Police stand guard at the bank branch as concerned bank customers wait outside – Copyright AFP\/File ERIC PIERMONT<\/p>\n
Robbers used a large drill to break into a German savings bank\u2019s vault room and steal cash, gold and jewelry worth some 30 million euros ($35 million), police said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The heist in the western city of Gelsenkirchen saw the thieves break into more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes, they said.<\/p>\n
While the criminals remained at large, hundreds of distressed bank customers massed outside the branch on Tuesday demanding information, but were kept at bay by police.<\/p>\n
According to police, the robbers drilled their way into the underground vault room of the Sparkasse savings bank from a parking garage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investigators suspect the gang spent much of the weekend inside, breaking open the deposit boxes.<\/p>\n
The break-in came to light after a fire alarm was triggered in the early hours of Monday and emergency services discovered the hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Witnesses reported seeing several men carrying large bags in the stairwell of the parking garage during the night from Saturday to Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Footage from security cameras has also shown a black Audi RS 6 leaving the parking garage early Monday morning, with masked persons inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The car\u2019s license plate had been stolen earlier in the city of Hanover, police said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A police spokesman told AFP that the break-in was \u201cindeed very professionally executed\u201d, likening it to the heist movie \u201cOcean\u2019s Eleven\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA great deal of prior knowledge and\/or a great deal of criminal energy must have been involved to plan and carry this out,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police said the more than 3,000 boxes had an average insurance value of 10,000 euros, and therefore estimated the damage at some 30 million euros.<\/p>\n
Several victims had told police officers that their losses far exceeded the insured value of their safe deposit boxes.<\/p>\n
The police spokesman said that \u201cdisgruntled customers\u201d were outside the bank branch which didn\u2019t open\u00a0for security reasons, after threats had been made against the employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still on site, keeping an eye on things,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cthe situation has calmed down considerably\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police stand guard at the bank branch as concerned bank customers wait outside – Copyright AFP\/File ERIC PIERMONT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[3670,2000,299,1824,108814,19424],"class_list":{"0":"post-662909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-bank","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-hide","13":"tag-robbery"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115809693394257460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}