From priceless art thefts to infamous bank robberies, here are a few of the most sensational heists from around the world.
1. Scream
Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Scream, was sensationally stolen twice from the National Gallery of Norway.
In 1994 two men took just 50 seconds to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the Gallery and cut the painting from the wall with wire cutters.
A few months later the thieves offered the painting back in exchange for a $1 million ransom, but the offer was refused. Luckily a sting operation held in May 1994 successfully recovered the painting, and four men were convicted and sentenced for the theft in 1996.
Ten years later, the painting was stolen again, this time alongside Munch's Madonna. Two armed, masked robbers burst into the Oslo museum in August 2004, snatching the artworks from the walls as horrified tourists looked on.
Police recovered the works in August 2006, but found they were scratched and torn and showed signs of damp. They have now been restored and are hanging back in the Gallery – where visitors are subjected to tighter security checks.
2. The biggest art heist in history?
The culprits of this 1990 heist are still at large today.
Just a few hours after Boston's St. Patrick's Day festivities ended, two men dressed as policemen knocked on a side door at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
The guards let them in – only to then realise to their horror that these were not police officers, but art thieves. The guards were handcuffed, gagged and dragged into the basement while the thieves cut three Rembrandt's from their frames, as well as "The Concert" by Johannes Vermeer and "Landscape with an Obelisk" by Govert Flinck.
In total they snatched 12 paintings worth an estimated £300 million – the paintings have never been found, and the museum never reimbursed.
3. America’s most notorious hijacker
“D. B. Cooper” is still at large after 35 years of being on the run. On November 24 1971 he hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 with a briefcase "bomb." He handed a flight attendant a note saying "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."
The flight attendant alerted the pilot, who was instructed by radio control to comply with Cooper's requests, which were a parachute and $200,000.
Passengers were dropped off at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, in exchange for the parachute and cash. Loot in hand, Cooper instructed the pilot to take to the skies again, this time headed for Mexico.
When Cooper jumped from the plane, it was flying through a heavy rainstorm with no light source coming from the ground due to cloud coverage. Because of the poor visibility, his descent went unnoticed by the jet fighters tracking the airliner. He is believed to have landed around Ariel, Washington, although his precise landing zone remains unknown.
The whereabouts of the man (or his remains) has been described as “one of the great crime mysteries of our time.”
4. The Great Train Robbery
This notorious robbery involved a 15-member gang, led by Bruce Reynolds and including Ronnie Biggs, who took £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train in Buckhamshire in 1963.
The men brought the Glasgow to London mail train to a halt by tampering with the signals. They then swarmed onto the train, badly injuring the driver, and grabbed 120 mail bags containing used bank notes. Most of the gang members were caught after police discovered their fingerprints at their hideout at Leatherslade Farm, near Oakley, Buckinghamshire. The robbers were tried, sentenced and imprisoned.
Ronnie Biggs escaped from prison 15 months into his sentence and moved to Brazil – but he returned to the UK in 2001 to serve the remainder of his 30-year sentence. Charlie Wilson also escaped prison and lived in a quiet suburban street in Canada – unfortunately for him, his wife made the mistake of telephoning his parents in England, enabling Scotland Yard to track him down.
5. Brinks Mat
In 1983 six robbers broke into the Brinks Mat warehouse at Heathrow Airport, England. They were going to steal £3 million in cash; but when they arrived they found ten tonnes of gold bullion, worth £26 million.
The gang got into the warehouse thanks to security guard Anthony Black, who was the brother-in-law of the raid's architect Brian Robinson. Scotland Yard quickly discovered the family connection and Black confessed to aiding and abetting the raiders, providing them with a key to the main door and giving them details of security measures.
Robinson was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for armed robbery; Black got six years, and served three.
Three tonnes of stolen gold has never been recovered. It is claimed that anyone wearing gold jewellery bought in the UK after 1983 is probably wearing Brinks Mat.
6. Shergar
“Shergar the wonder-horse”, who was worth around £10 million, was kidnapped from a stables owned by the Aga Khan in Ireland in 1983. The theft came just before the breeding season, where Derby winner Shergar was due to mate with up to 55 mares.
Shergar was never found and his kidnappers have never been officially identified – but most evidence points to the involvement of the IRA. The thieves demanded a ransom of £2 million, but the horses’ shareholders refused to pay. Insurers also refused to pay out without evidence of the horse’s death.
Sean O'Callaghan, a convicted murderer who turned into a supergrass against the IRA, wrote a book called The Informer in which he claims the horse died because its IRA captors could not handle the animal.
"To handle Shergar, the IRA recruited a man who had once 'worked with horses'. But working with horses is one thing: dealing with a thoroughbred stallion, which can be a difficult, highly-strung creature at the best of times, is another story altogether," he said. He goes on to claim that the horse got out of control in its horsebox, injured itself and died within days.
7. Bull semen…
From prize horses to… bull semen. It may be unsavoury, but it is worth a lot of money. In November 2005, a farmer at Stonewood Acres in Smithburg, Maryland returned to his farm to discover that a 70-pound tank filled with bull semen had been opened up, with sixty-five "straws" containing the sperm of nearly 50 bulls missing.
The missing straws were worth about $75,000. The farmer, who had taken years to build up his supply, was planning on selling the semen at a cattle show.
“Frozen bull semen is big business because it saves on the transportation cost of putting a bull and a cow into the same pen to breed. Frozen semen can also last for many years, outliving the bull who produced it,” according to the Washington Post.
The number of potential suspects was limited because of the specialized knowledge and equipment required to keep and sell the semen – yet the culprit was never found.
8. Oscar jewelry theft
This year thieves broke into the showroom of an Italian jeweler and stole £10 million worth of diamonds while its owners were in Los Angeles hosting a party to celebrate the Oscars.
The heist took place at the Damiani showroom in Milan’s fashion district as celebrities such as Tilda Swinton were sporting Damiani jewelry at the Oscar ceremony.
The thieves had spent more than a month digging a tunnel from a disused cellar in an adjoining building. Police said that the drilling had been heard for weeks but was presumed to be part of continuing building works next door.
The four men, disguised as police officers, overpowered the staff and tied them up with electrical cable, sealed their mouths with tape and locked them in the washroom. They then helped themselves to jewellery from the safe-deposit boxes and left the way they had come.
Police said that the entire operation had taken little more than 40 minutes. The employees managed to free themselves and raise the alarm, but by then the gang was long gone. The thieves, who Police say may have had “inside assistance”, have still not been caught.
9. Bank tunnel robbery
Thieves in Brazil netted $65 million after digging a 200m tunnel into a bank from a nearby house. The heist, which occurred in August 2005, is Brazil’s largest ever bank robbery. Around 10 men are thought to have spent three months digging a hole from a house that was rented in the name of a fake gardening business.
The theft happened over the weekend, but was not discovered until Monday morning because the bank was closed. Neighbours reported seeing vanloads of material being removed each day.
Only two suspects have been caught and only $500,000 has been recovered.
10. Castle tourist theft
In August 2003 a painting worth up to £50 million – Madonna with the Yarnwinder – was snatched from the Duke of Buccleuch's home at Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland. The painting was stolen by two men who joined a public tour and overpowered a guide.
Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, said such a heist "would probably be easier to do it when it was open to the public rather than at night when all the alarms were set".
The painting is still missing despite the offer of a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the thieves.
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