Polizei Gelsenkirchen
Most bank robberies involve criminals making off with a relatively meager sum compared to the massive heists at the center of plenty of Hollywood productions. However, a gang of thieves in Germany managed to draw comparisons to Ocean’s 11 after spending multiple days raiding a vault before fleeing with an estimated $35 million worth of cash and other valuables.
There’s no shortage of movies that revolve around robbers who hatch an elaborate plan to stage a massive heist that requires a number of moving pieces to perfectly fall into place in order for things to go off without a hitch.
However, the typical bank robbery tends to have more in common with the crimes staged in The Town or Hell of High Water as opposed to something like Inside Man or one of the movies in the Ocean’s 11 franchise; smash-and-grab jobs that require less time and effort than sophisticated operations where extensive planning and inside information are paramount.
There are exceptions to that rule, and we were certainly treated to one based on what went down at a bank in Germany shortly after Christmas.
Thieves drilled into a bank vault in Germany and spent a weekend clearing out the contents before making off with an estimated $35 million
According to CBS News, a fire alarm was triggered at a Sparkasse bank branch in Gelsenkirchen, Germany on Monday. That led to authorities discovering a hole that had been drilled into a vault that contained thousands of safe-deposit boxes, which had been raided by criminals who entered via a hole that exited into an adjoining parking garage.
Police quickly launched an investigation and spoke to witnesses who said they’d observed several men carrying large bags in the parking garage on Saturday and Sunday. They also reviewed surveillance footage, which captured a stolen Audi RS 6 that was home to multiple passengers in masks leaving the scene on Monday morning.
A spokesperson said the heist was “professionally executed” and required a “great deal of prior knowledge…and criminal energy” to pull off while comparing it to Ocean’s 11. They added the robbers appeared to spend multiple days emptying out more than 3,0000 safe-deposit boxes while ultimately raiding 95% of the ones that were in the vault.
There’s no way to know the exact value of the cash, gold, jewelry, and other valuables that were taken, but police initially pegged the estimated value of the haul at around $35 million; each box was insured for up to $12,000, but there’s a chance some of them could have contained significantly more.
Police in Gelsenkirchen were forced to do crowd control after people who were potentially impacted flooded the bank in search of answers after the heist came to their attention, and they have not said if they have any leads or suspects as of this writing.