The Banco Central burglary
The Guinness Book of World Records once named the 2005 Banco Central burglary in Fortaleza, Brazil, one of the biggest bank robberies of all time. The criminals rented a commercial property in the city center three months before the burglary and tunneled 78 meters (256 feet) beneath two city blocks to a position beneath the bank. The gang had renovated the property and erected a sign indicating that it was a landscaping company that sold both natural and artificial grass as well as plants. They dug a 256-foot tunnel up through the vault floor of the bank for three months.
On Saturday, August 6, 2005, the gang of burglars tunneled into the bank and stole five containers of 50-real notes worth R$164,755,150 (approximately 71.6 million USD at the 2005 exchange rate) and weighing approximately 3.5 tons. The funds were uninsured, according to a bank spokesperson, because the risks were too small to justify the insurance premiums. The burglars were able to avoid or disable the bank's internal alarms and sensors, and the burglary went undetected until the bank reopened the following Monday.
The Brazilian central bank, Banco Central, is in charge of controlling the money supply. The funds in the vault were to be examined to determine whether they should be recirculated or destroyed. The bills were not sequentially numbered, making it nearly impossible to track them down.
Stolen: $71.6 million
