Thieves used the quiet Christmas holiday to drill their way into the vault of a German retail bank and make off with at least 10 million euros (US$11.73 million) of money and valuables from customers’ deposit boxes, police said on Tuesday.
The perpetrators drilled through a thick concrete wall at a branch of Sparkasse bank in the western city of Gelsenkirchen, and broke into several thousand safe deposit boxes and stole a sum estimated in the double-digit millions of euros, police said in a statement.
Most shops and banks close in Germany over the Christmas holiday, starting from the evening of Dec. 24, and police only discovered the hole after a fire alarm went off in the early hours of Monday.
Photo: GELSENKIRCHEN POLICE via EPA
The bank said that “more than 95 percent of the 3,250 customer safe deposit boxes were broken into by unknown perpetrators.”
Dozens of angry customers on Tuesday gathered in front of the bank loudly chanting: “Let us in.”
“I couldn’t sleep last night. We’re getting no information,” one man told the Welt broadcaster as he waited outside the branch, adding that he had been using the safe for 25 years and that it contained his retirement savings.
Another man said he used his deposit box to store cash and jewelry for his family.
A spokesperson for Sparkasse bank in Gelsenkirchen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Police said witnesses have reported that they saw several men on Saturday night carrying large bags in the stairwell of an adjacent parking garage.
There were also reports of a black Audi RS 6 leaving the garage early on Monday morning with masked men inside.
The vehicle’s license plate was that of a car stolen in Hannover, more than 200km northeast of Gelsenkirchen, police said.
A police spokesman said that the break-in was “indeed very professionally executed,” likening it to the heist movie Ocean’s Eleven.
“A great deal of prior knowledge and/or a great deal of criminal energy must have been involved to plan and carry this out,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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