In 2006, a military of law enforcement officials surrounded the Banco Rio in Acassuso, Argentina, and negotiated for hours with a daring group of robbers inside.
The criminals took hostages and demanded the police deliver them pizza, as the nation watched on reside TV. Snipers perched in bushes, able to shoot if wanted.
Finally, one robber advised the police they had been able to give up. But when legislation enforcement entered the financial institution, there wasn’t a perp to be discovered. They’d vanished with no hint, taking with them a reported $20 million in money and valuables from security deposit packing containers.
“We use[d] [a] tunnel, not to break in, but to break out,” says the theft’s mastermind, Fernando Araujo, in the new Netflix documentary “Bank Robbers: the Last Great Heist,” which debuts on Wednesday.
“No one [had] ever planned to do a heist this way.”
The plan
Araujo, an artist and small time pot grower, began concocting the plan in 2003, when he rented a home close to the financial institution and commenced exploring the sewage tunnels beneath. Inspired partially by the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” he dubbed his scheme the “Donatello Project.”
Posing as an structure pupil, he known as the public works company in Acassuso to get data on how the floor may deal with tunnels. Then he satisfied Sebastián García Bolster, a neighborhood bike mechanic to hitch his workforce as a civil engineer.
They calculated easy methods to drill 15 meters diagonally into the financial institution, basically making their tunnel a triangular hypotenuse between the constructing’s basement and the sewer. Doing so would require some heavy equipment.
“To make a hole the size of a soda bottle [with pickaxes] took one hour. It was impossible. So we had to bring in a 220 watt generator so we could use an electro pneumatic drill,” Araujo says.
As their plans got here collectively, they discovered extra males to be half of the heist. Career criminal Rubén “Beto” de la Torre was recruited as muscle and Luis Mario Vitette Sellanes got here on as effectively — he would grow to be designated police negotiator. They recruited one other man referred solely in the movie as “the Doc” and mentioned to be each a lawyer and a classy thief.
After years of tinkering, the plan got here into focus. Rather than going by means of the sewer to exit to native waters, as legislation enforcement would doubtless predict, Araujo’s workforce would go deeper into the metropolis’s bowels.
The crew purchased an previous van and customised it to have a ground hatch so they may park it above a manhole and climb straight into the car with out ever going out onto the avenue. They recruited a person named Julián Zalloecheverría to be their driver and somebody known as “the kid” to function further muscle.
D-Day
At round 12:38 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13, 2006, the workforce of robbers stormed in by means of the entrance door of the financial institution, weapons in hand and able to take hostages. Sellanes went to the high ground to get the financial institution supervisor, then introduced the man to the basement the place the protected and safety packing containers had been. There, he pressured a safety guard to give up his weapon after which go away the constructing.
Araujo and Beto targeted on the financial institution’s floor stage, managing hostages and securing exits.
Police rapidly descended upon the financial institution, and Sellanes started pretend negotiations with the cops to get extra time for his accomplices to collect the loot. He threw on a pretend mustache, yarmulke, and glasses to throw off police and snipers peering by means of the financial institution’s home windows. At 2:30 p.m., he made a degree of releasing two hostages.
Meanwhile, Bolster was in the basement utilizing a particular cannon to interrupt open deposit packing containers as rapidly as attainable.
“I didn’t stop to see what was inside or if it actually opened or anything,” Bolster says. “Just breaking, breaking, breaking all the locks.”
After two hours, they’d cracked open 143 packing containers and it was time to flee. Sellanes advised authorities they had been prepared to surrender.
“Bring us some pizzas, bring us some soda, we’ll have a little food and surrender,” Sellanes recollects telling the negotiators. He knew they might be out of the constructing by the time forces entered.
The robbers splashed chlorine all through the financial institution to cowl their DNA and tossed random strands of hair round to throw off crime scene investigators. Then they escaped into their tunnels and into the sewer with no hint.
There, two small boats, one with a motor awaited them. But the motor wouldn’t begin, so the males needed to paddle by means of the sewer to succeed in their van 14 blocks away. Araujo laid sprawled out atop the loot in a single of the boats to safe it.
They efficiently made it to the van and drove to their protected home. The cops had been none the wiser.
“Right away, the first thing I wanted to do was turn on the TV and make sure they weren’t behind,” Araujo says in the movie. “Here we were with the money so far away.”
The males then divided the cash evenly amongst themselves and parted methods.
Sellanes says he drove off with “four trashbags full of cash.”
Authorities had been at first baffled by the escape. They didn’t even understand the gang had tunneled out till a financial institution employee noticed a bit of out of place furnishings overlaying the gap.
In it, they discovered booby traps and a observe from Araujo that learn, in Spanish, “in a rich neighborhood, without weapons or grudges, it’s just money and not love.”
It was an image good job, the take was large, the police had no leads and nobody had been injured. Araujo and Co. appeared to have gotten away with the heist of the century and would be capable of take pleasure in their riches in peace.
One unfastened finish
Then, weeks after the theft, Beto observed one thing amiss.
“I come back [home] one day and find my [stash] bag is out of place,” he says in the movie. “I saw the stack of money had dropped, quite a bit.”
His wife, Alicia di Tullio, admitted to him that she had taken about $300,000 and a few security deposit loot from Beto with out asking permission.
The two, who had been collectively 18 years, received right into a blowout argument. Beto demanded she deliver again what she taken instantly and left the home together with his remaining loot in a huff. Furious, di Tullo known as the police and turned in her husband.
The males realized their good plan had been thwarted. Sellanes recollects the Doc calling him frantically, saying “De la Torre’s wife is going to turn us all in soon, she’s asking for each of us to pay her $300,000, if we won’t she’s gonna give us up.”
Sellanes replied: “Doc, she can go f–k herself. I’m not giving her a thing, let Beto fix all this with her and leave me out of it.”
But Beto couldn’t repair what his wife had accomplished.
Beto, Bolster, Sellanes, Araujo and Zalloecheverría had been all arrested and charged, with di Tullio serving as a confidential witness.
“She told us she had knowledge about the situation…for the purposes of this case, there is no proof that allows us to say what happened between [Beto and Di Tullio],” prosecuting district lawyer Gastón Garbus says in the movie. “I feel like it’s related to the cash and it wasn’t induced from matter of spite over the presence of another lady.”
Beto confirmed that her motive was cash. “She valued [it] more than family and that was it, the tragic ending of my story, I think of everyone’s too,” he mentioned.
In 2010, Beto was sentenced to fifteen years, Araujo was given 14, Zalloecheverría received 10 and Bolster received 9. Sellanes agreed to a separate, expedited trial the place he was given 14 years for not simply the theft but different miscellaneous crimes he was discovered linked to round that point as effectively. The Doc and the child had been by no means caught.
A contented ending for all?
None of the males ended up serving the sentences in full and all are actually free and celebrated for his or her infamous heist.
“There were people who suddenly idolized this and see it as, I don’t know, something out of the ordinary,” Araujo says.
Sellanes has amassed over 30,000 Twitter followers, and the gang’s story was immortalized in a 2020 thriller-comedy “The Heist of the Century.”
Araujo says their story has a cheerful ending.
“Everyone who played a role in this story won. Prosecutors advanced careers, police officers became detectives afterwards and the judges were recognized. The victims’ insurance got them more than they had,” he says.
In the documentary, a number of of the males trace that a lot of the money and valuables they scored was by no means recovered.
“Everybody’s curiosity, it’s great…where is [the rest of the loot]? It’s in the Cayman Islands in the, you better write this down, CBU [account] number 24!” Araujo says sarcastically.
