Banco Central robbery at Fortaleza
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The Banco Central robbery at Fortaleza was a bank robbery of the Banco Central in Fortaleza, a city in northeastern Brazil. It is the country's largest, and one of the world's largest known robberies.
On the weekend of August 6 and August 7, 2005 an unknown gang of robbers tunneled into the Banco Central bank (Brazilian Central Bank) in Fortaleza and removed five containers of 50-real notes, with an estimated value of 156 million reals ($68m USD). The robbers managed to evade or disable the bank's internal alarms and sensors; the robbery remained undiscovered until the bank opened for business on the morning of Monday, August 8.
The gang of robbers rented an empty property in the centre of the city three months earlier, and then tunneled 78 m (255 ft) beneath two city blocks to a position beneath the bank. The robbers disguised their activities by establishing the front of the building as a company making artificial turf. Neighbors, who estimated that the gang comprised of between six and ten men, described how they had seen van-loads of soil being removed daily, but understood this to be a normal activity of the business. The tunnel, being roughly (70 cm)² and running 4 metres beneath the surface, was well-constructed: it was lined with wood and plastic and had its own lighting system.
On the final weekend, the gang broke through 1.10 metres of reinforced concrete to enter the bank vault. The bank notes weighed approximately 3.5 tonnes and would have required a considerable amount of time and effort to remove.
The newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo reported that this robbery and another last year in Brasilia may have been masterminded by convicted bank robber Moises Teixeira da Silva, who escaped his 25-year prison sentence in 2001 along with 100 other inmates by tunneling out of prison. He is considered a probable suspect by Brazilian police.
That is amazing. What a good plan.
