The French Vacuum Gang
All the way back in 2006, a couple of French robbers exploited a weakness in the way a store called the "Monoprix" stored it's cash. It had tubes that flushed the money into the safe. The safe is good, but the tubes were not. The vacuum gang broke in and drilled into a tube. Then they hooked up a vacuum into the tube, and sucked up all the cash instead. As of 2011, they made off with 800000$ and the only CCTV tapes were a couple of blurry masked dudes. o_O
Credit Lyonnais Paris Heist
On March 30, 2010, burglars got into the Credit Lyonnais bank in central Paris, and emptied over 100 safety deposit boxes, and got away with millions of euros and valuables. The burglars tunneled into the basement from a parallel cellar, and got inside with a thermal cutter. They tied up the guard and told him not to move. This section was closed for renovations. For a couple hours, they ransacked the bank, and set it on fire.
The sprinklers went off, and the tied up guard managed to raise the alarm. The thieves got away, and probably will get away for good because, well, the fire got rid of all the evidence. The whole operation took 9 hours.
Paris Modern Art Fail
Simple stuff, a burglar broke into a window of the Paris Modern Art Museum (Which, surprisingly, had no alarms) and made off with around 100 million euros worth in masterpieces such as Picasso and Matisse.
Albert Spaggiari
(Taken from an article)
Albert Spaggiari was a French career criminal who is best known for masterminding the Societe Generale bank robbery in France, 1976. As a young man he committed his first robbery in order to impress his girlfriend, but was soon captured and imprisoned. After his release and having served in the French military, Spaggiari became the owner of a photographic studio and was making a reasonable living as a law-abiding citizen. However, he apparently became bored with his middle-class life and sought to return to a life of crime.
He began to plan a break-in at the Societe Generale Bank, in Nice. He decided that, since the bank vault was located in the basement, the break-in would best be achieved by digging underneath from a nearby sewer system. He opened a box for himself and placed a loud alarm clock inside, setting it to go off at midnight in order to check for the existence any acoustic or seismic detectors that might foil his plan. In fact, the bank vault had no interior alarm or security systems, as it was considered utterly impenetrable.
Spaggiari then recruited a group of professional gangsters from Marseille to help him dig the tunnel. He instructed them to never drink coffee or alcohol, and always to get at least 10 hours sleep every day to avoid danger to the mission. After two months of digging, the tunnel was finished, and, during a Bastille Day festival when the bank was closed for a long weekend, the gang broke into the vault, itself. They opened up over 400 safety deposit boxes, stealing over 60million francs worth of money, securities and other valuables.
When the robbery was discovered, the following message was found on the vault wall: “sans armes, ni maine, ni violence” which is translated as: “without weapons, nor hatred, nor violence”. At first police were baffled, however, in the following months they arrested one suspect on a tip from a former girlfriend. The man later admitted being a part of the robbery and ratted out the entire gang, including Spaggiari. During his trial, however, Spaggiari managed to escape by distracting the judge, by handing him a fake piece of encoded evidence. He jumped out of the window, where a motorcycle was waiting for him and made his getaway.
He was never caught and the loot from the heist was never found. He died at the age of 52 of throat cancer, and his body was found dumped outside his mother’s house, presumably by unknown friends.
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