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Behind a Brazen Brazilian Burglary
Federal police inspect the house where thieves began a tunnel to enter a branch of Brazil's central bank and steal $67.8 million from the vault.
(Sao Paulo Globe Via Reuters)
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"I'm not sure how many people worked in that house, but I would say more than five," he said by telephone. "The man who seemed to be the owner of the establishment was a friendly person who at times would pay for a round of beer in a nearby bar."
"He was a tall, balding and unshaven man who judging from his accent was from the south, maybe Sao Paulo," Chamberlain said. "He definitely was not from Ceara or anywhere from northeastern Brazil."
The bookstore owner said he never heard noises indicating tunneling or anything suspicious. "The tunnel was dug underneath one of the city's busiest and noisiest avenues, so it would be hard to notice anything unusual."
The biggest previous bank heist in Brazil took place in 1999, when thieves stole money worth about $16 million today from a Sao Paulo bank.
According to the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, police say the Fortaleza job and last year's similar robbery in the capital may have been masterminded by the same man -- convicted bank robber Moises Teixeira da Silva.
In 2001, da Silva was serving a 25-year sentence for robbery when he and more than 100 other inmates tunneled their way out of a prison in Sao Paulo.
In October of last year, at least eight men wearing monkey and clown masks broke through a bathroom of the money-transport company, Nordeste Transbank Seguranca e Transporte de Valores, after digging a 400-foot-long tunnel from a nearby house.
Wielding AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, the robbers forced about 75 workers tallying cash for automatic-teller machines to stuff the money in bags and fled back through the tunnel after spending only 10 minutes inside the building.
They made off with $1.6 million.
