{"id":666592,"date":"2026-01-01T10:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T10:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/666592\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T10:05:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T10:05:25","slug":"thieves-drilled-into-a-bank-vault-and-emptied-3000-safe-deposit-boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/666592\/","title":{"rendered":"Thieves Drilled Into a Bank Vault and Emptied 3,000 Safe Deposit Boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thieves broke into a German bank vault over Christmas weekend, making off with tens of millions of dollars of valuables from over 3,000 safe deposit boxes, say police.<\/p>\n

“I would definitely say this is quite spectacular,” said Thomas Nowaczyk, a spokesman for the local police, in translated remarks. “I have never heard of any similar case, except on TV.” <\/p>\n

At Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen’s branch in Buer, a suburb in western Germany, the holiday heist started with thieves breaking into a door and then drilling through the concrete bank vault wall. <\/p>\n

The boxes’ insured value was at least 31 million euros, or $36 million. The heist’s full tally could be much higher, as some customers likely stored valuables exceeding the insurance limit.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, you must assume that your box has also been broken into,” Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen said on its website. “More than 95% of the customer safe deposit boxes were forced upon by the as-yet-unknown perpetrators.” <\/p>\n

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The police spokesman said it was a professional job. <\/p>\n

“The hole that can now be seen also indicates that a very large special tool was used. Accordingly, it must have taken longer and was certainly not a spontaneous action,” Nowaczyk said. <\/p>\n

The Associated Press reported that an early Monday fire alarm drew first responders to the bank.<\/p>\n

\"Thieves<\/p>\n

Thieves drilled this hole in the concrete wall of a German bank, say police.<\/p>\n

Police Gelsenkirchen\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Dozens of angry people gathered outside the branch early this week.<\/p>\n

“I fear my mother’s gold coin is gone. She passed away in 1988. My grandmother’s gold bracelets, which I hoped would secure my daughter’s future,” a woman told DW News, which translated her remarks to English. <\/p>\n

Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University, told DW News that banks often have less security vigilance during holiday weekends. <\/p>\n

He said the thieves likely “had some level of inside information” to access the site, so investigators would look for dissatisfied employees, ex-employees, or contractors. <\/p>\n

“It’s the large end of the scale” of robberies, Levi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thieves broke into a German bank vault over Christmas weekend, making off with tens of millions of dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-666592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115819283948874102","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666592","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=666592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}