Villains pull off one of the biggest heists in German history which shares many characteristics of the 2015 London burglary by elderly criminals dubbed the ‘Diamond Wheezers’, as police liken it to Hollywood Ocean’s Eleven plot
The hole drilled by burglars in Gelsenkirchen(Image: Jam Press/Polizei Gelsenkirchen)
Bank raiders drilled through a wall to steal £25million in cash and jewels in a burglary bearing striking similarities to the Hatton Garden heist.
Just like the elderly villains who stole £16million from a vault in London ten years ago, a gang in Germany clambered through a hole bored by a diamond-tipped tool.
Also like the Hatton Garden raiders, the latest crime was carried out over a number of days during a bank holiday weekend and at first went undetected.
A police spokesman likened the German break-in to the Hollywood heist film Ocean’s Eleven, saying it was “very professionally executed”.
“A great deal of prior knowledge and/or a great deal of criminal energy must have been involved to plan and carry this out,” he added.
The hole made by the Hatton Garden raiders(Image: PA)
During the heist at Sparkasse savings bank in the city of Gelsenkirchen, in the west of the country, thieves broke open more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes containing money, gold and jewellery.
The villains would have needed many hours, if not days, to force open so many boxes.
The hole made by the German criminals (Image: Jam Press/Polizei Gelsenkirchen)
Gelsenkirchen Police said they only became aware of the crime after a fire alarm was set off in the early hours of Monday morning.
The gang are believed to have first entered the building on Saturday through a hole in a wall made in an adjacent indoor car park.
No arrests have been made. Police said the thieves had used the “quiet Christmas days” to target the building on Nienhofstrasse in the Buer district.
Witnesses reported seeing several men carrying large bags in the staircase of the garage overnight on Saturday into Sunday.
Police said video footage shows a black Audi RS 6 leaving the garage, on De-La-Chevallerie-Strasse, early on Monday morning.
The car was reportedly stolen in Hanover 120 miles away from the scene of the crime.
On Tuesday, hundreds of customers queued outside the bank, demanding to know what had happened. “I couldn’t sleep last night. We’re getting no information,” one man told the Welt broadcaster, saying he stored his retirement savings in his box.
Dubbed the “Diamond Wheezers”, the Hatton Garden heist gang were jailed for the £14million hole-in-the-wall burglary at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd in Central London during the 2015 Easter bank holiday.
The gang first broke in on Thursday April 2 disabling the alarm and then using a diamond-tipped drill to bore a 25cm high by 45cm wide hole in the concrete vault wall. But they failed to force their way past the metal cabinets housing the safe deposit boxes and walked out empty handed almost 10 hours later.
Brian Reader masterminded the 2015 burglary(Image: PA)
They returned two days later and got into the vault. A total of 74 safety deposit boxes were opened. Two of the leading raiders have now died. Mastermind Brian Reader, played by Michael Caine in one of several movies about the burglary, succumbed to cancer in 2023, aged 83.
Terry Perkins, portrayed by Timothy Spall in ITV drama, had a heart attack a week after being ordered to pay millions, aged 69.
Timothy Spall as Terry Perkins and Kenneth Cranham as Brian Reader(Image: ITV)
The youngest in the team was Michael Seed, then 54, dubbed “Basil the Ghost”. Seed was the technical brains behind the burglary, getting the gang into the vault, disabling the alarms and removing most of the CCTV. He was one of two raiders slim enough to climb into the vault through the drilled hole to loot the safe deposit boxes.
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