The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
Harry "Pete" Pierpont was a Prohibition era gangster, convicted murderer and bank robber. He was a friend and mentor to John Dillinger.
The Brink's-Mat robbery occurred at the Heathrow International Trading Estate, London, United Kingdom, on 26 November 1983. £26 million worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash was stolen from a warehouse. The bullion was the property of Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd, which collapsed the following year after making large loans to fraudsters and insolvent firms. Two men were convicted, and the majority of the gold has never been recovered. Insurers Lloyd's of London paid out for the losses, and several shooting deaths have been linked to the case.
David Aleksander Toska was the alleged "mastermind" behind the "NOKAS robbery" in Stavanger on 5 April 2004, one of the most profiled criminal cases in modern Norwegian history. The robbery resulted in the killing of a police officer, a very rare occurrence in Norway.
Brenden James Abbott is a convicted Australian bank robber. He is reported to have stolen and hidden millions of dollars, and was dubbed "the postcard bandit" by police seeking media coverage.
John McVicar was a British journalist and convicted one-time armed robber who escaped from prison.
Attila Ambrus, alias The Whiskey Robber, is a Hungarian bank robber and professional ice hockey player. He became notorious during the 1990s for committing a string of undercover "gentleman robberies" in and around Budapest, Hungary, while working a day job as a goaltender. He became infamous in Hungary as a folk hero symbolic of the times in the decade after the introduction of capitalism to the former Communist state. Ambrus was eventually caught and imprisoned for about 12 years, released in 2012. His story was told in the 2004 book Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by author Julian Rubinstein and the 2017 film A Viszkis directed by Nimród Antal.
The 2006 robbery of Securitas depot in Tonbridge, England, was the UK's largest cash robbery. It began with a kidnapping on the evening of 21 February and ended in the early hours of 22 February, when seven criminals stole almost £53 million. The gang left behind another £154 million because they did not have the means to transport it.
The Pink Panthers are an international jewel thief network responsible for a number of robberies and thefts described as some of the most audacious in the history of organized crime. The organization has roughly 800 core members, many of whom are ex-soldiers with extensive military and paramilitary backgrounds. Both women and men play an equal part in the structure of the organization. The organization's membership mostly consists of Serbian, Montenegrin and other former Yugoslavian state citizens, believed to be remnants of the Bosnian War who have made criminal use of their militaristic skills. The organization was named by Interpol after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films.
The Bank Job is a 2008 heist thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and starring Jason Statham, based on the 1971 Baker Street robbery in central London, from which the money and valuables stolen were never recovered. The producers allege that the story was prevented from being told in 1971 because of a D-Notice, to protect a prominent member of the British royal family. According to the producers, this film is intended to reveal the truth for the first time, although it includes significant elements of fiction.
The Gang des postiches was a famous team of bank robbers that operated in Paris between 1981 and 1986. With a rare boldness, they attacked about thirty banks.
The Graff Diamonds robbery took place on 6 August 2009 when two men posing as customers entered the premises of Graff Diamonds in New Bond Street, London and stole jewellery worth nearly £40 million. It was believed to be the largest ever gems heist in Britain at the time, and the second largest British robbery after the £53 million raid on a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, in 2006. The robbers' haul totalled 43 items of jewellery, consisting of rings, bracelets, necklaces and wristwatches. One necklace alone has been reported as being worth more than £3.5m. Britain's previous largest jewellery robbery also took place at Graff's, in 2003.
Edward Wilhelm Bentz was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. He was associated with several high-profile public enemies during his criminal career, including Harvey Bailey, Albert Bates, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and Baby Face Nelson. He was eventually captured by the FBI and sentenced to Alcatraz.
Johann Kastenberger was an Austrian marathon runner, bank robber and murderer. He infamously committed his crimes while wearing a Ronald Reagan mask, earning him the nickname Pumpgun Ronnie. Kastenberger's criminal life was the basis for the 2010 film The Robber.
On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a shot being fired.
The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary occurred in April 2015, when an underground safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden, London, owned by Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd., was burgled. According to official sources, the total stolen had an estimated value of up to £14 million, of which only £4.3 million has been recovered. The heist was planned and carried out by six elderly men who were experienced thieves, all of whom were arrested, pleaded guilty and received prison sentences in March 2016. Four other men were also tried on suspicion of involvement; three were found guilty and sent to prison, while the fourth was cleared.
Jeffrey Shuman is an American-French bank robber, dubbed "The Vaulter", considered to be one of Canada's most prolific bank robbers. In 1994, he pleaded guilty to robbing 14 banks in the United States, receiving a 12-year sentence, but was released in 2004, and fled the country while on parole. He then robbed 21 banks in Canada, before fleeing to France on his French passport. In 2016, he was extradited to Canada, and in 2017, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay back nearly $450,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to seven counts of robbery using a firearm.
The City bonds robbery of 1990 was a heist in which £291.9 million was stolen in London, England. The carefully planned operation made it seem at first as if a courier had been mugged on 2 May, yet the City of London Police soon realised that it was a sophisticated global venture which ended up involving participants such as the New York mafia, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Colombian drug barons. The robbery was one of the largest in world history.
Gilbert William Galvan Jr. is an American bank robber. Having spent many of his adult years in prison, Galvan fled to Canada where he assumed the name Robert Lee Whiteman and began a three-year spree robbing banks and jewelry stores. The media dubbed him the Flying Bandit and the Phantom Bandit. Galvan's exploits were the subject of a 1996 true crime novel by Robert Knuckle, which was adapted into the 2022 film Bandit.
