7 Famous Bank Heists in History

Some of the boldest heists have involved detailed plans and took a long time to prepare. Here are 7 of the most famous bank robberies in history, showing just how far some criminals are willing to go.

The Baker Street Bank Heist

Sherlock Holmes, a character who debuted in 1887, has inspired countless detectives and, intriguingly, criminals. In the Holmes story “The Red-Headed League,” thieves tunnel into a bank, a method mimicked in real life during the 1970 London heist at Lloyds Bank on Baker Street.

Masterminded by Anthony Gavin, the robbers rented nearby premises to dig a tunnel to the bank, using traffic noise to cover the sounds of their drilling. They managed to steal about £500,000 before getting caught, though the full details remain sealed in national archives until 2071.

The United California Bank Heist

The 1972 break-in at the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel carried political undertones, with the thieves aiming to snatch $30 million allegedly linked to President Nixon’s re-election campaign.

Orchestrated by Ohio’s Amil Dinsio, the heist involved disabling alarms with surfboard resin and breaking in through the roof. The crew successfully made off with $12 million, marking it the largest bank heist in American history at the time, and later inspiring the film “Finding Steve McQueen.”

The British Bank of the Middle East

In 1976, amidst civil disorder in Lebanon, a guerrilla group blasted through a church wall into the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss, stealing contents valued at $70 million from the vaults, including gold bars and jewels.

This heist holds the Guinness World Record for the “Greatest Robbery of Safe Deposit Boxes,” with none of the stolen assets recovered or suspects arrested to this day.

The Central Bank of Iraq Robbery

As war loomed in 2003, Saddam Hussein dispatched his son, Qusay, to withdraw $1 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq, purportedly for “business continuity.” This operation, conducted hours before a U.S. bombing campaign, remains controversial but is not universally classified as a robbery due to Hussein’s control over Iraqi financial institutions.

The Northern Bank Robbery

Just before Christmas 2004, robbers posing as police officers took the families of two Northern Bank officials in Northern Ireland hostage. The criminals coerced the officials into aiding a heist that resulted in a £26.5 million theft, one of the largest in UK history. Despite several arrests, the stolen funds were largely never recovered, and the true orchestrators remain unidentified.

The Banco Central Heist

In Brazil, 2005, a gang rented a house under the guise of starting a gardening business as a cover to dig an 80-metre tunnel to the Banco Central. Their efforts netted 156 million reals ($70 million), discovered only when bank staff found a hole in the vault floor. A portion of the money was later recovered, but much remains missing

The Dar es Salaam Investment Bank Robbery

In Baghdad, 2007, three security guards at the Dar es Salaam Investment Bank exploited their insider access to abscond with $282 million. The guards, who vanished without a trace, leveraged the chaotic post-invasion atmosphere, which necessitated large cash reserves due to the infeasibility of electronic transactions.