MOST AMBITIOUS HEISTS AND ROBBERIES IN HISTORY

THE BRUSSELS AIRPORT DIAMOND HEIST

On February 18, 2013, eight masked gunmen robbed a

Switzerland-bound plane containing around $50 million in

diamonds, property of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre.

The team used two vehicles with police markings to

approach the plane where the gems were being transferred

from a Brink’s armoured van. The whole job took about

20 minutes, and the thieves took about 130 bags of gems.

THE SONALI BANK HEIST

On January 26, 2014, a Sonali Bank branch in Kishoreganj

was robbed of 169 million Bangladeshi taka after two men

tunnelled their way into the vault from an abandoned

room of a neighbouring house. Unfortunately for the

robbers, the Hollywood-style heist didn’t have a happy

ending even though it was almost perfectly executed:

the mastermind behind the biggest bank robbery in

Bangladesh history was eventually arrested.

THE BRITISH BANK OF THE MIDDLE EAST ROBBERY

On January 20, 1976, a group associated with Yasser Arafat’s

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) exploited the chaos

of the country’s civil war and broke into the British Bank of the

Middle East in Beirut. The robbers blasted through a wall

which the bank shared with a Catholic church then cracked

the bank’s vault and plundered its contents (anywhere from

$20 million to $50 million in gold bars, Lebanese and foreign

currency, stocks and jewels). Today the loot is valued at

more than three times what it was worth in 1976.

THE 1798 BANK OF PENNSYLVANIA HEIST

Known as America’s first bank robbery, the 1798 Bank of

Pennsylvania heist occurred in the predawn hours of

September 1, 1798. $162,821 was stolen from the bank,

which may not seem like much, but back then, that

was a lot of money.

THE CHELEMBRA BANK ROBBERY

The Chelembra Bank robbery in Kerala, India is considered one

of the biggest bank robberies in Indian history. In the early

hours of December 30, 2007, the robbers made a hole in

the floor of the Bank of Kerala and got away with eighty

kilograms of gold and five million rupees, a total value of

eighty million rupees. The culprits were arrested

two months later.

THE HISTORIC BANK OF AUSTRALIA ROBBERY

The Bank of Australia robbery was the first bank robbery in

Australia. On September 14, 1828, a gang of five robbers

tunnelled through a sewage drain into the vault of the

Bank of Australia and stole about £14,000 in promissory

notes and coins. Unfortunately for the gang, the theft was

discovered the next day and all five members were arrested.

THE EPIC STEPHANE BREITWIESER HEISTS

Between 1995 and 2001, Stéphane Breitwieser stole 230

works of art from museums and exhibitions, approximately

thirty-eight objects a year. In the space of six years he

compiled an impressive art collection with an estimated

value of $1.4 billion. On January 7, 2005, he was

sentenced to three years in prison by a court in

Strasbourg but only served twenty-six months. He later

wrote about his exploits in Confessions of an Art Thief,

published in French in 2006.

THE PLYMOUTH MAIL TRUCK ROBBERY

On August 14, 1962, two men stopped a US Mail truck that was

on its way to deliver a shipment to the Federal Reserve Bank

in Boston. The delivery consisted of bags and pouches

containing more than $1.5 million in cash. Armed with

shotguns and aided by accomplices who were diverting

traffic away from the scene of the robbery, the thieves

got away with all the cash.

MEXICO CITY’S MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY HEIST

Back in 1985 thieves stole 140 priceless Mayan, Aztec and

other artefacts from Mexico’s world-famous National Museum

of Anthropology on Christmas Eve in the biggest heist ever

of pre-Columbian art objects. Eventually, in 1989, federal

officials recovered most of a cache of gold, jade and stone

artefacts and arrested one of two men who were accused of

staging the robbery.