From Italian Job to Ocean’s 11 --- and of course, Money Heist! The exciting escapades
of a ragtag team of thieves pulling off their outrageous plans are both exciting
and nerve-wracking at the same time! But did you know that reality is far more interesting
than fiction? Today we’re counting down the 10 most impressive criminal heists ever!
What’s up, fact-natics! This is Discovery Amuse, serving up your daily dose of the most
outrageous, outlandish, and out-of-this-world fun facts!
Don’t blink because our number one entry will keep you on the edge of your seat!
On with the countdown!
#10: Dan Cooper
This air pirate could definitely give Danny Ocean a run for his money!
On November 24, 1971, a commercial flight to Seattle, Washington
was hijacked by a passenger who called himself Dan Cooper.
After announcing that he had a bomb in his briefcase, Cooper demanded $200,000 and 4
parachutes. When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker released all 36 passengers and left
with him two pilots, a flight engineer, and a flight attendant to fly with him
on the plane. He gave them instructions to fly to Mexico City under 10,000 feet,
but when the aircraft landed, everyone aboard realized that Cooper already left!
Apparently he made his escape by lowering the rear steps and jumping off the aircraft!
The heist was considered as one of the greatest unsolved cases in American history!
Keep watching because our number 1 pick involved flying choppers and sledgehammers!
#9: Great Train Robbery
This sounds like something out of a Breaking Bad episode. The fifth ep of season 5 to be exact.
In August 1963, a tampered stop signal was enough to stop
and infiltrate a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London.
Fifteen bandits headed by Bruce Reynolds did just that and bagged 2.6
million pounds --- which is roughly equal to 55 million pounds today, without the use of guns!
They went into a farm they bought two months before the heist,
where they waited until the police gave up pursuit. And what’s a bunch
of wealthy thieves going to do to pass the time? Play monopoly of course!
When the coast was clear, a guy named Mark was supposed to burn the farm down
along with other evidence, but he didn’t.
Heisenberg would’ve been pissed!
Police eventually found the farm and the monopoly board with their fingerprints.
While 11 out of the 15 perps were nabbed, most of the stolen money was never recovered.
#8: Gerald Blanchard
Before he was nabbed in 2007, this this Canadian conman managed to pull off some of the most
daring heists in history, including the time he stole from an actual palace!
In June 1998, Blanchard pretended to be a tourist when he went to the Schonbrunn
Palace in Vienna, Austria to marvel at the precious memorabilia called
Sisi Star--a hair ornament made of pearls and diamonds custom-made for Empress Elisabeth.
Little did the staff know, Blachard was already surveilling the area,
videotaping every nook and cranny of the chamber where the Sisi Star was located.
He also bought a replica of the Sisi Star at the souvenir shop.
Two days later, he managed to break into the palace by jumping off a plane and landing on the
roof of the palace through a parachute! He entered through the windows he had previously opened,
used a butter knife to bypass the alarm system,
and replaced the real Sisi Star with the giftshop knock-off!
Talk about a royal theft!
#7: Pharmacy Robbery 2016 was off to a rocky
start for SuperValue Pharmacy owners in Texas when two heavyset men ransacked their place!
Surveillance cameras caught the two thieves crawling across the pharmacy’s floor during
the early hours of 2016, successfully avoiding motion detectors and breaking into a safe.
One of them even used cough syrup to put out a small flame that erupted as
he drilled into the safe that held narcotics such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine.
The men ultimately got away with about $1 million worth of
pharmaceuticals without sounding the alarm. No official arrest was made for this heist,
though several pharmacy robbers have been apprehended over time.
#6: Frank Abegnale
He’s no Leonardo DiCaprio, but Frank Abagnale is infamous
enough to deserve his own Hollywood movie! The American con man and impostor lived his
best capers when he was 15 to 21 years old. He assumed several identities including a pilot,
doctor, teacher’s assistant, and lawyer. One of his most memorable scams included him standing
beside a money deposit box, disguised as a security guard, with a sign that said
"Out of Service, Place deposits with security guard on duty."
It was so ingeniously simple that it worked! He also managed to defraud several banks,
fly more than a million miles, and commit fraud in 12 countries. Even after being arrested in 1969,
he’s managed to escape twice. He’s too good at what he did that he was eventually invited to join
the FBI as a security consultant and lecturer! And if his names sounds familiar, that’s because
his criminal hijinks inspired the movie “Catch Me If You Can” wherein his character was played by no
less than Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio! #5: Banco Central
Move over “The Professor” because these Brazilian band of burglars are the real deal!
In August 2005, robbers were able to successfully break into the Banco Central in Brazil-without
raising a single alarm—and managed to take with them more than 164 million Brazilian Real,
or approximately $71.6 million!
It was easily the biggest heist in the country, and the thieves chose to steal old bills.
Because the bank had no record of their serial numbers, the money was virtually untraceable!
The most ingenious part of their heist was actually what they did to prepare for it --- three
months prior, the robbers rented a commercial property two blocks away from the bank. Under the
guise of a landscaping company, they proceeded to dig a 256-ft. tunnel leading to the bank.
13 suspects have since been caught, but some,
including the alleged mastermind, have reportedly been killed or kidnapped.
#4: Antwerp Diamond Heist
With 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors and a lock with 100 million
possible combinations, the Antwerp Diamond Center in Belgium was deemed
practically impenetrable… until Italian Leonardo Notarbartolo came along and proved otherwise.
In February 2003, Notarbartolo’s team of five organized the largest diamond heist in history!
Months before D-day, Notarbartolo rented an office in the Diamond Centre and posed as a
diamond merchant. During that time, he and his team pulled off some smart tactics like
hiding a small camera to record the password that the guards used, practiced with a full-size
replica of the vault, and used hairspray on the motion sensors which temporarily disabled them!
Dubbed as the ‘Heist of the Century’,
the diamonds and jewelry Notarbartolo’s team stole were worth a cool $100 million!
But 4 years of planning were wasted in their getaway, when one of his associates
had a panic attack and threw the evidence on the side of the road. The mastermind was
eventually caught and sentenced to 10 years in prison, while his accomplices received 5.
However, the diamonds were never recovered.
#3: Society General Heist
It’s better late than never when it comes to reaping your just desserts.
France’s biggest heist happened on July 16, 1976 when the Society General, the 3rd
largest bank in the city of Nice, was robbed on Bastille Day weekend.
In October of the same year, Albert Spaggiari was arrested,
and he confessed to stealing an estimated 30-100 million francs worth of valuables.
For the longes time, it seemed like a closed case, until a notorious French gangster
resurfaced as the real mastermind in 2018, 40 years after the crime.
Jacques Cassandri couldn’t help but brag about his adventures during his heyday that in 2010,
he wrote the book “The Truth about the Nice Heist” under the pseudonym D’Amigo.
It would’ve passed off as a good fiction novel, but his children admitted that the
74-year-old Jacques would frequently brag about his big score back in the old days.
While he couldn’t be legally tried by virtue of statute of limitations, Cassindri was eventually
prosecuted for money laundering. He served a short but long overdue 30-month jail sentence.
#2: The British Bank of the Middle East
In January 1976, in the middle of war-torn Beirut, Lebanon,
a group of 8 heavily armed men dressed as soldiers blasted through the British Bank of Middle East.
Despite the crudeness of their plan, the weapons they carried were highly advanced,
and they knew just the right amount of firepower to bore a hole right
beside the vault without bringing the bank down.
They took more than 200 million dollars and up to this day,
no one was held accountable and none of the loot was ever retrieved.
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#1: G4S Cash Depot
Back in September 2009, a group of thieves broke into the G4S Cash Depot in Stockholm, Sweden,
making a grand entrance from a stolen helicopter
and breaking through the skylight using sledgehammers!
Known as the first robbery involving a helicopter in Swedish history, the aircraft managed to hover
around for 15 minutes, giving the thieves enough time to rappel down and hoist the money up.
Where were the police in all this, you ask? They were busy battering their way into the
depot. Authorities could have pursued the thieves with their own helicopters, but suspected bombs
were found in the aircraft hangar, in bags labeled with “bomb.” Turned out, they were just decoys!
The entire heist was well-choreographed --- they had intimidating automatic weapons,
they spread out spikes around the depot so that police couldn’t get through, and they made a
clean getaway by strategically placing sets of real and fake explosives around the area!
It was an epic but anticlimactic heist, ending with the arrest of 10 men,
7 of whom were convicted for stealing an equivalent of $5.3 million.
So, which of these heist jobs impressed you the most? Let us know in the comments section below!
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extra cash online doing what you do best! Awesome, right!
And if you want more tales from the wild side,
then check out our list of the 15 Prison escapes That Went Horribly Wrong!
‘Til then, stay clever, fact-natics! And see you in the next video!