It’s January 13, 2006, a beautiful summer
day in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when a call went out to local police at 12:38 PM that
Banco Rio was being robbed. Located in a serene, rich neighborhood in
Argentina’s capital, the prestigious bank contained a fortune in its vaults. Police officers arrived at the scene to discover
that four thieves and twenty three hostages were inside. They secured the perimeter, guarding the only
two possible exits from the bank. After communicating and negotiating with the
robbers throughout most of the afternoon, the thieves suddenly went silent. At 7 PM, police officers broke into Banco
Rio and found a confounding scene: the hostages were alive and well, almost one hundred and
fifty safety deposit boxes were forced open and emptied of their contents, and the robbers...were
gone. No sign of the thieves could be found, no
windows were broken, and the exits had been watched by police the whole time. How did these thieves get away with what has
become known as “the robbery of the century”? How did they disappear under the careful watch
of more than one hundred police officers? We dug deep into this infamous Argentinean
bank heist to find out. Banco Rio, now known as Banco Santander Rio,
was one of Argentina’s leading financial institutions, with branches throughout the
country. One of its branches was nestled in the calm,
wealthy neighborhood of San Isidro, in Buenos Aires’ northern suburbs. How well off was San Isidro? Well, the neighborhood now has two golf courses,
a sailing club, and a jockey club. You can almost see the residents clutching
their pearls. In 2006, Argentina was already no stranger
to infamous bank robberies. In fact, a heist that had happened a few years
earlier had left the nation reeling, and as it turns out, inspired the heist of Banco
Rio. In 1999, thieves had broken into a bank in
Ramallo, Argentina, and taken hostages in order to negotiate their freedom from police. The robbers tried to leave the bank using
the hostages as shields and police opened fire, killing one of the robbers, but also
two innocent hostages. As though the tragic event wasn’t enough
of a PR nightmare for the police, the whole bank heist had been shown on live TV via the
many news cameras at the scene. Most Argentinians had seen both the robbery
and the killings go down in real time. The nation was in shock. As a result of the Ramallo case, police in
the 2006 Banco Rio heist were more reluctant to take drastic action when they arrived at
the scene of a bank robbery in progress. That warm January day, with even more news
cameras trained on the hostage situation at Banco Rio, police were trying to move as carefully
as possible. Then again, they weren’t in a rush, because
they thought they had the thieves trapped and surrounded. Over 100 officers had shown up at the scene,
and every vantage point to the bank that wasn’t occupied by a news photographer was occupied
by a sniper. The two bank exits were covered. Where could the thieves go? One of the robbers inside, who bypassed several
cool Argentinian names to codename himself Walter instead, was negotiating the release
of hostages with police. The thieves let the bank’s security guard
walk out the door unharmed, then a young man, then a young woman as well. It seemed like things were going well and
the robbers were playing along with the cops. Walter, who had been given the nickname of
“The Man in the Gray Suit”, seemed to be in a strangely happy mood given the gravity
of his situation. He and the other thieves were treating the
hostages well. At one point, they sang “Happy Birthday”
to one of the bank employees after discovering it was the man’s birthday, which is more
than you remembered to do for most of your friends last year without Facebook reminding
you. Later on, around 3:30 PM, Walter called police
to complain that the 23 remaining hostages were hungry and they’d like some pizza. After this call, the line went silent. What was happening inside Banco Rio? For three hours, with Walter having ghosted
them, the police had no idea what to do. Do they barge in, putting hostages in danger
and risking another Ramallo-like situation? Like a needy ex, they kept trying to contact
Walter even after several missed calls. Finally, special forces lined up and forced
their way in to discover a truly unbelievable situation. Twenty three hostages were being held or had
been locked into three separate floors: the lobby, the mezzanine, and the basement conference
room. The thieves were nowhere to be found. Police even double checked to see if they
were hiding among the hostages, but could not find them. When they entered the basement, they realized
what the thieves had really been after. Out of the 400 reinforced-steel safe deposit
boxes in the basement, 143 had been cracked open. Why didn’t the thieves steal cash from the
bank instead? Well, most Argentinians at the time were pretty
distrustful of the country’s banking system. During the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina,
the banking system had collapsed, wiping out the fortunes of those who had most of their
money in bank accounts. Viewing money held in bank accounts as suspiciously
as most people view bitcoin today, Argentinians instead decided they would only use banks
for their safe deposit boxes, which couldn’t be wiped out in the event of a crisis. In these safeguarded boxes, Argentinians piled
in their cash, jewelry, and other valuable items that they could always reclaim in the
event of an emergency. Given that San Isidro was an exceptionally
rich neighborhood, the safe deposit boxes of this particular branch of Banco Rio contained
an immense amount of wealth. After officers found so many of the boxes
forced open, they also found the only few pieces of evidence the thieves had left behind:
a battery pack, a tool that police assumed had been used to crack open the boxes, and
a row of toy guns. That’s right; the robbers had conducted
this epic bank heist without even using real weapons. The last item police found was perhaps the
most perplexing and obnoxious piece of evidence. The robbers, trying to make some sort of poetic
statement, left behind a note that read, “In a neighborhood of rich people, without weapons
or grudges, it's just money, not love.” Argentinians throughout the country, lacking
Netflix at the time, had been watching the whole robbery unfold for hours from their
televisions, and now saw that the thieves had pulled off an impossible escape as well. Public opinions and rumors in Argentina almost
immediately depicted the robbers as Robin Hood-like folk heroes. After all, they had stolen from the rich,
hadn’t harmed anyone, and given the money to…(pause)...well, it seemed they’d given
it to themselves. But still; their heist was somewhat ingenious. So who was at the center of it all? And how had they executed and gotten away
with such a perfect heist? Well, the mastermind behind the robbery of
the century turned out to be a man named Fernando Araujo. You see, the Ramallo bank heist had made an
impression on Araujo, who thought the robbers had almost pulled off the perfect heist, but
botched it all up when they tried to leave. One day, when Araujo was a few bong hits deep
and talking to a dear friend, he thought of the obvious: what if the robbers never had
to leave? What if, instead, they disappeared through
a hole? Araujo’s friend, Sebastian Garcia Bolster,
agreed that this sounded like a crazy, yet perfect plan. However, he didn’t pay his friend’s theory
much attention, as Bolster was neither a criminal or in any dire financial straits. Also, most people don’t take grand stoned
plans seriously. Araujo and Bolster had grown up together in
an upper middle class neighborhood, also located in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, and
while Araujo sometimes dabbled in hobbies on the wrong side of the law, Bolster enjoyed
a completely legal lifestyle. Bolster had a wife and child and was mechanically
inclined, repairing mostly small engines for money and tinkering around with inventions. Araujo, on the other hand, had a very impulsive
and somewhat eccentric lifestyle, teaching martial arts occasionally to pay the bills
while also cultivating marijuana for money. He was a free-spirited artist who was dealing
with a recent break up as many free-spirited artists do: melodramatically. He decided he needed to remove the world from
his personal space, so he blacked out the windows of his loft. According to others, Araujo ate relatively
little and slept whenever the mood hit him. Frequently high on weed, permanently underfed,
and presumably lacking a whole lot of Vitamin D, Araujo was drawn towards stranger and stranger
ideas. His biggest obsession? Bank robberies. Apparently, Araujo voraciously consumed any
and all media involving bank robbers, from movies and shows to documentaries of real-life
heists. His goal was to observe the mistakes other
fictional and real robbers made, and use these observations to plan out the perfect heist. In 2004, Araujo finally realized he had not
only figured out a plan, but also needed his friend Bolster’s mechanical and technical
knowledge to help him. Bolster wasn’t too happy about the idea,
and he knew banks were harder to break into than most people thought as he had worked
part-time in a bank for a while. However, he was also furious that his father
and grandfather had entrusted money to banks and then lost it all during economic downturns,
so like many people, he ended up hating bankers. When Araujo guaranteed Bolster that no one
would get hurt - in fact, they wouldn’t even have real weapons - Bolster agreed to
the plan and got to work. So what exactly IS the prep work for the robbery
of the century? Thanks partly to its temperamental weather,
Buenos Aires has plenty of storm drains underneath its streets that lead directly out to the
river. The robbers would enter one that ran close
to the bank and then dig up a tunnel to connect it to the bank itself. However, bypassing the bank’s nighttime
alarm system would be a huge challenge, much more difficult than digging a hole. So how would the thieves turn off the bank’s
alarm? Simple: by not tripping it at all. The thieves would rob the safe deposit boxes
in the bank’s basement in the daytime, when the alarm wasn’t set, but the bank was swarming
with people. How would they enter a bank during the workday
and not draw attention to themselves emptying the safe deposit boxes? In Araujo’s mind, the answer was even simpler:
stage a fake bank robbery upstairs, to cover the real bank robbery going on in the basement. Some say the phrase “it’s so crazy it
just might work” was born that day. The duo then proceeded to assemble a crew
of experienced thieves, financiers, and misfits they’d need to pull off this job, presumably
in an “Ocean’s Eleven”-style montage. Enter: an experienced bank robber named Doc
and his associate Ruben Alberto de la Torre, nicknamed Beto. They were former members of an Argentinian
group of armed bank robbers known, unimaginatively, as “Super Banda”. Another fixer and a getaway driver were added
to the crew. Araujo also found a financier and problem
solver in retired rich Uruguayan thief Luis Mario Vitette Sellanes, who invested $100,000
into the operation. What did they need the money for? Well, Bolster had to come up with a way to
get into the bank, spend a lot of time and energy tunneling through, and find a relatively
unobtrusive way to get the safe deposit boxes open so they wouldn’t be heard from upstairs. Bolster decided to rent a safe deposit box
at another Banco Rio branch, noted down the brand name, and ordered a few boxes himself
to find the best way to open them. He concluded that a jackhammer punching through
the locks would do the job, and could be kept to a reasonable noise level. He built a jackhammer that could be transported
in pieces to the bank, assembled there, and then taken apart. However, as anyone who’s seen “The Italian
Job” or almost any heist movie knows, getting a lot of valuable, heavy goods out of the
location you’re robbing presents its own challenge. Since the thieves were going to drop back
down into water-filled drains, getting the goods into Zodiac boats seemed like a good
idea, but the water level was usually too low to hold up the loaded-down boats. Since Bolster couldn’t make it rain - no
more puns, we swear - he naturally decided he’d build a wooden dam in his shop, disassemble
it, and reassemble it in the storm drains over several days. The morning of the heist, the seven men met
for coffee - because apparently even bank robbers need caffeine to start their day - and
then dispersed to start the heist of the century. Bolster headed to the storm drains to make
his way towards the bank underground. Julian Zalloecheverria drove the getaway car
to a pre-arranged meeting spot. Vitette and a mystery man named Luis the Uruguayan
drove a stolen car to the garage under the bank, while the rest of the men drove another
stolen car to the bank itself. Beto and Doc headed in first, with Beto waving
around a toy gun he had stolen from his nine year old son that morning. Shockingly, this worked, and everyone in the
bank immediately dropped to the floor. Araujo left another stolen car outside the
bank purposely to make it look like a getaway vehicle, so police would think they had found
the robbers’ escape plan. Araujo walked into the bank in a baseball
cap, ski mask, long blond wig, and sunglasses; how he managed to avoid weird looks on the
sidewalk before entering is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Bolster had reached the end of
the tunnel he had dug and was just chilling in the dark underneath the bank. Doc went down, broke the basement wall separating
the bank from Bolster’s tunnel, and let Bolster in to help with the robbery, unbeknownst
to anyone inside the bank. This was because Luis and Beto had already
subdued and isolated the hostages. Vitette then took on the persona of Walter
to deal with the cops that had just arrived, in order to make police believe that the robbers
had been caught in a heist gone wrong. Araujo’s plan was somewhat brilliant: the
thieves were basically staging a visible botched bank robbery upstairs to cover up the invisible
robbery happening in the basement. Vitette even released a few hostages one after
the other to make the police think that they had the upper hand, and could get the rest
of the hostages through negotiation alone. The whole crew had been told they had two
hours to get in and get out. Bolster assembled his jackhammer-like contraption
in 20 minutes and spent another hour and a half opening safe deposit boxes. After Vitette got the signal from Araujo to
come downstairs, he told the cops to order pizza and then went down to the basement,
telling the hostages if they moved they’d be killed. Beto and Vitette helped Bolster stuff the
valuables into bags, while Araujo and Doc sprayed bleach to destroy any DNA and threw
around fistfuls of hair from a barbershop floor to confuse police even further. As you do in a bank heist. As the men exited through Bolster’s tunnel,
they cleaned up all evidence of the broken wall, and hid the hole behind a large, heavy
cabinet. The men piled into the Zodiacs, and even though
the motor malfunctioned, Araujo had brought paddles. The men paddled to the getaway van ten blocks
away, used a previously tested pulley system to haul the bags up from the storm drain,
and drove off, all while police still thought they had the bank robbers surrounded in Banco
Rio. When police officers eventually stormed the
bank, the robbers were already home watching the report on live TV, while finally eating
their long-awaited pizza. Bolster, being one of the smartest of the
group, and figuring credit cards would be the most useless of the valuables as they
could be cancelled, scattered the cards all over various streets far away from the gang’s
actual route out of the bank. This not only left no clear trail towards
the robbers; it also created a lot of false leads for police, as every time a passerby
would pick up a credit card and try to use it, the police would have to hunt them down
and see if they were involved. Frustrated, tired, and with no viable leads,
the police, like any “Love is Blind” contestant, realized they had just been publicly humiliated
on TV. So wait - if the robbers got away with it,
how do we know the names and stories of everyone involved in this crime? Well, as it usually happens in life, even
the most carefully thought out plan can be undone with one dumb, egocentric mistake. When Beto brought home the money, he bragged
to his wife Alicia that he and his friends had robbed Banco Rio. Considering Beto had a habit of frequently
cheating on Alicia, disclosing this information so readily probably wasn’t the best idea. When some of the valuables went missing from
the house, Beto and Alicia had a huge fight that led to the unraveling of the whole heist. Sure enough, five weeks later Beto got pulled
over by police while out driving with his mistress. Apparently, Alicia had told them the whole
story of the heist, and identified Beto, Araujo, Bolster, Vitette, and Zalloechevarria as robbers
as well, as she had seen them work on the getaway van in her garage. Alicia didn’t point fingers towards Doc
and the mysterious Uruguayan Luis, as she had never seen them in her house, and they
presumably hadn’t cheated on her. The men were all tried and sent to jail, though
most have been released by now, and are presumably still pissed at Beto for being unable to keep
it in his pants. However, their daring heist lives on in infamy
in Argentina. Do you think you could commit the perfect
crime? If so, please let us know by revealing your
identity and full plan, in detail, in the comment section below! Or better yet, if you’d like to stay out
of jail, go discover another unbelievable story or check out this other video instead!
Este es el de acazuzo?