Robbery “like in the movie Ocean's Eleven”, discovered at a bank in Germany. The police, amazed by the method of thieves who “took advantage of the Christmas silence”
German police officers, photographed in front of the bank in Gelsenkirchen on Tuesday, PHOTO: Christoph Reichwein / AFP / Profimedia Images
Burglars robbed a bank and ran away with the loot over the weekend in Gelsenkirchen, a city in western Germany, causing damage of 30 million euros, according to an estimate, the police announced on Tuesday, quoted by AFP and News.ro.
Armed with a huge drill, the suspects – still unidentified – broke into a branch of the bank, a local savings bank, and emptied nearly 3,000 safe deposit boxes full of money, gold and jewelry, a police spokesman told AFP.
With an average insurance of 10,000 euros per box, the investigators estimate the total damage at approximately 30 million euros.
The bank remained closed on Tuesday “for security reasons”, after several customers, worried about their belongings, gathered in front of the bank and uttered threats to the employees.
In a video broadcast by the tabloid Bild, dozens of people try to force their way into the building, despite the presence of the police.
The situation calmed down on Tuesday afternoon, according to the police spokesman.
The method used in breaking into the bank amazed the investigators – the thieves made a hole in the vault with a huge drill.
The burglary, discovered because of a fire alarm
The break-in was discovered on Monday, following a fire alarm received by the fire department.
“It's like in the movie (about robberies) Ocean's Eleven”, a source from the German police summed up the situation. “Everything was carried out very professionally,” the same source told AFP.
The burglars “took advantage of the Christmas lull,” the bank said in a statement. An investigation is underway, but the identity of the perpetrators and the exact amount stolen remain unknown.
According to the police, witnesses saw several men, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, with large bags, in the stairwell of an adjacent parking lot.
A black car, Audi, with a stolen registration number, driven by masked men, left the parking lot on Monday morning, according to video recordings of surveillance cameras analyzed by the police.
