If you have heard this, chances are, you have not been able to resist watching Money Heist.
And in that effort, you've been blown away by the beautiful story and a brilliant heist!
But what many claim to be a one-of-a-kind story is, after all, a story.
If you thought the heists at the Royal Mint and the Royal Bank of Spain were the only
robberies that could make you go “wow”, you are mistaken. Imagine if there was a real
heist that could parallel the genius of the Professor and his partners. There is! Even
before Netflix launched its streaming services in 2007, there was a heist that looked like
a work of fiction. The heist is known as Brazil’s Banco Bank Heist!
But before we begin, make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon so that
you don’t miss out on anything. Where it All Started?
While Sergio’s story in Money heist is believed to have begun with his father, real stories
are rarely as complex. The story for the heist began with its mastermind called Luis Fernando
Ribeiro. Just like the Professor couldn’t have completed his heist on his own, Ribeiro
needed people for the heist. So, he went about gathering people for the
heist. The 26-year old mastermind gathered a gang of 25 to put his brilliant plan into
action. The target for the heist was the branch for the Central Bank at Fortaleza, Brazil.
If the selection of the central bank had anything to do with a symbolic message, like in Money
Heist, we are unaware. But speculators do say the heist was meant to reveal the corruption
in the country. The Beginning
The heist took place on the 6th of August 2005. However, it would be a gross overestimation
to believe that that is where the heist really began. In fact, the heist needed a preparatory
stage. So, if you can really trace back where the heist began, it began 3 months ago – in
May 2005. The first step was renting out a small property
about a block away from the branch of the bank. The plan was to dig an underground tunnel
from this property to the bank’s vault and transport the money back to the property.
The Landscaping Company
But, how do you dig an entire tunnel without being noticed? How would you dispense tons
of dirt from the ground? Easy, you put up a front! The front for this
heist was a landscaping company. But rather than simply work like a landscaping company,
they made people believe in their front. They made people believe that the site was under
renovation. They put up a sign on the front yard saying “Synthetic Grass” and rented
a van advertising the landscaping company. They even went as far as to print leaflets
to distribute around the neighborhood and market their new company! That is why, when
everybody saw vans full of soil being removed, they did not bother to investigate.
The Tunnel
Next came the tunnel. To make sure they did not make a lot of noise, the gang decided
to stick to light tools. To dig the 13-foot hole, they used electric saws, bolt cutters,
GPS and horse shovels. Once, they had gone enough vertically, it was time to go horizontally.
So, they began digging towards the bank. Of course, it takes plenty of time to dig
when you use only light tools. That is why the plan took 3 months to implement. They
were digging a tunnel with a diameter of 28 feet and a length of 260 feet!
But how is it that the tunnel did not collapse on their heads? The answer is that they did
a very good job at building the tunnel. The tunnel was stabilized with wood paneling.
That is not it though; they had their own lighting system and even a heating system
inside the tunnel! If anything, these people were not new at
what they were doing. Later on after the heist, it was found that the work could not have
been done without engineers and expert miners. Moreover, they had no shortage of funds. It
was estimated that the tunnel cost around $200,000 to construct!
The Heist!
But at the end of it all, there was one motive for the effort – to get rich. So, on the
6th of August in 2005, they finally began the heist.
They cut through, 3.6-feet of steel reinforced concrete walls to get into the vault of the
bank. The question that anyone would ask here is: how could the bank not have any security
systems to monitor the integrity of the safe? Well, it did have those measures in place.
The probable reason that the alarms did not go off was that there was an insider involved
in the job. And in fact, there was! Once through the walls of the vault, what
came next was transporting the money. And to give you an estimate of how much money
there was, we’d rather tell you the weight. The cash weighed around 3.5 tons! This cash
was transported to the rented property from where it was picked up in vans and taken to
unknown locations. The total value of the money taken was 160
million Brazilian Reals or 70 Million US dollars. The Investigations
When the bank management arrived on Monday morning, they found the vault empty. The news
spread like wildfire. How could it be that the Central bank of Brazil was robbed and
nobody knew about it for 2 whole days? The question was a serious one and cast doubts
on the integrity of several top officials and bank management. It shook the system and
a full-fledged investigation was launched. When the police jumped into the tunnel, they
found large amounts of chalk to cover their tracks. But fingerprints were still found.
What mostly gave the heist away was the mistake of one person. One of the gang members went
out the very next day of the heist and bought cars. Not one, not two, but 10 cars and made
the payment in cash! Once the police had him, they had all the
details they needed because apparently the gang did not prepare for such a contingency
where someone could be caught. On the other hand, the police also apprehended three pickup
trucks carrying $2.13 million Brazilian Reals. Some time later, the police also recovered
another 5.22 million Reals and caught five more men who had helped dig the tunnel. A
number of arrests took place in the aftermath and the police found evidence in the form
of prepaid phone cards to track suspects. They found money in trucks, buried under houses
and several other places. But even today the only amount that could be recovered was a
total of $20 million reals! Jail Time and Kidnappings
Perhaps the little success that the police did have in the investigation was the capture
of prominent figures in robbery. These included people nicknamed the Big Boss, the Armadillo
and the German. The Armadillo was sentenced to 17 years of jail but only served two and
the German was sentenced to 70 years of jail time!
However, Big Boss managed to escape prison in 2011 and has been on the run ever since.
There was a reason he was called “Big Boss,” after all.
But there was another feature to the aftermath of the robbery. The police had discovered
about six kidnappings by April 13, 2006. These were people who had been involved in the heist,
kidnapped for ransom that their relatives paid.
In one of these kidnappings, the mastermind was also caught! His family had paid about
R$900,000 in ransom, yet Ribeiro was killed. He was shot seven times and his body was found
near Camanducaia. Justice comes to you after all!
The Aftermath
Many believe that the ingenious method that Sergio found for escaping the Royal Mint was
inspired from the Baco Bank Heist. But if you think that the real heist from Baco did
not catch the eye of the film industry, you are wrong again. The story of the heist caught
the eye of director and producer Marcos Paulo Simoes who made a movie on the heist in 2011
titled “Federal Bank Heist.” Of course, the movie did introduce its own plots, side
stories and characters. The movie went on to be a success. Just on
its opening show, there were more than 325,000 spectators that came out to see the film.
But there was more than just a movie in the aftermath. The people that escaped the heist
tried to recreate it in 2011 by digging a tunnel to the Sao Paulo branch of Brazil’s
central bank. However, they were caught this time. This is because several members of the
heist were already on the radar for law agencies. Had they succeeded in this heist, it would
have gone on to be the biggest heist ever. Before they were caught, they had already
dug a tunnel of 2000 feet! But when you have $97 million as a motivation, 2000 feet does
not seem much.
Well, that's about it. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you did then let us know by
giving it a thumbs-up. We will see you in another video so stick around folks. Until
then, take care and goodbye!