Robbers stole items worth up to $105bn from safe-deposit boxes held at a German retail bank in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia state, during the Christmas holiday, German police said on Tuesday.
The German news agency dpa reported that it may rank among the biggest thefts in the country’s history.
The thieves broke into a branch of Sparkasse bank in the city of Gelsenkirchen, in North Rhine-Westphalia state, from an adjacent parking garage, according to the police, at some point when businesses were closed for the Christmas holiday.
The German state is home to museums and Gothic architecture. Its capital, Dusseldorf, is known for its shopping boulevard and the Rheinturm telecommunications tower.
Using a large drill, the thieves bore through a thick concrete wall of the bank and gained access to an underground vault room. Then, they forced open some 3,000 safe deposit boxes, before making off with cash, gold and jewellery.
A police spokesperson likened the break-in to the movie, Ocean’s Eleven, and described it as “very professionally executed”, according to the AFP news agency.
“A great deal of prior knowledge and/or a great deal of criminal energy must have been involved to plan and carry this out,” the spokesperson told the agency.
The bank said “more than 95 percent of the 3,250 customer safe deposit boxes were broken into by unknown perpetrators.”
Police say they were alerted to the robbery when a fire alarm went off on Monday, but have not confirmed exactly when the robbery took place.
Investigators estimate the total value of the stolen items to be anything between 10 and 90 million euros ($11.8m and $105.7m), according to police spokesperson Thomas Nowaczyk.
Police said the average insured value of each deposit box was more than 10,000 euros ($11,700). However, officers said several victims have reported that the contents of their boxes were worth significantly more than the insured amounts.
No arrests have been made, and the thieves remain at large.
Security camera footage showed a black Audi RS 6 leaving the bank’s parking garage during the early hours of Monday, with masked people inside.
The police said the car’s licence plate had been stolen earlier in the city of Hanover, about 200km (124 miles) northeast of Gelsenkirchen, where the robbery took place.
