KEY POINTS

  • The robbers escaped with 20 safe deposit boxes
  • The raiders pointed guns at the staff and held them hostages
  • There were no customers inside the bank at the time of the incident

Perhaps inspired by “The Professor” and his gang from the popular Spanish crime series “Money Heist”, a gang of armed robbers on Tuesday executed a carefully planned heist at French bank Credit Agricole’s Milan branch.

While two armed robbers entered the branch at Piazza Ascoli through the main entrance, the other two emerged from a manhole inside the bank, reported The Guardian.

The first two bank raiders kept the bank staff at gunpoint as the other two got inside the bank through an underground tunnel that connected the building’s sewer.

The incident happened shortly after the bank’s opening time, at around 8 30 am. According to the media outlet, the robbers wrestled with the bank manager who hesitated to cow down as he shouted, “It’s a robbery”. The manager was hit with the butt of a gun in the scuffle that ensued, but the rest of the employees were unharmed.

bank vault
The robbers took 20 safe deposit boxes from the vault. The value and the contents of the boxes lost are still uncertain. pixabay

The robbers held the manager and another employee hostages as police surrounded the building. A third employee managed to escape from the bank building after he heard the manager shouting that there was a robbery.

According to Italian media outlet La Stampa, there were no customers inside the bank at the time of the incident.

“They came in through the sewer system, they asked to open the vault and stole from safety deposit boxes,” the branch manager told journalists at the scene, reported Premium Times. “We don’t know how many boxes they stole from. When they were done, they left through the sewer system, just as they came in”, he added.

The robbers reportedly took 20 safe deposit boxes from the vault. The value and the contents of the boxes lost are still uncertain.

The police arrived at the scene and cordoned off the area for investigation purposes. Before they escaped through the tunnel, the robbers activated a fire extinguisher of the bank. The smoke from the fire extinguisher helped them create a chaos and confusion as they made their great escape. Although the police followed the robbers into the sewerage system, they could not trace them.

In a similar incident in 2019, 30 safe deposit boxes were emptied at a bank in Belgium, when the thieves entered the vault through the sewage pipes as narrow as 40 cm, reported BBC.

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