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The Banco Central robbery at Fortaleza city is Brazil's largest bank robbery, and one of the world's largest known robberies. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Ongoing events • 2005 Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes • 2005 Maharashtra floods • 2005 Gujarat Flood • Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan • Fuel prices • Gomery Comm. ... Official Flag Fortaleza (fortress in portuguese) is the capital of Ceará, a State in the northeastern of Brazil. ... Bank robbery is the crime of robbing a bank. ...

On the weekend of the 6 August and 7 August 2005 an unknown gang of robbers tunnelled in to the Banco Central bank (Brazilian Central Bank) in Fortaleza and removed five containers of 50-real notes, with an estimated value of 150 million reals ($65m). The robbers managed to evade or disable the bank's internal alarms and sensors, so the robbery remained undiscovered until the bank opened for business on the Monday morning. 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 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and is the current year. ... Official Flag Fortaleza (fortress in portuguese) is the capital of Ceará, a State in the northeastern of Brazil. ... The real (plural reais) is the present monetary unit (currency) of Brazil. ...

The gang of robbers rented an empty property in the centre of the city three months earlier, then tunnelled 78 m (255 ft) under two city blocks to a position beneath the bank. The robbers disguised their activities by establishing the front of a business making artificial turf. Neighbours, who estimated that the gang comprised of between six and ten men, described how they had seen vanloads of soil being removed daily, but understood this was the normal activity of the business. The tunnel, being roughly 70 cm square and running 4 metres beneath the surface, was well built, lined with wood and plastic and had its own lighting system. In sports that were originally or are normally played on grass, artificial turf is a grass-like playing surface manufactured from synthetic materials. ...

On the final weekend, the gang broke through 1.10 metres of reinforced concrete to enter the bank vault. The bank notes would have weighed approximately 3.5 tonnes and so required a considerable amount of time and effort to remove. 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 form of rods, bars (rebars) or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the naturally brittle concrete. ...

The newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo reported that this robbery 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 tunnelling out of prison. He is considered a probable suspect by Brazilian police. 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. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery — possibly the only larger known robbery, valued at around $70m.

The Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery took place on 12 July 1987 in Knightsbridge, England, part of the borough of Westminster within the greater city of London. ...

References

• BBC news story
• Agencia Brasil story
• Times online story - includes a picture of the tunnel
• Bloomberg story