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Brazil police bust tunnel intended for $317M bank heist
SAO PAULO – Brazilian police say they have foiled a bank heist plot in which would-be robbers dug a 1,600-foot (500-meter) tunnel to a Sao Paulo branch of government-owned Banco do Brazil.
The Sao Paulo state Public Safety Department said Tuesday in a statement that agents had been monitoring the gang for three months but only discovered the tunnel Monday.
By then the tunnel was complete. But police arrested 16 suspects before they could pull off the heist.
They allegedly told officers they had hoped to steal the equivalent of $317 million.
Investigator Fabio Pinheiro Lopes said the gang spent $1.27 million to build the tunnel from a rented home nearby.
Twelve years ago a different gang tunneled into a bank vault in Fortaleza and made away with $70 million in Brazilian reals.
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