Has it ever happened to you that you create more empathy for the villain in the story than for the hero? That the thief ends up being so charming or intelligent that he ends up developing your deep admiration?
Well, something similar happened on January 13, 2006, when a group of 7 men set out to carry out what is called "the robbery of the century" in one of the Banco Rio headquarters in the Argentine town of Acassuso.
The action begins
The morning of that day, a group of 5 people prepared to enter a Rio bank branch with toy weapons and took 23 hostages. All in a very calculated way; in fact, everything was so well planned that they even ordered a cake and sang a birthday for one of the hostages.
Outside the bank there were 70 elite policemen, negotiators, snipers (you can't miss the cliché in a hostage-taking), 300 policemen, and above all one determining factor: a lot of press.
A negotiator who kept in constant conversation with the police. First they released several hostages and that saved them a lot of time; They even allowed the hostages to call their relatives to inquire about the site and in this way; the psychological factor of the police would be affected; since, this time they would have to get it right.
It should be noted that in a previous robbery months ago, an event occurred that marked the entire country. It is said that there was a rather unfortunate scenario, since some criminals have taken three hostages, in turn they have escaped in a car.
But the police intercepted them and literally fired on the car the thieves were heading for, resulting in the death of the hostages; which were used as human shields. From this, the police protocol had to change. Factor that our cunning robbers took advantage of.
Everything was developing in a very normal way, the police were conducting negotiations and the thieves were acceding; Everything pointed to the fact that they were going to surrender without offering greater resistance, at least this was what they made the entire police force think, but the truth was different.
They placed the hostages in the windows to make the snipers confused, they befriended the hostages and created a certain bond of empathy. And so they were confusing everyone, the only ones who seemed clear on their objective were the 5 robbers.
But who were these people? One of them was someone named Fernando Araujo, a Jiujitsu teacher; who was born in Argentina, specifically in the town of San Isidro, he is the one who is credited with having been the mastermind behind the robbery.
He was accompanied by highly intelligent people: an engineer, an actor, a climber, and many others; a whole body of specialists worthy of films like "The Great Scam"
They didn't just get up one day and decide to rob the bank; This plan had been in execution for more than a year, in which they were analyzing and carrying out each step.
The first thing they did was to locate a bank headquarters in an area of people with a lot of money; And the other thing they did was come up with an escape plan. The ideal headquarters were found in Acassuso; which, had a very close drain, in which, they could place some boats and move through a river channel to a destination very far from the police.
The plan was developed for a period of approximately one year; the thieves posed as public works employees and entered the river channel with certain excavation equipment. All this to make a tunnel that communicated with one of the walls of the bank, in which they could extract the money and escape unscathed.
These people dug the tunnel until they only got a concrete wall, which would leave 4 cm thick to open a hole on the inside of the bank that could help them escape.
The wind was in his favor
Something that draws our attention is that days before, due to the intense work of the machinery, the bank's anti-seismic alarms were activated repeatedly; but those in charge of them, seeing that no apparent event occurred, decided to disconnect them because they thought there was some kind of error in their programming.
The thieves did everything they planned after this; They entered the bank, subdued the hostages, negotiated with the police, released some, and after a few hours; they just ordered pizza.
Suddenly, everything became suspicious for the police, since the negotiator disappeared, without giving any signs. After a few hours, they decided to enter, but it was too late, the thieves had escaped through a tunnel they had made previously and took around 19 million dollars and 80 kilos of jewelry.
The police only got the empty boxes and a note that said: "In a neighborhood of rich men without weapons or grudges, it is only money and not love." They searched everywhere and around; But the criminals had reached a tunnel that connected them to another tunnel that finally led them to their destination:
A truck that had a hole in the bottom and was located just above one of the sewers that the assailants had previously selected; so that nobody saw the sacks with the loot on the street.
The police basically were left without any kind of clues because all the details were taken care of and executed; They even spread hair they had bought from a nearby hair salon to test negative for DNA. This, coupled with the fact that glue was placed on the hands to avoid leaving traces.
After a while and thanks to the confession of one of the criminals' wives, the police managed to catch several of them; but the money was gone; so the bank had to compensate those affected.
This is something the gang boss had planned; and he knew that he was not going to generate large losses among the owners of the accounts, because according to the payroll, they were all very well placed economically.
I know what you're thinking, and this story is a lot like the paper house series; it's true. Especially because of the social impact it had, since this took place 5 years after an economic crisis hit the Latin American country creating true chaos.
In that crisis, many people died because they could not buy medicine; and many other older ones were left unprotected; Because the banks refused to return the money to the people who had invested in them, for this reason, this feat of the robbers was seen as an act of justice against the banking system.