Hi I’m Craig. Welcome to the salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube and did you know
that in 1963, a group of robbers managed to steal over £2.6 million from a Royal Mail
train heading to London? Around fifteen men detached the engine and two of the train cars
without any of the mail sorters noticing. Then, they entered one of the cars, held up
four workers, and took 120 bags of mail and money. The majority were eventually captured
and sentenced to prison. DON'T DO CRIME.
And that’s the first of many historic heists and robberies that I’m going to share with
you today. I’m not going to talk about many art heists because we’ve already done that,
so if those interest you, check out that episode here. I'm also not going to talk about the
heist that I'm planning.
In 2000, a group attempted to rob a diamond exhibition in London’s Millennium Dome.
The exhibition included the Millennium Star diamond, worth around £200 million, so if
the robbers had grabbed that and some others, it would’ve been the biggest robbery of
all time. Of ALL TIME. They dressed up as workers, drove an excavator through the dome,
then released smoke bombs. Luckily, police had already been surveilling the group, so
they were in the room dressed as cleaners and managed to capture them.
Another heist involving robbers dressed as workers was the 2011 Banco Itaú Burglary
in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The bank was being renovated, so twelve men dressed in gray uniforms and
managed to make it into the building around midnight. They took $58.5 million worth of
valuables from around 170 private strongboxes.
Another famous Brazilian heist happened at the Banco Central in Fortaleza in 2005. Robbers
stole around $95 million after spending three months tunneling underneath the bank for 78
meters.
In 2008, a man robbed an armored truck in Washington after putting an ad on Craigslist,
my list, for road maintenance workers. About twelve of them showed up to the bank, wearing
yellow vests and safety goggles. And that’s how the robber dressed to grab money from
the truck, so when authorities went looking for him...they found a bunch of men who looked
just like him. Genius. Speaking of yellow and safety goggles we don't meth around here.
In 1997, robbers stole $18.9 million from a Los Angeles Dunbar Armored truck depot.
They held up the guards during the overnight shift and stole money from the vault. By the
time they were caught in the early 2000s, $10 million was gone. Where's the money, Lebowski?
An even earlier armored car robbery occurred in 1950 at the Brinks car depot in Boston.
Eleven criminals staked out the depot for a year to determine what day it would have
the most money. Then, they stole the plans for the alarm system. They got into the counting
room, tied up the guards, and stole around $2.7 million. The robbers were caught just
days before the crime’s statute of limitations would have expired.
China’s largest bank robbery ever took place in 2007 when two managers at the Agricultural
Bank of China managed to embezzle 51 million yuan, or $6.7 million. One of them stole a
smaller amount earlier in the year -- 200,000 yuan -- And yu-wanna know what he spend it
on? Lottery tickets. And he won enough to replace the money and have some leftover.
But, when he tried to repeat the crime with a partner, they didn’t win enough, so they
kept embezzling and eventually got caught. Lesson is, work alone don't try to cooperate
with other people. Or don't do crime!
In 1987, Valerio Viccei and his gang stole from celebrities, royalty, and millionaires
by breaking into the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Centre in London. They got into the vault
by saying they wanted to rent a safe. Then, they held up the guards and used metal cutters
to steal from boxes. Viccei already had around 50 armed robberies under his belt, which helped
him bankroll a famous life of luxury. And have a nice belt.
In 2013, robbers conducted a heist at the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel and stole a
bunch of jewelry worth about $136 million. They took it from a salon in the hotel where
the guards didn’t have any weapons to fight back with. Otherwise known as, not guards.
One of the suspects was Milan Poparic, a member of the Pink Panther crime gang, since he had
just escaped from prison a few days prior. The hotel, by the way, was the setting for
Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.
Speaking of the Pink Panthers, over the course of about twenty years, they managed to steal
around £150 million. Perhaps their most famous crime was the reason they got their name -- in
1993, they stole a diamond worth £500,000 by hiding it in a jar of face cream, just
like in the Pink Panther movies.
The 2003 Antwerp diamond heist is one of the most famous heists of all time. I don't even
have to talk about it. It's too famous. Ok, in order to pull off a jewelry robbery worth
over $100 million, Leonardo Notarbartolo did a lot of homework. He rented an office in
the building he was going to rob -- the Antwerp Diamond Centre in Belgium -- for over two
years. With building access, he later had five men help him rob 123 vaults in the building,
then steal the security footage.
Another famous heist in 2003 occurred when Robert Mang stole a saltcellar from a museum
in Vienna. The sculpture was only about 10 inches long, but its estimated worth is around
$58 million since it was created by Benvenuto Cellini in the 16th century. Mang and his
group stole it from the museum at around 4am. They did set off an alarm, but the guard figured
it was a glitch and just turned it off. He's also known as not-a-guard. Three years later,
Mang turned himself in.
In 2012, a group of thieves rode into a London mall on motorcycles. They rode right up to
a jewelry store, then smashed the glass with axes and bats. They took off with over $3
million worth of jewelry. I'd like to think they were singing while they did it. Like
a musical number, the whole time. We are robbers on motorcycles, something like that.
A newsworthy 2013 heist occurred a few hours after a Justin Bieber concert in Johannesburg,
South Africa. The robbers dressed as security guards then entered through holes they carved
into the building. They then carved out a wall leading to a safe room with the cash
the stadium acquired that weekend.
In 2009, robbers landed a helicopter on the roof of a cash depot in Stockholm, Sweden.
They used explosives to get into the building and started loading bags of money into the
helicopter. Authorities never figured out how much money they’d stolen, but within
a year, the thieves had been caught and sent to prison.
Speaking of crimes involving air travel, there was a famous plane hijacking in 1971 on an
aircraft travelling from Portland to Seattle. A man (with the alias Dan Cooper) announced
he had a bomb and demanded $200,000. He was trying to sell a bomb for $200,000? Oh! Authorities
on the ground gathered his money and the plane landed. He received it, then told the pilot
to fly him to Mexico. He parachuted from the sky and was never seen again.
In 2005, Heather Tallchief turned herself in after around 12 years on the run for robbing
the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas for $2.5 million. She was a driver for an armored
car company and just took off with the cash. She fled to Europe where she couldn’t even
spend the money she’d stolen. Because you know you can't drive an armored car across
the ocean, she just fell right into the ocean that's probably what happened.
In 1303, a wool merchant named Richard of Pudlicott managed to steal the wardrobe treasury
of King Edward I from Westminster Abbey. It’s estimated that the items he stole were worth
100,000 pounds, which wasn’t too shabby in the 14th century. He was eventually caught
and hanged. I mean he'd be dead anyway, that was a long time ago.
In 1671, Irishman Thomas Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels, probably because his
position as Parliamentarian in Ireland was taken away after the English monarchy was
restored in 1660. Although his plan of dressing as a priest and taking the jewels backfired,
he impressed Charles II who made Blood a member of his court.
In 2005, a group of men stole a KLM cargo truck and drove it to Amsterdam’s Schiphol
Airport where they stopped another car on the cargo terminal carrying uncut diamonds.
They took the diamonds, which were worth around $118 million.
Another airport heist occurred at JFK International Airport in 1978. Is there anywhere a heist
hasn't occurred?! The thieves stole about $5 million cash from a vault in the airport.They
had an insider helping them out, so they knew how to avoid setting off the alarm. They then
forced one of the employees to open the vault and took bags of cash, leaving through the
cargo terminal.
Another airport that has seen heists is the Heathrow Airport where the Brink’s-MAT warehouse
was robbed in 1983. Robbers got in thanks to a connection with a security guard. They
planned to steal around £3 million, but some gold bullion caught their eye and they ended
up taking it, which was worth like £26 million. If you see gold bullion, take it. That's the
lesson here.
A group of thieves stole $30 million worth of cash and items from a safe deposit vault
at United California Bank in the seventies. The crime took place over multiple nights
and involved avoiding a bunch of alarms and dropping down into the bank’s vault. One
of the deposit boxes that was robbed reportedly belonged to President Nixon. The FBI managed
to catch the thieves because they committed an almost identical crime in Ohio and the
FBI tracked down their headquarters and found fingerprints on their dishes. That's why I
wear gloves.
Finally, I return to the salon to tell you that in 2009, two men pretended to be customers
at the Graff Diamonds in London and managed to steal $65 million worth of jewelry. They
were wearing prosthetics that took around four hours to apply. Luckily, police managed
to find a cell phone in one of their abandoned getaway cars and were able to catch them.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube, which is made with the help of all these nice
people, that I'm going to rob later. Don’t rob anyone! It’s rude. Bye!