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Gelsenkirchen Bank Heist: Police Confirm Manipulated Escape Door as 230-Officer Task Force Expands Probe

The thieves opened thousands of safe-deposit boxes within a four-hour window, and months of forensic work on hundreds of thousands of items now lie ahead.

Overview

  • The task force counts about 230 investigators who are reviewing roughly 10,000 hours of footage (around 8 terabytes) and cataloging an estimated 500,000 items from the vault and adjacent rooms.
  • Investigators say the perpetrators accessed the branch from an adjacent parking garage through a manipulated escape door and then drilled a roughly 40-centimetre hole through a reinforced wall into the vault.
  • Only a fire alarm triggered during the break-in while the intrusion alarm did not; responding firefighters, a police officer and private security reportedly found no clear signs, and the vault area was later found to be contaminated with chemical liquids to hamper DNA recovery.
  • Digital records show the first safe-deposit box was opened on December 27 at 10:45 and the last at 14:44, with the break-in discovered on December 29.
  • Police say losses are still being assessed, with estimates ranging from the mid double-digit millions to potentially triple-digit millions, and lawyers for customers are preparing claims against the bank, which insures each box only up to about €10,300.