6 Infamous Unsolved Bank Robberies

History is rife with notorious robberies and heists, from the train robbery pulled off by Jesse James and his crew in 1873 to the 1990 theft at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (where several paintings worth more than half a billion dollars were taken) to the Green Vault theft in 2019 (in which more than 4000 diamonds—some hundreds of years old—were stolen from Dresden Castle in Germany).

Some have been dramatic enough that they’ve become fodder for Hollywood, with the twists and turns of the saga usually concluding in a neat and tidy fashion by the time the film cuts to black and the end credits roll. But in real life, these cases aren’t always so straightforward, and some never arrive at a conclusion at all. Here’s a chronological look at crimes in which the bank robbers were never caught.

1. The Grand National Bank Robbery // St. Louis, Missouri
2. The 300 Million Yen Heist // Tokyo, Japan
3. The British Bank of the Middle East Robbery // Beirut, Lebanon
4. The Standard Bank Robbery // Krugersdorp, South Africa
5. The First National Bank Robbery // Chicago, Illinois
6. The Bank of New South Wales Heist // Murwillumbah, Australia

The Grand National Bank Robbery // St. Louis, Missouri

In May 1930, one of the biggest bank heists in the history of St. Louis, Missouri, took place at the Grand National Bank. The bank was in the process of locating to new premises, and for a while, the vault containing the safety deposit boxes was guarded around the clock by the police. After the door of the vault was replaced, however, one employee asked for an end to the police presence. The thieves moved soon after, breaking into the vault and tying up staff on duty that day while they made off with around $1 million (more than $18 million today). The relative of a local gangster was recorded naming a number of people supposedly involved in the heist, but the case was ultimately closed in 1933 with no convictions. No one was unambiguously attributed with responsibility for the heist, and the bank went under.

The 300 Million Yen Heist // Tokyo, Japan

In December 1968, a considerable sum of money was stolen from employees of Nihon Shintaku Ginko Bank as they transported bonuses for workers at a Toshiba factory in Tokyo. A man on a motorcycle dressed as a policeman tricked the employees away from the car—weaving an elaborate yarn involving their boss, an explosion, and dynamite on their vehicle—then got inside and drove away. The amount stolen came to 294 million yen (often rounded up in news articles to 300 million yen, giving the heist its name), the equivalent of $820,000 US dollars in 1968 currency (more than $7 million today). A composite image was circulated of the man believed to have carried out the heist, but he was never conclusively identified, and the authorities never found the missing money.

The British Bank of the Middle East Robbery // Beirut, Lebanon

A notorious heist took place in Beirut, Lebanon, in January 1976, when a group of thieves robbed the British Bank of the Middle East by blowing through a wall shared by the bank and a church next door. In addition to cash, the thieves stole gold and jewels; no one involved was apprehended, and the stolen goods were never seen again. The case holds the Guinness World Record for the largest theft of safety deposit boxes in history, with an estimated $50 million worth stolen in the heist.

The Standard Bank Robbery // Krugersdorp, South Africa

The heist that occurred at the Standard Bank in Krugersdorp, South Africa, in 1977 took months of planning: The thieves used a false name to rent an empty shop near the bank and then dug a tunnel under multiple buildings to access the vault. (Compressors being used nearby masked the sounds of their tunneling, and also caused the bank to turn off alarms that would have been triggered by trembling.) Finally, on Easter weekend 1977, the robbers broke into the vault and stole a total of 400,000 in South African Rand. Afterward, photos of the tunnels showing how the thieves got into the bank were published in the local media, but the case was never solved, and none of the stolen money was ever found.

The First National Bank Robbery // Chicago, Illinois

In November 1977, $1 million dollars mysteriously disappeared over a long weekend from the First National Bank in Chicago. The theft didn’t involve a break-in—or at least, there wasn’t any evidence of one. Instead, a tally of the bank’s money on the Tuesday after Columbus Day showed that there was $3 million in the vault rather than the $4 million that had been there at the close of business the previous Friday. Due to the lack of signs of a break-in and the number of security protocols in place, authorities believed that the money must have been taken by someone who already had access to the building—in the words of TIME, someone “so familiar a figure in the bank that he was able to leave unnoticed with a haul that weighed a mere 20 lbs.—just right for a banker’s briefcase” and who probably knew that making off with exactly $1 million would lead to “bank officers … wast precious time attributing the loss to an accounting error.” Several years later, a former bank employee was investigated by authorities, partly because he seemed to be living a lavish lifestyle without the income to support it. Still, no one was ever charged, and officially, the case remains unsolved.

The Bank of New South Wales Heist // Murwillumbah, Australia

Australia’s biggest bank heist occurred in 1978—and not in one of the country’s major cities, but in the small and otherwise quiet town of Murwillumbah. On November 23, thieves picked the locks of the town’s branch of the Bank of New South Wales, drilled into the safe, grabbed $1.7 million (the equivalent of $10 million today, according to The Guardian), jammed the safe to buy time, and took off. The heist took place just 328 feet away from the local police station, which was within sight of the building and had staff on duty all night. While there have been suspects and a career criminal who claimed responsibility for the crime, the case has not yet been solved and remains open.

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