96 Fun Facts About Famous Heists

Which country's central bank lost $81 million to hackers' fraudulent SWIFT transfers in February 2016?

Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was drained of $81 million in February 2016; the money was laundered through Philippine casinos, and a spelling error blocked a further $20 million.

What filled the 120 mail bags the Great Train Robbery gang carried off from the Royal Mail train in 1963?

Banknotes, mostly £1 and £5 notes, filled the 120 bags; the train was carrying far more cash than usual because a bank holiday weekend had just ended.

What was the approximate value of the haul taken in the Great Train Robbery?

£2.6 million was the haul; the gang drove it to a farm hideout and shared it out there.

Which of these criminals was one of the 15-strong gang behind the 1963 Great Train Robbery?

Ronnie Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 by scaling the wall on a rope ladder, then lived as a fugitive for 36 years before returning to Britain in 2001.

How did the Great Train Robbery gang bring the Royal Mail train to a halt in 1963?

A rigged red signal: the gang covered the green light with a glove and lit the red one from a battery, and the train's fireman was seized when he climbed down to investigate.

Which French city's Société Générale vault did Albert Spaggiari's gang enter through the sewers in 1976?

Nice: over a July weekend in 1976 Spaggiari's team tunnelled from the city sewers into the Société Générale vault, emptied safe-deposit boxes and left a wall message boasting of no weapons, hatred or violence.

At which airport did thieves in a stolen airline van hijack an armoured truck's diamond cargo in February 2005?

Amsterdam Schiphol: the gang used a stolen KLM van to get airside, then drove off in the armoured truck carrying the stones, one of the largest diamond robberies on record.

Which city's Diamond Centre did Leonardo Notarbartolo empty in February 2003, after renting an office above the vault?

Antwerp: Notarbartolo had posed as a gem importer for more than two years, and his rented office in the Diamond Centre came with a tenant's pass and his own box in the vault.

Which Louvre painting did former museum worker Vincenzo Peruggia steal in 1911 and hide for over two years?

Mona Lisa: Peruggia kept the panel in a trunk in his Paris lodgings, and the worldwide hunt for it helped turn an admired Leonardo into the most famous painting on earth.

Which jeweller's Paris boutique lost more than €80 million to armed robbers in December 2008?

Harry Winston's Avenue Montaigne boutique was raided just before closing by armed men, some disguised in wigs and women's clothes, who left with rings, necklaces and watches.

Which Irish mansion housing the Beit collection was robbed of paintings in 1974 and 1986?

Russborough House in County Wicklow was raided by an IRA gang including heiress Rose Dugdale in 1974 and by Martin Cahill's gang in 1986; its Vermeer was taken both times and recovered both times.

The December 1978 Lufthansa heist, dramatised in Goodfellas, took place at which airport?

John F. Kennedy Airport: the crew drove up to Lufthansa's cargo building before dawn and left with cash and jewels flown in from West Germany, almost none of which was ever recovered.

Who was the only person ever convicted for the Lufthansa heist?

Louis Werner, the Lufthansa cargo agent who tipped off the crew, was the only person convicted; Vincent Asaro, tried for the heist decades later, was acquitted in 2015.

What clue did investigators find at the Los Angeles depot after the 1997 Dunbar Armored robbery?

A plastic taillight lens was all the gang left behind; the FBI matched it to a 14-foot U-Haul truck, but it led nowhere for two years.

How much gold bullion did the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbers find in the warehouse they raided?

Three tonnes: 6,800 ingots sat in the warehouse waiting to be flown to the Far East, and most of the metal is thought to have been melted down and never recovered.

What nickname did the press give John Palmer, who melted down Brink's-Mat bullion in his garden?

Goldfinger was the tag John Palmer earned for smelting the stolen bars; he was acquitted in 1987 after telling the court he had not known where they came from.

The 2019 Green Vault burglary took place in a museum in which German city?

Dresden's Green Vault was hit at dawn on 25 November 2019: a fire at a nearby power box knocked out lights and alarms, and the thieves smashed open a display cabinet of royal jewels.

The men convicted of the Green Vault burglary belonged to which notorious Berlin crime family?

The Remmo clan, an extended Berlin crime family, supplied the five men convicted in May 2023 after a deal that saw much of the loot returned.

The 1971 Baker Street bank robbery in London was inspired by which Sherlock Holmes story?

The Red-Headed League: as in Conan Doyle's story, the gang took over premises nearby and tunnelled from the basement into the Lloyds Bank vault on Baker Street in September 1971.

To dig into the Baker Street bank vault, the gang rented what kind of business two doors away?

A leather goods shop called Le Sac, two doors from Lloyds Bank, was rented as the front; the gang dug beneath the Chicken Inn restaurant between them to reach the vault.

Rumour holds that the 1971 Baker Street vault raid netted compromising photographs of which royal?

Princess Margaret: the tale has never been proven, and it lingers partly because many of the police papers on the raid stay closed at the National Archives until 2071.

Which Kent town's Securitas cash depot was robbed of £53 million in February 2006?

Tonbridge: the gang kidnapped the depot manager and his family, tricked their way inside and left with almost £53 million in the early hours of 22 February 2006.

Why did the 2006 Securitas depot robbers leave about £154 million behind?

Their lorry was full: the gang got away with almost £53 million, about half a tonne of notes, and drove it to a farm elsewhere in Kent.

Which city's Northern Bank lost £26.5m in December 2004, one of the UK's biggest raids?

Belfast: the Northern Bank's city-centre cash centre was emptied on 20 December 2004 after two staff members' families were held hostage, a tiger-kidnap raid netting £26.5 million.

In which country did burglars tunnel from a rented house into a Banco Central vault in August 2005?

Brazil: the gang rented a house in Fortaleza in the name of an artificial-turf company and dug into the Banco Central vault over a weekend, so the theft went unnoticed until Monday.

How is Vincenzo Peruggia said to have got his prize out of the Louvre?

Wrapped in his work smock under his arm is the usual telling: he took the panel out of its frame on a service stair, and a passing plumber, taking him for staff, unlocked the exit door.

Vincenzo Peruggia was finally arrested in December 1913 in which Italian city?

Florence: Peruggia offered the painting to the Uffizi through dealer Alfredo Geri and was arrested at his Florence hotel in December 1913.

How were the two thieves who robbed Boston's Gardner Museum in 1990 disguised?

As police officers, they talked their way in, tied up the guards, and spent 81 minutes inside.

Which Vermeer painting was among the works stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990?

The Concert, which shows a man and two women making music, was lifted out of its frame in the Dutch Room, one of 13 works taken on 18 March 1990.

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, stolen in the Gardner heist, is the only seascape by whom?

Rembrandt painted The Storm on the Sea of Galilee in 1633; it is his only known seascape and was cut from its frame by the Gardner thieves in March 1990.

In 2017 Boston's Gardner Museum doubled its reward for the stolen art to what sum?

$10 million: the museum doubled its $5 million reward for information leading to the works' safe return; as of 2025 none of the 13 has been recovered.

After the 1963 Great Train Robbery, the gang hid at which Buckinghamshire farm?

Leatherslade Farm was meant to be torched once the gang had gone, but the job was never properly done, and police found fingerprints all over it.

What item at the Great Train Robbers' hideout carried the fingerprints that led to their arrests?

A Monopoly board left at the hideout carried the prints of several robbers, who had played the game with their stolen money; more prints turned up on a ketchup bottle.

What nickname was given to the Great Train Robbers' never-identified inside informant?

The Ulsterman: the insider who tipped the gang to the cash-heavy train was never charged; in 2014 robber Gordon Goody claimed he was a postal worker named Patrick McKenna.

What sentence did the Great Train Robbery ringleaders get, though no firearm was used?

30 years: seven of the gang were given 30-year terms in 1964, though none of the robbers ended up serving more than 13.

The 1950 Great Brink's Robbery was solved only when Joseph 'Specs' O'Keefe testified days before what?

The statute of limitations expired six years after the raid, and O'Keefe turned informer in January 1956 with only days to spare; eight of the gang were then sentenced to life.

The Great Brink's robbers wore chauffeur caps, pea coats and rubber masks of which comic hero?

Captain Marvel masks hid the faces of the men who walked into Brink's Boston building on 17 January 1950; they wore soft soles to muffle their footsteps and barely spoke.

By what route did the Hatton Garden burglars reach the basement vault in 2015?

A lift shaft: the gang climbed down it over the Easter weekend, then drilled through the vault's 50 cm wall.

Who was the alleged ringleader of the Hatton Garden burglary, jailed for six years and three months?

Brian Reader was 76 when arrested, the eldest of a gang the press called the 'Diamond Wheezers'; three decades earlier he had been tied to handling the Brink's-Mat gold.

What item of discarded rubbish helped tie Leonardo Notarbartolo to the 2003 diamond heist?

A partially eaten salami sandwich lay in the heist rubbish the crew dumped in woodland beside a motorway, where the landowner found it and called the police.

Leonardo Notarbartolo's diamond-heist crew belonged to a loose network of thieves named after their northern Italian home city, known as what?

The Turin School, also called the School of Turin, was a loose network of specialist thieves; the loot from the crew's 2003 raid, valued above $100 million, was never found.

Which artist's Nativity was stolen from Palermo's Oratory of San Lorenzo in October 1969?

Caravaggio's Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence was cut from its frame in Palermo in October 1969; Mafia informants later gave conflicting accounts of its fate.

What vehicle did the Dome raiders use to smash into the diamond exhibition on 7 November 2000?

A JCB digger smashed into the Dome carrying raiders in body armour and gas masks, who attacked the security glass with sledgehammers and a nail gun before waiting police overwhelmed them.

How did the Millennium Dome diamond raiders plan to make their getaway in November 2000?

By speedboat: a boat was waiting on the Thames to carry the gang to a van on the far bank, but police who had watched them for months arrested its skipper along with the raiders.

In which London district did Valerio Viccei's gang loot a safe deposit centre in July 1987?

Knightsbridge: Viccei, an Italian lawyer's son with a string of armed robberies behind him, had inside help from the centre's boss, and a fingerprint left at the scene later gave him away.

The Italian playboy behind a 1987 London safe-deposit raid was caught through his attachment to which possession?

His Ferrari Testarossa was his undoing: police caught him with the car in London after the raid; jailed for 22 years, he died in a 2000 shoot-out with Italian police while on day release.

The 1994 theft of The Scream from Oslo's National Gallery coincided with the opening of what event?

The Lillehammer Winter Olympics opened on 12 February 1994, the same day the thieves took The Scream; a sting set up with British police recovered it that May.

Which other Munch painting was taken alongside The Scream by masked gunmen at the Munch Museum in 2004?

Madonna and The Scream were both snatched from the Munch Museum walls on 22 August 2004; a bystander photographed the robbers fleeing, and both works were recovered in August 2006.

How much ransom did the hijacker known as D. B. Cooper demand on Northwest Orient Flight 305 in 1971?

$200,000 in twenty-dollar bills, plus four parachutes, was handed over at Seattle; Cooper then had the plane take off again and jumped somewhere over southwest Washington.

In 1980, part of D. B. Cooper's ransom, $5,800, was found on the banks of which river?

The Columbia: in February 1980 a boy named Brian Ingram dug up three bundles of the marked twenties, $5,800 in all, on Tena Bar near Vancouver, Washington; the FBI suspended its investigation in 2016.

Who was the reputed mastermind of the 1978 Lufthansa heist, yet was never charged for it?

James 'Jimmy' Burke was never charged over the heist but died in prison in 1996 while serving time for other crimes; Robert De Niro's Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas is based on him.

The Gardner Museum thieves took a bronze eagle finial from a flag of whose Imperial Guard?

Napoleon: the finial topped a flag of his Imperial Guard; the thieves apparently tried to take the whole flag, gave up and unscrewed only the 10-inch bronze eagle.

Why do empty frames still hang where the Gardner Museum's stolen paintings were?

Her will fixed the galleries' layout: Isabella Stewart Gardner stipulated that the arrangement of her collection never be altered, so the frames hang as placeholders for the paintings' return.

The 1983 raid that netted 6,800 gold bars hit a trading estate beside which airport?

Heathrow: masked robbers burst into the Brink's-Mat warehouse beside the airport, doused the guards in petrol and threatened to set them alight unless the vault was opened.

Kenneth Noye recast the 1983 bullion-raid gold, mixing in what to disguise its source?

Copper coins were melted in with the bullion to lower its purity and mask its origin; Noye got 14 years in 1986 for conspiracy to handle the gold, a year after being acquitted of murdering an undercover detective.

What finally exposed the 1997 Dunbar Armored gang two years after the robbery?

Cash still bound in currency straps undid Eugene Hill: two years on he was caught with a stack of bills in the depot's own wrappers, confessed and named the rest of the gang.

Which 2016 comedy starring Zach Galifianakis dramatised the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery?

Masterminds (2016) cast Galifianakis as David Ghantt, Kristen Wiig as Kelly Campbell and Owen Wilson as Steve Chambers, the accomplices whose spending spree exposed the real robbery.

Vault supervisor David Ghantt drove off with $17.3 million from a Loomis Fargo vault in which North Carolina city?

Charlotte: Ghantt sent a trainee home early, loaded the cash into a company van and fled to Mexico, leaving accomplices whose sudden spending on a luxury house and a BMW gave them away.

Amil Dinsio said his 1972 Laguna Niguel bank burglary targeted whose campaign slush fund?

Richard Nixon's, by Dinsio's own account: his crew blasted through the vault roof and looted about $9 million, then were caught through fingerprints left in a rented townhouse's dishwasher.

Which New York hotel's safe-deposit boxes did a gang arriving by limousine empty in January 1972?

The Pierre: Bobby Comfort and Sammy Nalo's crew held the night staff at gunpoint before dawn on 2 January 1972 and, as they left, handed $20 bills to hotel workers they had held.

The 1968 Tokyo 300 million yen robber stopped a bank car by posing as what?

Dressed as a motorcycle policeman, he stopped the bank car, said a bomb had been planted beneath it, lit a flare under the vehicle and drove off with the cash as the staff fled.

The 294 million yen taken in Tokyo in 1968 was bonus money for which company's workers?

Toshiba: the cash was the winter bonus for workers at its Fuchu factory, being driven there in the boot of a Nissan Cedric; the criminal statute of limitations ran out in 1975.

In the 1855 Great Gold Robbery, what did thieves pack into the boxes to match the weight?

Lead shot, bought at the Shot Tower in Lambeth, took the gold's place: Edward Agar weighed the bars on scales mid-journey and packed in the same weight, so nothing was noticed until Paris.

What happened to Thomas Blood after his 1671 attempt to steal England's Crown Jewels?

Pardoned and given land in Ireland worth £500 a year: Blood insisted on speaking only to Charles II, who asked him, 'What if I should give you your life?'

The Just Judges panel, stolen in 1934, belongs to which famous work?

The Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers lost its Just Judges panel from Saint Bavo's Cathedral in April 1934; a copy by restorer Jef Van der Veken has filled the gap since 1945.

Art thief Stéphane Breitwieser was finally caught in 2001 stealing what in Lucerne?

A 16th-century bugle from the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne: Breitwieser was arrested in November 2001 when he went back to the museum days after a guard had spotted him taking it.

What did Stéphane Breitwieser's mother do with much of his stolen art hoard after his arrest?

Destroyed it: she cut up the paintings and threw vases, jewellery and statuettes into a nearby canal, where some later washed ashore; she went to prison for it.

Two van Goghs stolen in 2002 surfaced in 2016 in a drug lord's villa in which country?

Italy: the Guardia di Finanza found View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen in a villa at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, tied to a Camorra trafficker.

Cellini's gold salt cellar, stolen in Vienna in 2003, was recovered in 2006 where?

Buried in a forest near the Austrian town of Zwettl, where thief Robert Mang led police; he had given himself up after they released a surveillance photo of him buying a mobile phone.

Le pigeon aux petits pois, taken from Paris's modern art museum in 2010, is by whom?

Picasso painted Le pigeon aux petits pois in 1911; it was one of five works taken in May 2010 and has never been found, and one accomplice claimed he threw them all in the rubbish.

Three paintings stolen from Manchester's Whitworth gallery in 2003 turned up where?

Rolled up in a nearby public toilet, the three paintings, a van Gogh and a Gauguin among them, came with a note claiming the theft was meant to show how badly the gallery was guarded.

Thieves stole a Cézanne from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum under cover of what event?

The 1999 millennium fireworks masked the noise as the thief broke in through the roof, set off a smoke bomb to blind the cameras and left with only View of Auvers-sur-Oise, perhaps stolen to order.

Cézanne's Boy in the Red Vest, stolen from the Bührle collection in 2008, turned up where?

Serbia: police recovered the Cézanne in Belgrade in April 2012, four years after the raid; the stolen Monet and van Gogh had turned up within days in a car parked outside a nearby psychiatric hospital.

The two men behind Mexico City's 1985 anthropology museum heist were students of what?

Veterinary medicine students Carlos Perches and Ramón Sardina struck in the early hours of Christmas Day 1985; most of the 124 pieces were found in 1989 in a closet at Perches's family home.

The 1972 'Skylight Caper' art theft hit which Canadian city's museum of fine arts?

Montreal: three armed men came down through a skylight whose alarm was off during roof repairs, tied up the guards and left with 18 paintings and a haul of jewellery, almost none of it ever recovered.

How was the looted Warka Vase returned to the Iraq Museum in June 2003?

Three men drove it in, in a red Toyota, during an amnesty for looted pieces; the 5,000-year-old vase, wrenched from its base weeks earlier, came home in 14 pieces.

Who oversaw the removal of nearly $1 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq in March 2003?

Qusay Hussein arrived with a note signed by his father, and nearly $1 billion in cash was loaded onto trucks hours before the invasion began.

Robbers at Brussels Airport in 2013 took diamonds off a Helvetic Airways jet bound where?

Zurich: the Helvetic Airways Fokker 100 was about to leave for Zurich on 18 February 2013 when eight gunmen dressed as police drove through a hole in the fence and took about $50 million in diamonds in minutes.

How did the two 2009 Graff Diamonds robbers in London alter their appearance?

A professional make-up artist fitted them with latex prosthetics and wigs hours before the raid, believing it was for a music video; the £40 million haul was then Britain's biggest gem heist.

Which Cannes hotel, a setting of Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, lost $136m in jewels to a lone gunman in 2013?

The Carlton: the armed thief slipped in through a French window and walked off with jewels gathered there for a diamond exhibition, echoing the jewel-thief plot of Hitchcock's film.

The Pink Panthers jewel gang got their name after hiding a diamond where, echoing a film?

A £500,000 diamond from the 2003 Graff raid in London was found hidden in a jar of face cream, echoing a scene in The Return of the Pink Panther; most members were traced to the former Yugoslavia.

Pink Panthers reached a Graff jewellery store inside a Dubai mall by driving what through its entrance?

Two Audis, one black and one white, were driven through the entrance of Dubai's Wafi Mall, and one rammed the Graff storefront; the gang left with watches and jewels.

How did robbers reach the roof of a G4S cash depot in Stockholm in September 2009?

By stolen helicopter: it set the robbers down on the G4S roof in Västberga on 23 September 2009, while a suspected bomb left at the police hangar kept the force's own helicopter on the ground.

Which group did police chief Hugh Orde blame for the 2004 Northern Bank robbery?

The Provisional IRA: Chief Constable Hugh Orde said in January 2005 that the IRA was responsible, which Sinn Féin and the IRA denied; the bank reissued its notes because so many uncirculated bills were taken.

How did police first learn the 1971 Baker Street vault burglary was under way?

A radio ham overheard their walkie-talkies: Robert Rowlands taped the chatter from his flat half a mile away, though the first officer he rang took it for a prank.

What had police done with the Dome's diamonds before the 2000 raid?

Swapped them for replicas: the Flying Squad's Operation Magician had watched the gang for months and hid armed officers, some disguised as cleaners, inside the Dome.

What stolen prize did a dog named Pickles find in London in 1966?

The World Cup trophy vanished from a stamp exhibition in Westminster, where the thieves left £3 million of rare stamps untouched; Pickles found it on a walk a week later, and England won it that summer.

By what route did D. B. Cooper leave his hijacked airliner in mid-air in 1971?

The rear airstairs of the Boeing 727, which he lowered in flight; 727s were later fitted with a latch, nicknamed the Cooper vane, to stop anyone doing it again.

Lee Murray, alleged mastermind of the 2006 Securitas raid, fled to and was jailed where?

Morocco: Murray, a cage fighter with a Moroccan father, fled to Rabat, fought extradition as a Moroccan citizen and was instead tried there, receiving ten years in 2010, later raised to 25.

Which 2018 film starring Michael Caine dramatised the 2015 Easter vault burglary?

King of Thieves cast Tom Courtenay, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon and Ray Winstone alongside Caine; an ITV serial followed in 2019 after an 18-month legal delay.

The Hatton Garden burglar who stayed free for three years was known to the gang only by what name?

Basil was the only name the others knew him by; police identified him in 2018 as alarm specialist Michael Seed, and he was jailed for ten years in 2019.

Van Gogh's Poppy Flowers was stolen in 2010 from a museum in which city?

Cairo: Poppy Flowers, valued at around $50 million, was cut from its frame at the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in August 2010, when the museum's alarm system and most of its cameras were out of order.

The 100 kg gold coin stolen from Berlin's Bode Museum in 2017 was issued by which country?

Canada: the Royal Canadian Mint's 'Big Maple Leaf' had a face value of C$1 million; thieves took it using a ladder and a wheelbarrow, and it is believed to have been cut up or melted down.

Leonardo's Madonna of the Yarnwinder was stolen in 2003 from a castle in which country?

Scotland: the painting was taken from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire in August 2003 by two men posing as tourists, and recovered in a Glasgow law office in October 2007.

What work had Vincenzo Peruggia done at the Louvre before his 1911 theft?

Fitting glass to its paintings: Peruggia had helped fit the protective glass on the very picture he later walked out with, and after pleading patriotism he spent only a few months in jail.

What note did thieves leave after taking The Scream from Oslo's National Gallery in 1994?

'Thanks for the poor security' was the taunt; the gallery refused a $1 million ransom, and a sting with British police and the Getty Museum got the painting back undamaged that May.