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

Thieves stole goods and cash worth tens of millions of euros from safes inside a German bank vault which they broke into on Monday, police said.

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

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

In an updated press release on FacebookGelsenkirchen police said the burglary was discovered Monday morning. Police said that amid the holiday lull, the thieves used a large drill to cut a hole in a secure room and rummage through valuables inside.

“The police became aware of the burglary thanks to a fire alarm triggered Monday morning at 3:58 a.m. at the fire department,” the press release said. “Subsequently, the police and firefighters immediately began searching the building and noticed the hole in the cellar and the burglary.”

According to initial investigations, the police said that the criminals had accessed the savings fund through a parking lot and fled with the loot.

Witnesses told investigators they saw several men carrying large bags in a nearby parking lot overnight from Friday to Saturday.

Officers from the investigation team examined the first video footage from the parking lot, which shows a black Audi RS 6 leaving the garage early Monday morning.

“There are also masked perpetrators inside the vehicle, one of whom activates the exit barrier. The car’s license plate had already been stolen in Hannover,” the police said. “It is now confirmed that the perpetrators robbed several thousand safes in the affected safe. Initial rough estimates put the damage at several tens of millions.”

German Press Agency dpa reported that this theft could be one of the most important heists in Germany.

The bank remained closed on Tuesday, as around 200 people showed up demanding entry, dpa reports. Police are asking those who believe they may have been victims of the theft to contact the bank first.

This is not the first time this year that thieves have broken into a property to access cash and jewelry.

In April, a group of thieves stole almost 20 million dollars in jewelry and cash after entering a jewelry store in downtown Los Angeles.

The owners of Love Jewels said they lost millions of dollars following the burglary after thieves stole watches, pendants, gold chains and other merchandise.

Investigators said they were reviewing security camera footage that shows the suspects entering the store through a large hole they cut from the neighboring property, Officer David Cuellar of the Los Angeles Police Department revealed at the time.

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“They dug several levels of concrete down to the target location,” Cuellar said.

The store owner suspected that it took weeks for the thieves to break into his store and claimed to have used the abandoned theater next door to his home to create it.

The brazen German heist took place two months later thieves broke into the Louvre and took away objects valued at more than 100 million dollars.

The director of the most visited museum in the world later recognized a “terrible failure” safe. 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 through jewelry displays and used motorcycles to escape.

The loot has still not been recovered. It includes a diamond and emerald necklace that Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewelry linked 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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