Thieves drill into German bank vault, steal tens of millions in cash, valuables – National

Around 2,700 bank customers were affected by the theft in Gelsenkirchen, police and the Sparkasse bank said.

Thomas Nowaczyk, a police spokesperson, said investigators believe the theft was worth between 10 and 90 million euros ($16 to 145 million).

In an updated press release on Facebook, the Gelsenkirchen Police Department said the burglary came to light on Monday morning. Police said that amid the holiday lull, the thieves used a large drill to make a hole in a safe room and search the valuables inside it.

“Police became aware of the burglary by a fire alarm that was raised on Monday morning at 3:58 AM at the fire department,” the press release said. “Subsequently, the police and fire brigade immediately began to search the building and noticed the hole in the basement and the burglary.”

According to initial investigations, police said the perpetrators gained access to the savings fund building through a parking garage and escaped with the loot.

Witnesses told investigators they saw several men carrying large bags in a nearby parking garage during the night of Friday to Saturday.

Officers from the investigation team have reviewed initial video footage from the parking garage, which shows a black Audi RS 6 leaving the garage early Monday morning.

“Masked perpetrators are also inside the vehicle, one of whom operates the exit barrier. The licence plate on the car had previously been stolen in Hanover,” police said. “It has now been confirmed that the perpetrators broke into several thousand safe deposit boxes in the affected vault. Initial rough estimates place the damage in the tens of millions.”

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German news agency dpa reported that the theft could be one of Germany’s largest heists.

The bank remained closed Tuesday, when around 200 people showed up demanding to get inside, dpa reports. Police are asking those who believe they were victims of the theft to first contact the bank.

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Thieves tunnel into jewelry store, steal nearly $20M worth of goods

This isn’t the first time this year that thieves have drilled through a property to gain access to cash and jewelry.

In April, a group of thieves stole nearly US$20 million in jewelry and cash after they tunnelled into a downtown Los Angeles jewelry store.

The owners of Love Jewels said they’re out millions of dollars following the break-in after the thieves stole watches, pendants, gold chains and other merchandise.

Investigators said they were reviewing security camera footage that shows the suspects entering the store from a large hole they drilled from the property next door, officer David Cuellar with the Los Angeles Police Department revealed at the time.

“They tunnelled through multiple levels of concrete into the target location,” Cuellar said.

The owner of the store suspected that the thieves took weeks to tunnel into their store and alleged they used the abandoned theatre next door to their location to create it.

The brazen German heist took place two months after thieves broke into the Louvre and made off with items valued at more than $100 million.

The director of the world’s most-visited museum subsequently acknowledged a “terrible failure” in security. The thieves forced their way into the Louvre using a cherry picker to reach one of the building’s windows. They used grinders to cut into jewelry display cases and motorbikes to make their escape.

The loot still hasn’t been recovered. It includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

— With files from The Associated Press

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