View of Fortaleza's Praia of Iracema and Beira-Mar

The Banco Central burglary at Fortaleza was a bank robbery of the Banco Central in Fortaleza, a city in northeastern Brazil. It is one of the world's largest burglaries, along with the 1987 Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery in London. View of Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. ... View of Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. ... Bank robbery is the crime of robbing a bank. ... An artists rendering of the Banco Central building in Brasília, national capital of Brazil The Banco Central do Brasil is Brazils central bank, established on December 31, 1964. ... Official Flag Fortaleza (fortress in Portuguese) is the capital of Ceará, a State in the northeast of Brazil. ... 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery took place on 12 July 1987 in Knightsbridge, England, part of the City of Westminster in London. ... The clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, which contains Big Ben London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ...

The burglary

On the weekend of August 6 and August 7, 2005 a gang of burglars, suspected to be either the Gang of the Tattooed or First Capital Command, tunneled into the Banco Central in Fortaleza. They removed five containers of 50-real notes, with an estimated value of 164.755.150 reais (US$69.8 million, £38.6 million, €56 million), initially reported as 156 million. The money was uninsured, as a bank spokeswoman stated the risks were too small to justify the insurance premiums. The burglars managed to evade or disable the bank's internal alarms and sensors; the burglary remained undiscovered until the bank opened for business on the morning of Monday, August 8. August 6 is the 218th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (219th in leap years), with 147 days remaining. ... August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining. ... 2005 (Roman: MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Official Flag Fortaleza (fortress in Portuguese) is the capital of Ceará, a State in the northeast of Brazil. ... The real (symbol: R$, ISO 4217 code: BRL, plural: reais) is the currency of Brazil. ... The United States dollar, or American dollar, is the official currency of the United States. ... The pound sterling, which strictly speaking refers to basic currency unit of sterling, now the pound, is the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). ... The euro (€; ISO 4217 code EUR) is the currency of twelve European Union member states: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, collectively known as the Eurozone. ... August 8 is the 220th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (221st in leap years), with 145 days remaining. ...

The Banco Central is a national banking institution charged with control of the money supply. The money in the vault was being examined to see if it should be recirculated or destroyed. The bills were not numbered sequentially because they were used, making them almost impossible to trace. Reserve Bank of India in Mumbai, India. ... Money supply (monetary aggregates, money stock), a macroeconomic concept, is the quantity of money available within the economy to purchase goods, services, and securities. ...

Planning

Three months earlier, the gang of burglars had rented an empty property in the centre of the city and then tunneled 78 meters (255 ft) beneath two city blocks to a position beneath the bank. The gang had renovated a house and put up a sign indicating it was a landscaping company selling both natural and artificial grass as well as plants. Neighbours, who estimated that the gang consisted of between six and ten men, described how they had seen van-loads of soil being removed daily, but understood this to be a normal activity of the business. The tunnel, being roughly 70 cm (2.3 ft) square and running 4 meters (13 ft) beneath the surface, was well-constructed: it was lined with wood and plastic and had its own lighting and air conditioning systems. Landscaping can refer to more than one subject: Real estate on large scale, see Landscape architecture Gardening on a large or small scale, see Landscape gardening Artwork, see Landscape painting Maintenance, see Landscape maintenance This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share... In sports that were originally or are normally played on grass, artificial turf is a grass_like playing surface manufactured from synthetic materials. ... Divisions Green algae land plants (embryophytes) non-vascular embryophytes Hepatophyta - liverworts Anthocerophyta - hornworts Bryophyta - mosses vascular plants (tracheophytes) seedless vascular plants Lycopodiophyta - clubmosses Equisetophyta - horsetails Pteridophyta - true ferns Psilotophyta - whisk ferns Ophioglossophyta - adderstongue ferns seed plants (spermatophytes) †Pteridospermatophyta - seed ferns Pinophyta - conifers Cycadophyta - cycads Ginkgophyta - ginkgo Gnetophyta - gnetae Magnoliophyta - flowering... A disused railway tunnel now converted to pedestrian and bicycle use, near Houyet, Belgium A tunnel is an underground passage. ... Note: in the broadest sense, air conditioning can refer to any form of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning. ...

Execution

On the final weekend, the gang broke through 1.1 meters (3.6 ft) of steel-reinforced concrete to enter the bank vault. The bank notes weighed approximately 3,500 kg (approx. 7,700 lbs) and would have required a considerable amount of time and effort to remove. The old steel cable of a colliery winding tower Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ... Reinforced concrete at Sainte Jeanne dArc Church (Nice, France): architect Jacques Dror, 1926–1933 Reinforced concrete (Ferro concrete) is plain concrete in which reinforcement in the form of rods, bars (rebars) or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the naturally brittle concrete. ...

Investigation

"They worked for several months", police said, "The gardening company was working since March. They had sophisticated equipment, including GPS (global positioning systems) and experts in math, engineering and excavation." Over fifty GPS satellites such as this NAVSTAR have been launched since 1978. ...

Police located a pick-up truck branded with a Grama Sintética (Synthetic Lawns) logo found at the rented house. Bolt cutters, a blowtorch, an electric saw and other tools used to penetrate the concrete barrier were found both inside the vault and within the empty property. The house was covered in white powder to make locating fingerprints difficult. Bolt cutters A bolt cutter is a scissors-like tool used for cutting heavy chains, bolts and wire mesh. ... A blowtorch is a tool used in gas welding and metal cutting and brazing and sometimes in soldering. ... Portable saw The article is about the cutting tool. ... A fingerprint is an imprint made by the pattern of skin on the pad of a human finger. ...

Suspects

Sabrina Albuquerque, a Brazilian federal police spokeswoman, stated that eight suspects have been identified in the burglary.

The Brazilian Federal Police are investigating a possible connection between the burglars and car resellers in Fortaleza. On August 10 the Military Police of Minas Gerais arrested two men driving a car transporter truck in Sete Lagoas, a city located near Belo Horizonte. Among the cars was a Mitsubishi Pajero and another vehicle with over a $1 million inside. August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Minas Gerais (pronounced IPA ) is one of the states of Brazil, the second most populous in the federation. ... The driver of this DAF tractor with an auto-transport semi-trailer prepares to offload Skoda Octavia cars in Cardiff, Wales For further uses of the word truck, see Truck (disambiguation). ... Sete Lagoas (meaning Seven Lakes in Portuguese) is a town in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. ... Belo Horizonte (a Portuguese name meaning beautiful horizon) is among the most important cities in Brazil. ... The Mitsubishi Shogun 2800, as seen in the United Kingdom The Mitsubishi Pajero, known as the Mitsubishi Montero in North America and Spanish-speaking countries, and as Mitsubishi Shogun in the United Kingdom, is an SUV built by the Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. ...

On September 29 the Brazilian Federal Police arrested three men and found 5.4 million in a hole under a bedroom of a house in Fortaleza. The three suspects said they helped dig a tunnel to the vault and named 18 other people who also allegedly took part in the heist, Joao Batista Santana, the federal police chief in Ceara state told the Globo TV network.

Prosecutors have said the group tried unsuccessfully to charter a small plane days before the robbery to use it to escape and move the money out of the country. In all, Santana said, about 20 people in groups took part in the theft and thus far more than $7 million (11% of the total) was recovered by authorities.

The newspaper O Estado de São Paulo reported that this burglary and another last year in Brasilia may have been masterminded by convicted bank robber Moises Teixeira da Silva, who escaped his 25-year prison sentence in 2001 along with 100 other inmates by tunneling out of prison. He is considered a probable suspect by Brazilian police. O Estado de São Paulo logo. ... Bras lia is the capital city of Brazil and is located in the center of the country in a federal district created in the state of Goi s. ... Moises Teixeira da Silva is a convicted robber who escaped São Paulo, Brazils Carandiru prison with about 100 others through a tunnel in 2001. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

See also

• Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery — a robbery of similar magnitude, also valued at around $68 million.
• The Ladykillers, 2004 movie remake which parallels the mechanics of the robbery closely.
• Small Time Crooks, a 2000 Woody Allen movie depicting a gang opening a front business to cover up their tunneling activities towards a bank vault. It is currently running in a small one week re-release at a São Paulo cinema in the wake of the events.
• "The Red-Headed League", a Sherlock Holmes story which also parallels the robbery's mechanics.
• "Short Circuit 2" also featured a bank robbery via tunnel.
• List of famous bank robbers and robberies

The Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery took place on 12 July 1987 in Knightsbridge, England, part of the City of Westminster in London. ... The Ladykillers is a 1955 British film. ... Small Time Crooks is a Woody Allen comedy starring Woody Allen himself and Tracy Ullman. ... Woody Allen. ... Flag of São Paulo São Paulo is a state in Brazil. ... The Red-Headed League is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. ... Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes (1854–1957, according to William S. Baring-Gould) is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, created by British author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ... Short Circuit 2 is a 1988 film starring Fisher Stevens as Ben Jahrvi (Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit), Michael McKean as Fred Ritter, Cynthia Gibb as Sandy Banatoni, and Johnny 5, a sentient robot. ... This is a list of famous bank robberies, bank robbers and gangs involved in bank robberies. ...

References

• BBC news story
• Agencia Brasil story
• Times online story - includes a picture of the tunnel
• Bloomberg story
• CNN online story
• Banco Central do Brasil news release (in Portuguese)
• News24 Online Story
• Ireland On-Line Story