How to Rob a Bank: 7 Major Heists from History
While a bank robbery tends to be an opportunistic crime, some criminals buck the trend and devote months—if not years—of meticulous planning to attempt to pull off the perfect heist.
Here are seven bank robberies and burglaries from history that particularly stand out.
1. The Baker Street Bank Heist: Hat Tip, Sherlock Holmes
After making his debut in 1887, Sherlock Holmes has continued to inspire generations of detectives and criminals alike. Take The Red-Headed League, a short story by Holmes’s creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where the fictional consulting detective conceals himself inside a bank vault to catch thieves planning to break in via a tunnel.
In 1970, Anthony Gavin used a similar approach to break into a branch of Lloyds Bank at 187 Baker Street in London, England. He opened an account at the bank under a fake name, deposited £500 (£8,857 today, or $11,649), and rented a safety deposit box, which allowed him inside the bank to scout the premises.
A few months later, one of Gavin’s associates rented a business on the same street as the bank and their collective crew began to tunnel their way in—masking the sounds of their efforts with traffic noise. Once tunneled in, the group used explosives to breach an exterior wall of the bank’s vault, hiding inside until after police left the scene upon seeing the vault door undisturbed.
The crew escaped with approximately £500,000 (£8,857,101 today, or $11,649,000) before being caught. Gavin, Benjamin Wolfe, Reg Tucker, and Thomas Stephens all served jail time for their parts in the raid, The Daily Mail reported.
In an unusual move, details of the police investigation are under embargo at The National Archives until January 2071, according to Sky News History.
2. The United California Bank Heist: Nixon Connections
The 1972 Watergate break-in changed the course of American history. But there was another break-in that year with a Richard Nixon connection.
On 24 March 1972, a group of criminals broke into the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel, California, to steal $30 million—an alleged donation from labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa to Nixon for his re-election campaign.
Amil Dinsio, an Ohio resident, masterminded the plot after receiving a tip-off about the money at the Laguna Niguel bank. He worked with six people, including several family members. They sprayed the bank’s alarm with a material typically used to “solidify surfboards,” according to the Daily Beast, which interviewed one of the crew. Then, they used explosives to create a hole in the bank’s roof and climbed a ladder to enter the bank vault, ultimately making off with approximately $12 million.
The FBI later caught the crew by using fingerprints obtained from a house they rented while in California. But the theft, the largest bank heist in American history, later became known as “The Perfect Heist” and even inspired a movie, Finding Steve McQueen.
3. The British Bank of the Middle East: One for the Record Books
Some Guinness World Records evoke a certain feel-good sense of joy. Others, like the one set in 1976 in Lebanon, might make security practitioners feel a sense of defeat.
During a period of civil disorder in Lebanon, a guerrilla force used explosives to breach the wall between a Catholic church and the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss. They then used their access to enter the bank’s vaults and obtain safe deposit boxes. Their target was the contents of former Lebanese Finance Minister Lucien Dahdah’s safe deposit box, which was thought to be gold bars, currency, stocks, and jewels valued at $50 million, and another set of boxes with a minimum value of $20 million at the time.
The heist continues to hold the Guinness World Record for the “Greatest Robbery of Safe Deposit Boxes.” No one has been arrested, and the assets have never been recovered.
4. The Central Bank of Iraq Robbery: The Baghdad Bust
It was a matter of business continuity. In March 2003, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein knew an air war with the United States was about to begin and he might need an influx of cash to move across the country.
So, he dispatched his son—Qusay Hussein—to assemble a team to go to the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad and demand $1 billion in U.S. currency. The crew then worked to load the money into three trucks and drove away at 4 a.m. on 18 March, just hours after the United States began bombing Iraq.
While the method of withdrawal was controversial, some legal experts say that it does not qualify as a robbery.
“Saddam Hussein was an absolute dictator with personal, direct control over every aspect of the country’s governance, including the central bank and other economic institutions,” according to Military.com. “The $1 billion might even have been Saddam Hussein’s own personal funds, collected over the course of more than two decades of ruling Iraq.”
Coalition forces later were able to recover $650 million of the funds, but the rest of the money was never found.
5. The Northern Bank Robbery: Christmas Tidings
Just a few days before Christmas, groups of armed men showed up at the homes of two Northern Bank officials in Belfast and County Down, Northern Ireland. They were not there for caroling. Instead, the groups—posing as police officers—took Chris Ward, Kevin McMullan, and their families hostage, beginning an intimidation process that resulted in the theft of £26.5 million ($34.86 million).
The armed men instructed Ward and McMullan to go to work in the morning as if everything were normal. At the end of the day, however, they were instructed to let the group into the bank’s vaults, where they ultimately loaded the contents into vehicles and drove away.
“The haul included £10 million of uncirculated Northern Bank sterling banknotes, £5.5 million of used Northern Bank sterling notes, £4.5 million of circulated sterling notes issued by other banks, and small amounts of other currencies, largely euros and U.S. dollars,” according to The Guardian. “It was one of the largest amounts of money ever taken in a bank robbery in the UK.”
McMullan’s wife was able to escape from the hostage situation and alert the authorities. Initial blame was placed on the Irish Republican Army (IRA), but Sinn Féin denied the allegation. Several individuals were later arrested but released without charges, and Ward even defeated prosecution for charges that he had been an accomplice in the theft.
Police did recover £2 million in raids in Cork and Dublin, as well as $100,000 in a toilet of the police athletic association’s Newforge country club. But the location of the rest of the money and the identity of the individuals involved remains a mystery.
6. The Banco Central Heist: The Turf is Greener on the Other Side
You have to admire the commitment. In 2005 in Fortaleza, Brazil, several individuals rented a house to start their gardening business, Grama Sintética (Astro Turf). They painted the building, advertised services, and even bought a van that they customized with their marketing slogan.
Alas, it was all a front so the group could dig an elaborate 80-meter tunnel that used an air conditioning unit for ventilation, electric lights for visibility, and wood and plastic as reinforcement to connect the passage to the Central Bank and ultimately, its vault.
The fraudsters successfully breached the vault and stole 156 million reals ($70 million). The theft was only discovered when employees entered the bank around 8 a.m. on a Monday morning and discovered a circular hole in the safe and empty drink cartons around it, The Guardian reported.
Law enforcement later recovered $2 million of the stolen funds, which were found in trucks on a vehicle transporter several hundred miles away.
7. The Dar es Salaam Investment Bank Robbery: An Inside Job
Employees can be your greatest security asset. They can also leverage their insider access to inflict great harm on the company.
This was the case when three guards at the Dar es Salaam Investment Bank in the Karrada district of Baghdad, Afghanistan, stole $282 million. Bank employees discovered the theft after arriving at work one Wednesday morning in August 2007, finding the front door to the bank open and the money missing along with the guards who typically slept at the bank.
“It was not immediately clear why the bank had so much cash on hand, but Karrada is a key commercial district in Baghdad,” Reuters reported at the time. “Ever since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most transactions have been conducted in cash because of limited facilities to transfer money through banks or other financial institutions.”
The guards were never arrested, and the funds never recovered. The heist holds the Guinness World Record for the “Greatest Robbery of a Bank.”
Megan Gates is senior editor of Security Management. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
