The human history is full of robbers and thieves who go above and beyond to try to commit the perfect crime and sail off into the sunset with the loot.
Here is a list of heists that prove no matter how tight the net, some fish always manages to slip out.
1. Skyjacking
Time: 1971
On a sunny day, D.B. Cooper boarded the Northwest Orient Airlines Flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle and 30 minutes after takeoff, Cooper told the air hostess that he had explosive devices stuffed in his jacket and demanded $200,000, four parachutes and a refueling truck upon landing. Cooper’s requests were met, and he let the passengers go and took off with the pilot and a few of the crew members to Mexico City. However, it seems that Cooper didn’t intend to land in Mexico. He strapped on a parachute and, from 10,000 feet in the air, jumped out of the plane into the night.
To this day, D.B. Cooper is still at large, and the FBI has processed thousands of suspects and found no conclusive lead.
2. Tunneling through the bank
Time: 2005
A group of men rented a property and set up shop posing as a company, a few blocks from the Banco Central in Fortaleza, Brazil. They spent around three months digging a tunnel about 256 feet long and 13 feet below the street level from their office to directly below the bank. They used the tunnel to get into the bank and disabled all sensors. They dug further and broke through nearly 4 feet of solid steel-reinforced concrete to enter the vault and stole five boxes. The boxes were almost 7,000 pounds and contained 70 million Brazilian reals.
The employees discovered the theft when they returned to the office on the following Monday. By then, the robbers had long fled the area. However, the police caught up with them as one of the robbers purchased 10 cars using the cash he stole from the bank. This alerted the police who arrested the man and his dozen or so accomplices. Unfortunately, only 8 million of the total amount could be recovered.
3. Thieves in prosthetics
Time: 2009
What makes this heist interesting is that the thieves used makeup to get away with the robbery.
Hours before the raid, the gang’s ringleader, Aman Kassaye, and another man visited a makeup studio where they fooled professional makeup artists into “aging” them for a pop video.
When they entered the Graff, a jewelry store in London both men pulled out guns and forced staff to the floor, and ordered the shop assistant to pack up rings, necklaces, watches, and earrings from display cases, worth 40 million pounds.
The thieves were smart and planned their getaway meticulously. They hired cars that blocked the police from entering the street and escaped in another car. The ringleader and his team of 4 were eventually arrested and tried. The jewels weren’t completely recovered.
4. The empty frames
Time: 1990
In Boston, two imposters dressed as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stole 13 works of art. The missing artwork included a Rembrandt, Manet, and a few by Degas. The pieces were estimated at $500 million in value. The pictures were never recovered, and empty frames still hang in the room, in hopes that the paintings will one day be returned.
5. Rookie mistake
Time: 1987
In London, a man name Valerio Viccei entered a bank during business hours under the pretense of opening a safety deposit box. He and his armed accomplice overpowered the bank staff to let in even more accomplices to open the vault. They stole almost 62 million pounds in cash along with jewelry and other valuable gemstones. Interestingly, Viccei was implicated in several other bank robberies in his lifetime. After the Knightsbridge robbery, Viccei tried to flee to South America, only to be intercepted by British authorities and jailed when he came back to visit England in order to collect and ship his Ferrari Testarossa.
