Insane Way Bank Robbers Executed Perfect Bank Heist (Stole $20 Million)

It’s January 13, 2006, a beautiful summer. day in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when a call went out to local police at 12:38 PM that, Banco Rio was being robbed. Located in a serene, rich neighborhood in. Argentina’s capital, the prestigious bank contained a fortune in its vaults. Police officers arrived at the scene to discover, that four thieves and twenty three hostages were inside. They secured the perimeter, guarding the only, two possible exits from the bank. After communicating and negotiating with the, robbers throughout most of the afternoon, the thieves suddenly went silent. At 7 PM, police officers broke into Banco Rio and found a confounding scene: the hostages were alive and well, almost one hundred and. fifty safety deposit boxes were forced open and emptied of their contents, and the robbers...were. gone. No sign of the thieves could be found, no windows were broken, and the exits had been watched by police the whole time. How did these thieves get away with what has. become known as “the robbery of the century”? How did they disappear under the careful watch of more than one hundred police officers? We dug deep into this infamous Argentinean, bank heist to find out. Banco Rio, now known as Banco Santander Rio,, was one of Argentina’s leading financial institutions, with branches throughout the, country. One of its branches was nestled in the calm,. wealthy neighborhood of San Isidro, in Buenos Aires’ northern suburbs. How well off was San Isidro? Well, the neighborhood now has two golf courses,. a sailing club, and a jockey club. You can almost see the residents clutching. their pearls. In 2006, Argentina was already no stranger to infamous bank robberies. In fact, a heist that had happened a few years, earlier had left the nation reeling, and as it turns out, inspired the heist of Banco, Rio. In 1999, thieves had broken into a bank in. Ramallo, Argentina, and taken hostages in order to negotiate their freedom from police. The robbers tried to leave the bank using, the hostages as shields and police opened fire, killing one of the robbers, but also, two innocent hostages. As though the tragic event wasn’t enough, of a PR nightmare for the police, the whole bank heist had been shown on live TV via the, many news cameras at the scene. Most Argentinians had seen both the robbery. and the killings go down in real time. The nation was in shock. As a result of the Ramallo case, police in the 2006 Banco Rio heist were more reluctant to take drastic action when they arrived at, the scene of a bank robbery in progress. That warm January day, with even more news, cameras trained on the hostage situation at Banco Rio, police were trying to move as carefully as possible. Then again, they weren’t in a rush, because, they thought they had the thieves trapped and surrounded. Over 100 officers had shown up at the scene,. and every vantage point to the bank that wasn’t occupied by a news photographer was occupied by a sniper. The two bank exits were covered. Where could the thieves go? One of the robbers inside, who bypassed several, cool Argentinian names to codename himself Walter instead, was negotiating the release. of hostages with police. The thieves let the bank’s security guard, walk out the door unharmed, then a young man, then a young woman as well. It seemed like things were going well and. the robbers were playing along with the cops. Walter, who had been given the nickname of. “The Man in the Gray Suit”, seemed to be in a strangely happy mood given the gravity of his situation. He and the other thieves were treating the. hostages well. At one point, they sang “Happy Birthday”. to one of the bank employees after discovering it was the man’s birthday, which is more than you remembered to do for most of your friends last year without Facebook reminding, you. Later on, around 3:30 PM, Walter called police, to complain that the 23 remaining hostages were hungry and they’d like some pizza. After this call, the line went silent. What was happening inside Banco Rio? For three hours, with Walter having ghosted. them, the police had no idea what to do. Do they barge in, putting hostages in danger and risking another Ramallo-like situation? Like a needy ex, they kept trying to contact. Walter even after several missed calls. Finally, special forces lined up and forced, their way in to discover a truly unbelievable situation. Twenty three hostages were being held or had, been locked into three separate floors: the lobby, the mezzanine, and the basement conference. room. The thieves were nowhere to be found. Police even double checked to see if they were hiding among the hostages, but could not find them. When they entered the basement, they realized, what the thieves had really been after. Out of the 400 reinforced-steel safe deposit, boxes in the basement, 143 had been cracked open. Why didn’t the thieves steal cash from the, bank instead? Well, most Argentinians at the time were pretty. distrustful of the country’s banking system. During the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina,, the banking system had collapsed, wiping out the fortunes of those who had most of their. money in bank accounts. Viewing money held in bank accounts as suspiciously as most people view bitcoin today, Argentinians instead decided they would only use banks, for their safe deposit boxes, which couldn’t be wiped out in the event of a crisis. In these safeguarded boxes, Argentinians piled in their cash, jewelry, and other valuable items that they could always reclaim in the, event of an emergency. Given that San Isidro was an exceptionally rich neighborhood, the safe deposit boxes of this particular branch of Banco Rio contained. an immense amount of wealth. After officers found so many of the boxes. forced open, they also found the only few pieces of evidence the thieves had left behind:, a battery pack, a tool that police assumed had been used to crack open the boxes, and.

a row of toy guns. That’s right; the robbers had conducted, this epic bank heist without even using real weapons. The last item police found was perhaps the. most perplexing and obnoxious piece of evidence. The robbers, trying to make some sort of poetic, statement, left behind a note that read, “In a neighborhood of rich people, without weapons or grudges, it's just money, not love.” Argentinians throughout the country, lacking. Netflix at the time, had been watching the whole robbery unfold for hours from their televisions, and now saw that the thieves had pulled off an impossible escape as well. Public opinions and rumors in Argentina almost. immediately depicted the robbers as Robin Hood-like folk heroes. After all, they had stolen from the rich,. hadn’t harmed anyone, and given the money to…(pause)...well, it seemed they’d given it to themselves. But still; their heist was somewhat ingenious. So who was at the center of it all? And how had they executed and gotten away with such a perfect heist? Well, the mastermind behind the robbery of the century turned out to be a man named Fernando Araujo. You see, the Ramallo bank heist had made an, impression on Araujo, who thought the robbers had almost pulled off the perfect heist, but. botched it all up when they tried to leave. One day, when Araujo was a few bong hits deep, and talking to a dear friend, he thought of the obvious: what if the robbers never had to leave? What if, instead, they disappeared through. a hole? Araujo’s friend, Sebastian Garcia Bolster,. agreed that this sounded like a crazy, yet perfect plan. However, he didn’t pay his friend’s theory much attention, as Bolster was neither a criminal or in any dire financial straits. Also, most people don’t take grand stoned plans seriously. Araujo and Bolster had grown up together in an upper middle class neighborhood, also located in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, and, while Araujo sometimes dabbled in hobbies on the wrong side of the law, Bolster enjoyed, a completely legal lifestyle. Bolster had a wife and child and was mechanically, inclined, repairing mostly small engines for money and tinkering around with inventions. Araujo, on the other hand, had a very impulsive, and somewhat eccentric lifestyle, teaching martial arts occasionally to pay the bills while also cultivating marijuana for money. He was a free-spirited artist who was dealing with a recent break up as many free-spirited artists do: melodramatically. He decided he needed to remove the world from, his personal space, so he blacked out the windows of his loft. According to others, Araujo ate relatively little and slept whenever the mood hit him. Frequently high on weed, permanently underfed, and presumably lacking a whole lot of Vitamin D, Araujo was drawn towards stranger and stranger ideas. His biggest obsession? Bank robberies. Apparently, Araujo voraciously consumed any. and all media involving bank robbers, from movies and shows to documentaries of real-life heists. His goal was to observe the mistakes other fictional and real robbers made, and use these observations to plan out the perfect heist. In 2004, Araujo finally realized he had not only figured out a plan, but also needed his friend Bolster’s mechanical and technical, knowledge to help him. Bolster wasn’t too happy about the idea,. and he knew banks were harder to break into than most people thought as he had worked, part-time in a bank for a while. However, he was also furious that his father, and grandfather had entrusted money to banks and then lost it all during economic downturns, so like many people, he ended up hating bankers. When Araujo guaranteed Bolster that no one would get hurt - in fact, they wouldn’t even have real weapons - Bolster agreed to. the plan and got to work. So what exactly IS the prep work for the robbery, of the century? Thanks partly to its temperamental weather, Buenos Aires has plenty of storm drains underneath its streets that lead directly out to the river. The robbers would enter one that ran close, to the bank and then dig up a tunnel to connect it to the bank itself. However, bypassing the bank’s nighttime. alarm system would be a huge challenge, much more difficult than digging a hole. So how would the thieves turn off the bank’s alarm? Simple: by not tripping it at all. The thieves would rob the safe deposit boxes. in the bank’s basement in the daytime, when the alarm wasn’t set, but the bank was swarming, with people. How would they enter a bank during the workday, and not draw attention to themselves emptying the safe deposit boxes? In Araujo’s mind, the answer was even simpler:. stage a fake bank robbery upstairs, to cover the real bank robbery going on in the basement. Some say the phrase “it’s so crazy it just might work” was born that day. The duo then proceeded to assemble a crew. of experienced thieves, financiers, and misfits they’d need to pull off this job, presumably. in an “Ocean’s Eleven”-style montage. Enter: an experienced bank robber named Doc, and his associate Ruben Alberto de la Torre, nicknamed Beto. They were former members of an Argentinian. group of armed bank robbers known, unimaginatively, as “Super Banda”. Another fixer and a getaway driver were added. to the crew. Araujo also found a financier and problem solver in retired rich Uruguayan thief Luis Mario Vitette Sellanes, who invested $100,000. into the operation. What did they need the money for? Well, Bolster had to come up with a way to get into the bank, spend a lot of time and energy tunneling through, and find a relatively. unobtrusive way to get the safe deposit boxes open so they wouldn’t be heard from upstairs. Bolster decided to rent a safe deposit box, at another Banco Rio branch, noted down the brand name, and ordered a few boxes himself. to find the best way to open them. He concluded that a jackhammer punching through. the locks would do the job, and could be kept to a reasonable noise level. He built a jackhammer that could be transported, in pieces to the bank, assembled there, and then taken apart. However, as anyone who’s seen “The Italian. Job” or almost any heist movie knows, getting a lot of valuable, heavy goods out of the.

location you’re robbing presents its own challenge. Since the thieves were going to drop back, down into water-filled drains, getting the goods into Zodiac boats seemed like a good idea, but the water level was usually too low to hold up the loaded-down boats. Since Bolster couldn’t make it rain - no more puns, we swear - he naturally decided he’d build a wooden dam in his shop, disassemble it, and reassemble it in the storm drains over several days. The morning of the heist, the seven men met, for coffee - because apparently even bank robbers need caffeine to start their day - and. then dispersed to start the heist of the century. Bolster headed to the storm drains to make. his way towards the bank underground. Julian Zalloecheverria drove the getaway car. to a pre-arranged meeting spot. Vitette and a mystery man named Luis the Uruguayan drove a stolen car to the garage under the bank, while the rest of the men drove another. stolen car to the bank itself. Beto and Doc headed in first, with Beto waving. around a toy gun he had stolen from his nine year old son that morning. Shockingly, this worked, and everyone in the bank immediately dropped to the floor. Araujo left another stolen car outside the bank purposely to make it look like a getaway vehicle, so police would think they had found. the robbers’ escape plan. Araujo walked into the bank in a baseball cap, ski mask, long blond wig, and sunglasses; how he managed to avoid weird looks on the sidewalk before entering is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Bolster had reached the end of. the tunnel he had dug and was just chilling in the dark underneath the bank. Doc went down, broke the basement wall separating, the bank from Bolster’s tunnel, and let Bolster in to help with the robbery, unbeknownst to anyone inside the bank. This was because Luis and Beto had already. subdued and isolated the hostages. Vitette then took on the persona of Walter to deal with the cops that had just arrived, in order to make police believe that the robbers, had been caught in a heist gone wrong. Araujo’s plan was somewhat brilliant: the thieves were basically staging a visible botched bank robbery upstairs to cover up the invisible. robbery happening in the basement. Vitette even released a few hostages one after, the other to make the police think that they had the upper hand, and could get the rest of the hostages through negotiation alone. The whole crew had been told they had two, hours to get in and get out. Bolster assembled his jackhammer-like contraption, in 20 minutes and spent another hour and a half opening safe deposit boxes. After Vitette got the signal from Araujo to come downstairs, he told the cops to order pizza and then went down to the basement,, telling the hostages if they moved they’d be killed. Beto and Vitette helped Bolster stuff the valuables into bags, while Araujo and Doc sprayed bleach to destroy any DNA and threw, around fistfuls of hair from a barbershop floor to confuse police even further. As you do in a bank heist. As the men exited through Bolster’s tunnel,, they cleaned up all evidence of the broken wall, and hid the hole behind a large, heavy, cabinet. The men piled into the Zodiacs, and even though, the motor malfunctioned, Araujo had brought paddles. The men paddled to the getaway van ten blocks. away, used a previously tested pulley system to haul the bags up from the storm drain,. and drove off, all while police still thought they had the bank robbers surrounded in Banco. Rio. When police officers eventually stormed the bank, the robbers were already home watching the report on live TV, while finally eating their long-awaited pizza. Bolster, being one of the smartest of the. group, and figuring credit cards would be the most useless of the valuables as they could be cancelled, scattered the cards all over various streets far away from the gang’s, actual route out of the bank. This not only left no clear trail towards. the robbers; it also created a lot of false leads for police, as every time a passerby, would pick up a credit card and try to use it, the police would have to hunt them down and see if they were involved. Frustrated, tired, and with no viable leads,, the police, like any “Love is Blind” contestant, realized they had just been publicly humiliated, on TV. So wait - if the robbers got away with it,, how do we know the names and stories of everyone involved in this crime? Well, as it usually happens in life, even the most carefully thought out plan can be undone with one dumb, egocentric mistake. When Beto brought home the money, he bragged. to his wife Alicia that he and his friends had robbed Banco Rio. Considering Beto had a habit of frequently cheating on Alicia, disclosing this information so readily probably wasn’t the best idea. When some of the valuables went missing from, the house, Beto and Alicia had a huge fight that led to the unraveling of the whole heist. Sure enough, five weeks later Beto got pulled, over by police while out driving with his mistress. Apparently, Alicia had told them the whole. story of the heist, and identified Beto, Araujo, Bolster, Vitette, and Zalloechevarria as robbers. as well, as she had seen them work on the getaway van in her garage. Alicia didn’t point fingers towards Doc, and the mysterious Uruguayan Luis, as she had never seen them in her house, and they. presumably hadn’t cheated on her. The men were all tried and sent to jail, though most have been released by now, and are presumably still pissed at Beto for being unable to keep it in his pants. However, their daring heist lives on in infamy. in Argentina. Do you think you could commit the perfect. crime? If so, please let us know by revealing your identity and full plan, in detail, in the comment section below! Or better yet, if you’d like to stay out of jail, go discover another unbelievable story or check out this other video instead!.