20 Criminal Robberies That the Authorities Have Still Not Solved

In 1971, a man dressed in a dark suit hijacked a Boeing 727, demanded two hundred thousand dollars, and then parachuted into a freezing storm over Washington State. No one ever found him or most of the money, although a young boy unearthed a few tattered bills years later. He became something of a folk hero, having pulled off the only unsolved airplane hijacking in the history of commercial aviation before vanishing without a trace.

A group of Italian thieves known as the “School of Turin” spent years planning a heist on one of the most secure vaults on the planet. They managed to bypass infrared sensors, Doppler radar, and a magnetic seal to make off with more than $100 million in diamonds and gold. Although the ringleader was eventually arrested thanks to discarded evidence, most of the loot was never recovered, and his accomplices remain largely a mystery.

On a rainy day in Tokyo in 1968, a police officer on a motorcycle stopped an armored truck and told the driver that the vehicle was about to explode. When smoke began to pour out of the vehicle, the bank employees fled, and the “police officer” simply got behind the wheel and drove off with a fortune in year-end bonuses. Even though the police had more than a hundred pieces of evidence, including the motorcycle, they never arrested the man who had turned a false bomb threat into a huge payday.

In 1955, a diver named Teddy Tucker discovered a magnificent gold and emerald cross in a 16th-century shipwreck off the coast of Bermuda. Years later, just as the cross was about to be displayed for Queen Elizabeth II, someone noticed that the original had been replaced by a cheap plastic replica. The real treasure, considered a priceless piece of maritime history, has not been seen since it was stolen from its “secure” display case at the museum.

In 1950, eleven men wearing Halloween masks and driver’s caps committed the “crime of the century” by breaking into a secure armored car depot in Boston. They stole more than two million dollars in cash and checks—a colossal sum for the time. Although some of the members were eventually arrested just before the statute of limitations expired, much of the money was never recovered, and the heist’s legendary status has remained intact.

In 1962, a group of robbers disguised as police officers hijacked a mail truck on a dark Massachusetts highway and stole one and a half million dollars. They were so well organized that they even had a “lookout” car and a getaway vehicle waiting for them in the woods. You’d think someone would have eventually talked, but the culprits were never convicted, and the money appears to have been completely laundered into the local economy.

In Brazil, criminals spent three months digging a 75-meter tunnel from a rented house to a bank vault in Fortaleza. They even installed lighting and air conditioning in the tunnel to make their work more comfortable while they transported tons of cash. Although some suspects were subsequently arrested, more than half of the approximately $70 million stolen remains unaccounted for to this day.

In 2008, four men—some of whom were disguised as women wearing wigs and high heels—entered a high-end jewelry store in Paris and ransacked nearly all the display cases. They knew exactly where the “hidden” safes were located, suggesting that they either had inside information or had spent months scouting the premises. They stole more than $100 million worth of jewelry, and although some arrests have been made, most of the glittering haul remains untraceable.

A few hours before the invasion of Iraq began in 2003, nearly a billion dollars was loaded onto trucks and transported out of the central bank. This was not a stealthy nighttime raid, but a large-scale operation involving several large vehicles and an official letter of authorization. While some of the money was later found hidden in the palace walls, hundreds of millions of dollars virtually vanished amid the chaos of the war.

In 1972, a crew used dynamite to blow a hole in the roof of a bank vault in Laguna Niguel, netting them about thirty million dollars. They were so professional that they even disabled the alarm system using a special foam that neutralized the sensors. The FBI eventually linked this heist to a professional crew from Ohio, but many details—as well as a large portion of the money—remained a secret.

An armed man wearing a bandana walked into a jewelry exhibition at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes alone and walked out with a suitcase full of diamonds. The heist lasted less than a minute, and the thief didn’t even need to fire a single shot to make off with loot worth more than one hundred million dollars. Since the hotel served as the setting for a famous Hitchcock film about a jewel thief, life has truly imitated art in the most expensive way possible.

In 1972, three armed men lowered themselves down a rope through a skylight and fled with a collection of rare paintings, including a landscape by Rembrandt. They had initially intended to take more, but were interrupted when an alarm went off. So they took what they could and fled into the night. Despite the high profile of the stolen works—notably paintings by Gainsborough and Corot—they have not resurfaced on the black market in over fifty years.

In 2019, thieves set fire to an electrical box to disable the streetlights before breaking into a museum in Dresden, Germany. They smashed the display cases with axes and, in just a few minutes, stole historic diamonds worth more than a billion dollars. Although some members of a notorious criminal family were subsequently arrested, many of the world’s most famous jewels are still missing from the royal collection.

During the Lebanese Civil War in 1976, a group of militants spent two days blowing up a wall shared with a Catholic church to reach a bank vault. They made off with dozens of safes filled with gold bars, jewelry, and various currencies. The estimated value of the loot was so great that it set a world record at the time, but the identity of the thieves remains a subject of intense debate.

An Italian playboy named Valerio Viccei led a team that posed as customers looking to rent a safe deposit box in London. Once inside the vault, they pulled out their guns, tied up the guards, and spent hours breaking into the safes to find millions in cash and jewelry. Viccei was eventually arrested because he had returned to England to retrieve his favorite Ferrari, but most of his accomplices and the loot remained at large.

In 1907, someone managed to steal the precious insignia of the Order of St. Patrick from a safe inside Dublin Castle. There were no signs of forced entry, leading authorities to believe it was a set-up involving someone with a key. To this day, the jewels have never been recovered, and this mystery has fueled conspiracy theories about the Irish aristocracy for over a century.

In 1983, a group of six men broke into a warehouse in Heathrow, expecting to find a modest sum of money but instead discovering three metric tons of gold bars. They spent hours loading the gold into a van, then vanished, triggering a massive international manhunt. Although the police eventually tracked down some members of the group, much of the gold is believed to have been melted down and sold, meaning it is likely circulating today in the form of jewelry.

In 2004, a Belfast gang kidnapped the families of two bank employees to force them to help rob their own workplace. They stole more than twenty-six million pounds in what was one of the most organized and violent robberies in the history of the United Kingdom. Since the robbers took mostly unregistered banknotes, the money was extremely difficult to trace, and the case remains a huge “what if” for investigators.

In 2009, two men wearing sophisticated cosmetic prosthetics to make themselves look older entered a London jewelry store and stole nearly $70 million worth of gemstones. They used several cars to make their getaway and even fired shots into the air to distract bystanders as they fled. Although the police eventually arrested the main suspects, the diamonds themselves vanished into a global network that has never been dismantled.