it's january 13 2006 a beautiful summer
day in buenos aires argentina
when a call went out to local police at
12 38 p.m
that banco rio was being robbed located
in a serene
rich neighborhood in argentina's capital
the prestigious bank contained a fortune
in its vaults
police officers arrived at the scene to
discover that four thieves and 23
hostages were inside
they secured the perimeter guarding the
only two possible exits from the bank
after communicating and negotiating with
the robbers throughout most of the
afternoon
the thieves suddenly went silent at 7 pm
police officers broke into bunco rio
and found a confounding scene the
hostages were alive and well
almost 150 safety deposit boxes were
forced open and empty to their contents
and the robbers were gone no sign of the
thieves could be found no windows were
broken and the exits had been watched by
police the whole time
how did these thieves get away with
what's become known as the robbery of
the century
how did they disappear under the careful
watch of more than 100 police officers
we dug deep into this infamous
argentinian bank heist to find out
bonco rio now known as banco santander
rio was one of argentina's leading
financial institutions
with branches throughout the country one
of its branches was nestled in the calm
wealthy neighborhood of san ysidro in
buenos aires northridge suburbs
how well off was sanisitro well the
neighborhood now has two golf courses a
sailing club and a jockey club
you can almost see the residents
clutching their pearls in 2016 argentina
was already no stranger to infamous bank
robberies
in fact the heist had happened a few
years earlier and had left the nation
reeling and as it turns out
inspired the heist of bancorio in 1999
thieves had broken into a bank in romajo
argentina
and taken hostages in order to negotiate
their freedom from police
the robbers tried to leave the bank
using the hostages as shields
and police opened fire killing one of
the robbers but also
two innocent hostages as though the
tragic event wasn't enough of a pr
nightmare for the police the whole bank
heist had been shown on live tv
via the many news cameras at the scene
most argentinians had seen both the
robbery and the killings go down in real
time
the nation was in shock as a result of
the ramazo case police in the 2006 banco
rio heist
were more reluctant to take drastic
actions when they arrived at the scene
of a bank robbery in progress
that warm january day with even more
news cameras trained on the hostage
situation at bancorio
police were going to move as carefully
as possible then again they weren't in a
rush because they thought they had the
thieves trapped and surrounded
over 100 officers had shown up at the
scene in every vantage point to the bank
that wasn't occupied by a news
photographer was occupied by a sniper
the two bank exits were covered where
could the thieves go
one of the robbers inside who bypassed
several cool argentinian names to
codename himself
walter instead was negotiating the
release of hostages with the police
the thieves let the bank's security
guard walk out the door unharmed
then a young man and then a young woman
as well it seemed like things were going
well and the robbers were playing along
with the cops
walter who had been given the nickname
of the man in the gray suit seemed to be
in a strangely happy mood given the
gravity of the situation
he and the other thieves were treating
the hostage as well at one point they
sang happy birthday to one of the bank
employees after discovering it was the
man's birthday
which is more than you remembered to do
for most of your friends last year
without facebook reminding you
later on around 3 30 p.m walter called
police to complain that the 23 remaining
hostages
were hungry and they'd like some pizza
after this call the line went silent
what was happening inside bancorio for
three hours with walter having ghosted
them the police had no idea what to do
did they barge in putting the hostages
in danger and risking another romyo-like
situation
like an edx they kept trying to contact
walter even after several missed calls
finally special forces lined up and
forced their way in to discover a truly
unbelievable situation
23 hostages were being held or had been
locked into three separate floors
the lobby the mezzanine and the basement
of the conference room
the thieves were nowhere to be found
police even double checked to see if
they were hiding among the hostages
but could not find them when they
entered the basement they realized what
the thieves had really been after
out of the 400 reinforced steel safe
deposit boxes in the basement
143 had been cracked open why didn't the
thieves steal
cash from the bank instead well most
argentinians at the time were pretty
distrustful of the country's banking
system
during the 2001 economic crisis in
argentina the banking system had
collapsed
wiping out the fortunes of those who had
most of their money in bank accounts
viewing money held in bank accounts as
suspiciously as most people view bitcoin
today
argentinians instead decided they'd only
use the banks for their safe deposit
boxes
which couldn't be wiped out in the event
of a crisis and these safeguarded boxes
argentinians piled in their cash
jewelry and other valuable items that
they could always reclaim in the event
of an emergency
given that san ysidro was an
exceptionally rich neighborhood
the safe deposit boxes of this
particular branch of bungal rio
contained an immense amount of wealth
after the officers found so many of the
boxes forced open they also found the
only few pieces of evidence
the thieves had left behind a battery
pack a tool that the police assumed had
been used to crack open the boxes
and a row of toy guns that's right the
robbers had conducted this epic bank
heist without even using real weapons
the last item police found was perhaps
the most perplexing and obnoxious piece
of evidence
the robbers trying to make some sort of
poetic statement left behind a note that
read
in a neighborhood of rich people without
weapons or grudges it's just money
not love argentinians throughout the
country lacking netflix at the time had
been watching the whole robbery unfold
for hours from their televisions
and now saw that the thieves had pulled
off an impossible escape as well
public opinions and rumors in argentina
almost immediately depicted the robbers
as robin hood-like folk heroes
after all they had stolen from the rich
hadn't harmed anyone and given the money
to
well i mean it seemed like they've given
it to themselves but still
their heist was somewhat ingenious so
who was at the center of it all
and how had they executed and gotten
away with such a perfect heist
well the mastermind behind the robbery
of the century turned out to be a man
named fernando arajo
you see the ramayana bank heist had made
an impression on araujo
who thought that the robbers had almost
pulled off the perfect heist
but botched it all up when they tried to
leave one day when arajo was a few bong
hits deep and talking to a dear friend
he thought of the obvious what if the
robbers never had to leave what if
instead they disappeared through a hole
arajo's friend sebastian garcia bolster
agreed that this sounded like a crazy
yet perfect plan
however he didn't pay his friends theory
much attention as bolster was neither a
criminal or in any dire financial
straits
also most people don't take grandstoned
plans seriously
araujo and bolster had grown up together
in an upper middle class neighborhood
also located
in the northern suburbs of buenos aires
and while around host sometimes dabbled
in hobbies on the wrong side of the law
while stare enjoyed a completely legal
lifestyle volstear had a wife and a
child and was mechanically inclined
repairing mostly small engines for money
and tinkering around with inventions
aurajo on the other hand had a very
impulsive and somewhat eccentric
lifestyle
teaching martial arts occasionally to
pay the bills while also cultivating
marijuana for money
he was a free-spirited artist who was
dealing with a recent breakup as many
free-spirited artists do
mellow dramatically he decided he needed
to remove the world from his personal
space
so he blacked out the windows of his
loft according to others araujo ate
relatively little and slept whenever the
mood hit him
frequently high on weed permanently
underfed and presumably lacking a whole
lot of vitamin d
oraho was drawn towards stranger and
stranger ideas his biggest obsession
bank robberies apparently araujo
voraciously consumed any and all media
involving bank robbers from movies and
shows to documentaries of real life
heists his goal was to observe the
mistakes other
fictional and real robbers made and used
these observations to plan out the
perfect heist
in 2004 araujo finally realized that he
had not only figured out a plan
but also needed his friend bolster's
mechanical and technical knowledge to
help him ulster wasn't too happy about
the idea
and he knew banks were harder to break
into than most people thought as he had
worked part-time in a bank for a while
however he was also furious that his
father and grandfather had entrusted
money to banks and then lost it all
during economic downturns
so like many people he ended up hating
bankers when araujo guaranteed bolster
that no one would get hurt
in fact they wouldn't even have real
weapons ulster agreed to the plan and
got to work
so what exactly is the prep work for a
robbery of the century
thanks partly to its temperamental
weather buenos aires has plenty of storm
drains underneath the streets that lead
directly out to the river
the robbers would enter one that ran
close to the bank and then
dig up a tunnel to connect it to the
bank itself however bypassing the bank's
nighttime alarm system would be a huge
challenge
much more difficult than digging a hole
so how would the thieves turn off the
bank's alarm system
simple by not tripping it at all the
thieves would rob the safe deposit boxes
in the bank's basement in the daytime
when the alarm wasn't set
but the bank was swarmed with people how
would they enter a bank during the work
day and not draw attention to themselves
emptying the safe deposit boxes in
araho's mind the answer was even simpler
stage a fake bank robbery upstairs to
cover the real bank robbery going on in
the basement
some say the phrase it's so crazy it
just might work was born that day
the duo then proceeded to assemble a
crew of experienced thieves financiers
and misfits they'd need to pull off the
job
presumably in an ocean's 11 style
montage enter an experienced bank robber
named doc and his associate ruben
alberto de la torre
nicknamed fedo they were former members
of an argentinian group of armed bank
robbers
known unimaginatively as superbanda
another fixer and getaway driver were
added to the crew
araujo also found a financer and problem
solver in retired rich uruguayan thief
luis mario vettet cianas who invested
one hundred thousand dollars into the
operation
what did they need the money for well
bolstar had come up with a way to get
into the bank
spend a lot of time and energy tunneling
through and find a relatively
unobtrusive way to get the safe deposit
boxes open
so they wouldn't be heard from upstairs
bolster decided to rent a safe deposit
box at another bunko rio branch noted
down the brand name and ordered a few
boxes himself to find the best way to
open them
he concluded that a jackhammer punching
through the locks would do the job
and could be kept to a reasonable noise
level he built a jackhammer that could
be transported in pieces to the bank
assembled there and then taken apart
however as anyone who's seen the italian
job or almost any heist movie knows
getting a lot of valuable heavy goods
out of the location you're robbing
presents its own challenge since the
thieves were going to drop back down
into water filled trains getting the
goods into zodiac boats seemed like a
good idea
but the water level was usually too low
to hold up the loaded down boats
however since bolster couldn't make it
rain no more puns we swear
he naturally decided he'd build a wooden
dam in his shop disassemble it and
reassemble it in the storm drain over
several days
the morning of the heist the seven men
met for coffee because apparently even
bank robbers need caffeine to start
their day
and then dispersed to start the heist of
the century whilster headed to the storm
drains to make his way toward the bank
underground
julian zayo echevarrea drove the getaway
car to a pre-arranged meeting spot
vitet and a mystery man named luis the
uruguayan
drove a stolen car to the garage under
the bank while the rest of the men drove
another stolen car to the bank itself
beto and doc headed in first with veto
waving around a toy gun he had stolen
from his nine-year-old son that morning
shockingly this worked and everyone in
the bank immediately dropped to the
floor
left another stolen car outside the bank
purposely to make it look like a getaway
vehicle so police would think they'd
found the robber's escape plan
araujo walked into the bank in a
baseball cap ski mask long blonde wig
sunglasses and
how he managed to avoid weird looks on
the sidewalk before entering is anyone's
guess
meanwhile bolstered reached the end of
the tunnel he had dug and was just
chilling in the dark underneath the bank
dock went down broke the basement wall
separating the bank from bolster's
tunnel and led full stair in to help
with the robbery
unbeknownst to anyone inside the bank
this was because luis sinbedo had
already subdued and isolated the
hostages
vitet then took on the persona of walter
to deal with the cops that had just
arrived
in order to make the police believe that
the robbers had been caught in the heist
gone wrong
rauho's plan was somewhat brilliant the
thieves were basically
staging a visible botched bank robbery
upstairs to cover the invisible robbery
happening in the basement
vit even released a few hostages one
after the other to make the police think
they'd had the upper hand
and could get the rest of the hostages
through negotiation alone
the whole crew had been told they had
two hours to get in and out
volstear assembled his jackhammer like
contraption in 20 minutes
and spent another hour and a half
opening safe deposit boxes after viet
got the signal from rahul to come
downstairs
he told the cops to order pizza and then
went down in the basement telling the
hostages if they moved they'd be killed
beto and vitiette helped bolster stuff
the valuables into bags while aurojo and
doc
sprayed bleach to destroy any dna and
threw around fistfuls of hair from a
barbershop floor
to confuse the police even further as
you do in a bank heist
as the men exited through bolsters
tunnel they cleaned up all the evidence
of the broken wall
and hid the hole behind a large heavy
cabinet the men
piled into the zodiacs and even though
the motor malfunctioned araujo had
brought paddles
the men paddled to the getaway van 10
blocks away
used a previously tested pulley system
to haul the bags up from the storm drain
and drove off all while police still
thought they had bank robbers surrounded
in bancorio
when the police officers eventually
stormed the bank the robbers were
already home
watching the report on live tv finally
eating their long-awaited pizza
bolster being one of the smartest of the
group and figuring credit cards would be
the most useless of the valuables as
they could be cancelled
scattered all the cards all over various
streets far away from the gang's actual
route out of the bank
this not only left no clear trail toward
the robbers it also created a lot of
false leads for police
as every time a passerby would pick up a
credit card and try to use it
the police would have to hunt them down
and see if they were involved
frustrated tired and with no viable
leads the police like any love is blind
contestant
realized they'd been publicly humiliated
on tv
so wait if the robbers got away with it
how do we know the names and stories of
everyone involved in the crime
well as it usually happens in life even
the most carefully thought out plan can
be undone with one
dumb egocentric mistake when beto
brought home the money he bragged to his
wife alicia
that he and his friends had robbed banco
rio considering beto had a habit of
frequently cheating on alicia disclosing
this information so readily probably
wasn't the best idea
when some of the valuables went missing
from the house beto and alicia had a
huge fight
that led to the unraveling of the whole
heist sure enough
five weeks later beto got pulled over by
police while out driving with his
mistress
apparently alicia told him the whole
story of the heist and identified beto
rajo poster vitet and zayo echevarria as
robbers as well
as she had seen them work on the getaway
van in her garage
alicia didn't point fingers toward doc
in the mysterious uruguay and luis
as she had never seen them in her house
and they presumably hadn't cheated on
her
the men were all tried and sent to jail
though most have been released by now
and are presumably still pissed at beto
for being unable to keep it in his pants
however their daring heist lives on in
infamy in argentina
do you think you could commit the
perfect crime if so please let us know
by revealing your identity and full plan
in detail in the comments section below
or better yet if you'd like to stay out
of jail go discover another unbelievable
story
or check out this other video instead