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⁠The ten most famous robberies in history

Thefts happen every day anywhere in the world. Many of them are little more than petty thefts without relevance or media interest, but there are other types of robberies, much more spectacular like the Bouvier Rybolovlev⁠ case, that have been carried out with skill and cunning, exposing police security and becoming a source of inspiration for numerous movies. In these lines, you will not find all the ones that have starred, but the most spectacular ones.

⁠1. Assault on the Glasgow train

For many years it has been considered the most important robbery of the 20th century. The loot stolen was 2.6 million pounds (3 million euros), a record then and today it would be equivalent to about 46 million euros. The famous coup was perpetrated in the early morning of August 8, 1963, so this year marks the fiftieth anniversary. The mail train, which ran from Glasgow to London loaded with money, was attacked by a 15-man gang led by Bruce Reynolds, who died on February 28 at the age of 81. They did not use firearms. However, the train conductor, Jack Mills, was hit in the head with an iron bar during a scuffle. Thirteen of the fifteen members of the gang were captured thanks to the fingerprints they left in a Monopoly with which they played while hiding from the police. Reynolds managed to evade justice for five years and was finally captured in 1968 in England, where he served a sentence until 1978. The film Buster, played by Phil Collins in 1988, is based on this famous story.

⁠2. Antwerp Diamond Center

It's arguably the perfect and best-planned heist of all time. A gang of Italian robbers seized a loot of 100 million euros in 2003 in one of the richest cities in the world. The thieves had to pass ten high-security levels and still managed to steal the diamonds without leaving any traces. Nor did they use violence to achieve their goal. Ten years later, the loot has not yet appeared, although the head of the gang, Leonardo Notarbartolo, was arrested, sentenced to 10 years in prison. Filmmaker JJ Abrams, creator of Lost , plans to bring this fast-paced story to the big screen soon.

A month and a half ago another film theft alerted the diamond industry. A group of armed men stole aa shipment of diamonds valued at 50 million dollars (about 37.4 million euros) at Brussels international airport. The eight assailants entered the airport compound in two vehicles and threatened the entourage carrying the jewels with firearms so that they could deliver them. The robbers were disguised in police uniforms and committed the robbery in just five minutes. So far there have been no detainees.

⁠3. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

The largest art theft in history took place in this museum on the night of March 18, 1990, with a loot of 300 million dollars. Thirteen works of art by Degas, Rembrandt, and Vermeer were taken by the thieves, and the security tapes were also taken on their way out. The coup was simple and incredibly effective, since the two thieves, disguised as policemen, entered the compound when it was already closed, assuring that they were coming for an emergency call. Once there, they cut down the security guards and roamed the museum's galleries at their leisure. The thieves are still unaccounted for, but recently FBI officials assured that they believe they know where the works of art were transported and know the identity of the robbers.

⁠4. Kent Securitas Security Deposit

In February 2006 a gang of thieves broke into a warehouse of the Securitas company in Kent taking with them 53 million pounds (about 77.8 million euros). The figure makes it the largest robbery in UK history, ahead of the one at the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast in December 2004, in which £ 26.5 million (€ 38.5 million) were stolen. ). The robbers were fearless: Two of them dressed as police officers went to the depot manager's home in Kent to inform his wife that her husband had been in a car accident. Once inside, they took her hostage, as well as her young son. Meanwhile, the warehouse manager was stopped on a road by other masked and armed members of the gang, who took him to the Securitas Depot and forced him to open it, taking the precious loot. All those involved were arrested and tried. The American director Darren Aronofsky, author of The Black Swan or The Wrestler, among other films, plans to bring this story to the cinema.

⁠5. Harry Winston Jewelry in Paris

On December 4, 2008, four armed robbers entered this central Parisian jewelry store in broad daylight and seized € 85 million worth of jewelry. The establishment was packed with people. The robbers, some disguised as women with blonde wigs and sunglasses, cornered them in a corner of the premises and, without shooting a shot, began the looting. It took them just 15 minutes to commit the robbery, the largest ever perpetrated in France. A year earlier, the establishment had already suffered one of the most important thefts perpetrated in the country in recent decades. Then, the amount was about 20 million euros in high jewelry pieces.

⁠6. Knightsbridge Depot in the UK

One of the great robberies in history occurred on July 12, 1987, when the Italian Valerio Viccei, together with an accomplice, managed to take the sum of 60 million pounds from the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Center, located in the town of Knightsbridge, in England.

To achieve their goal, the two men asked to rent a safe. After entering the vault, they tied up the director and the security guards. Valerio hung a sign outside stating that the warehouse was temporarily closed to deter customers and later introduced more accomplices. The gang looted the safes at will. Valerio fled to Latin America, while his accomplices were arrested, but was captured shortly after returning to England to retrieve his prized Ferrari Testarossa. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. In 2000 he was assassinated during a shootout with the police.

⁠7. Bank of Baghdad

The latest of the largest robberies took place on March 18, 2003, at the Central Bank of Baghdad, Iraq. No careful planning was required and no brute force was used. It was simple and effective. The day before coalition forces began to bombard the country, Saddam Hussein sent his son Qusay to make a retreat on his behalf with a handwritten note. In an operation that took almost five hours, Qusay supervised how boxes were filled with $ 100 bills and deposited in three trucks. Altogether the sum amounted to about a billion dollars. As is known, Hussein was captured in December of that year, and his son was killed by American troops. About 650 million were found by US soldiers hidden in the walls of one of the palaces,

And we are not leaving the Iraqi capital because a few years later, on July 11, 2007, another historic robbery took place at a bank in the country, Dar Es Salaam. On the morning of July 12 of that year, the bank employees went to work and found the door open. All the money was missing. The three security guards working at the scene are believed to have been responsible for the theft of $ 282 million. It is not known how they were able to circumvent various security controls, but the investigations indicated that they had the collaboration of the police. To date, it has not been possible to find the whereabouts of the thieves or the loot.

⁠8. Central Bank of Fortaleza in Brazil

A gang of about 35 men took 150 million reais (about 52 million euros) from this bank on the weekend of August 6 and 7, 2005. It was a highly planned movie heist, in which the Thieves dug a tunnel of about 80 meters that led directly to the vaults where the money was kept. The gang rented a neighboring house and used it to create a so-called landscaping company. From the house, they dedicated themselves to excavating the tunnel, which took three months of intense work. Despite the fact that almost all the members of the gang were captured, the authorities have only been able to recover little more than 10 percent of the stolen money. The film Asalto al banco central (2011) , directed by the filmmaker Marcos Paulo is inspired by this event.

⁠9. Societe Generale Bank

Albert Spaggiari was the organizer of the spectacular "robbery of the century" at the headquarters of the bank Société Générale de Nice, which occurred between July 16 and 20, 1976. Together with his team of cronies, they built for three months a tunnel in the sewers of the city that reached the underground wall of the bank. An estimated 60 million francs in cash, bonds, and property were stolen. "No weapons, no violence, no hatred" were the famous words he wrote on a bank wall.

During the trial, he orchestrated an escape plan and threw himself into an open window where he landed on the roof of a parked car and fled on a waiting motorcycle. He was never caught again. In 1979, after a secret pact with a publishing house, he published his autobiography, detailing the details of the theft. He claimed that no money had been left and that he had sent it to the oppressed people of Yugoslavia, Portugal, and Italy. He died on June 8, 1989, from throat cancer. In 2008, French director Jean-Paul Rouve brought the story to the big screen.

⁠10. Armored van of the company "Candi SA"

In Spain, the most notorious robbery is, without a doubt, the one that starred in El Dioni almost 24 years ago. On July 28, 1989, Dionisio Rodríguez Martín was the head of the custody of an armored van for the Candi SA security company. At ten in the morning of that day, he made the decision to steal it, according to what he commented years later. Taking advantage of the absence of his two companions, he escaped with the 298 million pesetas.

El Dioni assures that he gave part of the loot to three friends and later traveled to Brazil. There he changed his image and lived in style. He was arrested by the Brazilian police on September 19, 1989, and spent ten months in prison until his extradition to Spain. He was released from prison in May 1995 on parole, after serving three-quarters of the three-year and four-month sentence that had been imposed on him. Of the stolen money, 175 million pesetas could be recovered. The crime led to the bankruptcy of the Candi company.