals transported
the staggering amount of US dollars to an unknown location in vehicles.
According to the New York Times, at least $650 million dollars of the stash was recovered
in one of Saddam’s former palaces.
Not much is known about the remaining amount!
Here’s what’s next!