12 Times Someone Actually Broke Into An Impregnable Place
- Photo: Senado Federal / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.011,581 VOTES
Men Dug A 600-Meter Tunnel To Break Into Brazil's Central Bank
Like something out of the movies, a group of thieves spent three months planning and executing the biggest bank raid in Brazil's history. The group, composed of a few dozen heisters, set up a fake gardening business in a small home a block away from Brazil's Central Bank in Fortaleza, even purchasing a white van with a bogus company logo on the side. From there, the perps constructed an underground tunnel that stretched from one of the bedrooms in their rental to the Central Bank's secured vault.
The crooks reinforced their tunnel with plastic and wood, installed electric lights, and created a ventilation system. On Saturday, August 6, 2005, they snatched over $160 million out of the vault. The theft wasn't discovered until the following Monday morning, by which point the crooks were long gone. Since then, only eight people have been taken into custody and $20 million of the missing cash retrieved.
- Photo: Arpingstone / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain22,009 VOTES
A Sewage Worker Broke Into The Bank Of England Gold Vault Just To Tell The Directors It Was Possible
In 1836, high-ranking officials at the flagship Bank of England branch on London’s Threadneedle Street received a bizarre note from an anonymous source. The unnamed person wrote that they knew of a way to gain direct access to the bank's gold vault without alarming security. Scoffing at the notion that anyone could get into the vault, the staff laughed it off.
When they received a second note from the same source offering to meet them inside the vault in order to prove their case, they reluctantly agreed - more out of curiosity than fear. In the vault, the Bank of England officials were shocked when a man popped up from beneath the floorboards. It turns out he was a sewage worker who discovered an old pipe that led right into the vault. The good samaritan was supposedly rewarded with 800 pounds for pointing out the security breach, and the Bank of England quickly repaired the problem.
- Photo: NASA / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain31,289 VOTES
A 15-Year-Old Hacked Into NASA's Systems And Caused A 21-Day Shut Down
Miami teen Jonathan James found a backdoor into NASA's server in 1999 after using a hacking tool called a "sniffer" to unlock hundreds of messages, usernames, and passwords. From there, the 15-year-old accessed staff computers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and downloaded $1.7 million dollars worth of NASA proprietary software. The breach caused NASA to shut down its system for 21 days.
James, who became the first juvenile to receive a federal sentence for computer hacking, also compromised Department of Defense networks. His reason? Just to see how far he could get. "The government didn't take too many measures for security on most of their computers. They lack some serious computer security," James said at the time.
- Photo: King of Hearts / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 4.041,021 VOTES
Posing As Guards, Art Thieves Broke Into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum And Stole $500 Million Worth Of Art
The largest property theft in the world remains unsolved 30 years later. Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum houses some of the world's most prized and treasured works of art. On the evening of March 18, 1990, two men swiped $500 million dollars worth of art from the museum, including works from Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Degas.
Dressed as police officers, the crooks made their way into the museum by telling security guards they were responding to a disturbance call. Breaking protocol, the fake officers were allowed to enter through the employee entrance, where they handcuffed, bound, and gagged the guards on duty. 81 minutes later, the perps left with 13 works, none of which have resurfaced since. To this day, the museum offers a $10 million reward for anyone who can provide information that will lead to the art's retrieval.
- Photo: Kirill Naumenko / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.05707 VOTES
Crooks Managed To Break Into Russia's Doomsday Nuclear Plane And Swipe Radio Equipment
Russia's Beriev Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex houses the Ilyushin-80, a plane designed to carry top government officials to safety in the event of a nuclear strike. Dubbed the "Doomsday Plane," the aircraft became the unlikely target of theft in 2020 when inspectors realized 39 pieces of radio equipment were missing from a cargo hatch.
The plane and its contents are considered a state secret. The windowless vessel, configured to remain in the air for days, allegedly contains all machinery needed to control the Russian armed forces from on high. The Kremlin remains mum about how this theft occurred under its watch, who was involved, or what the investigation into the breach turned up.
- Photo: on_dit / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain6984 VOTES
A Man Snuck Into Buckingham Palace And Talked To The Queen For 10 Minutes
"God save the Queen!" Buckingham Palace's security forces were dealt a major blow when an intoxicated man named Michael Fagan got into the queen's residence through an unlocked window early on the morning of July 9, 1982. Fagan, who'd spent all night at the pub, wandered around the palace for quite some time, even checking out King George V's stamp collection and drinking a bottle of Prince Charles's wine, before eventually finding the queen's bedroom. According to Fagan, the Queen didn't appreciate the unexpected visitor:
She said, "Just one minute, I’ll get someone," swept past me and ran out of the room, her little bare feet running across the floor.
Fagan was eventually detained, but during his interrogation, he confessed to breaking into Buckingham Palace several weeks earlier without being caught. This empowered him to go back on July 9. "I knew I could break the security system because it was so weak," he later said in an interview. Fagan's infamous break-in is featured in Season 4 of The Crown.
- Photo: Benh LIEU SONG / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.07670 VOTES
Three Hired Handymen Evaded Security By Hiding In A Closet Before Robbing The Louvre
In 1911, three hired Italian handymen spent the night in an art supply closet at the Louvre, skulking out in the wee hours to snatch what is now the museum's most gazed upon painting: Leonard Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It took over a day for museum staff to realize the painting was gone because at the time there was a project going on at the museum. This project required the art at the Louvre be moved from display, taken to the roof, and photographed. It wasn't until an artist who had come to paint the gallery demanded all art be returned to their proper places that they noticed the historic piece was not on site. The international effort to retrieve the Mona Lisa made the artwork a household name.
Two years later, authorities eventually retrieved the Mona Lisa when a man named Vincenzo Perugia tried to sell it to an art dealer in Florence. Within minutes, police surrounded Perugia's home, where he told authorities he wanted to return a piece of Italian art pilfered by Napoleon Bonaparte to its home country.
- Photo: Mstyslav Chernov / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.08589 VOTES
A Man Snuck Into The Vatican In An Ill-Fitting Bishop Costume
When the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals met in 2013 to select a new pope, there was an imposter among them. A German man named Ralph Napierski, donning a black fedora, ill-fitting cassock, and purple scarf in lieu of a sash, managed to make it past the Swiss Guard outside the Vatican. Once inside, he posed as a real bishop and made it as far as the Vatican's main square, even taking photos with real bishops, before someone finally realized Napierski's attire wasn't quite right.
Napierski told authorities he belonged to the non-existent Italian Orthodox Church, and he still maintains he is a bishop on his website. Why did Napierski infiltrate the College of Cardinals meeting? He purportedly wanted to protest the Catholic Church's handling of its child abuse scandal with priests.
- Photo: White House Photographic Collection / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain9623 VOTES
A Man Snuck Into The White House The Day Of Reagan's Second Inauguration By Blending In With The Band
"Obviously we made a mistake," presidential spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters in 1985 after a man named Robert Latta slipped into President Reagan's state dining room a few hours before he was set to take his second oath of office. Latta, even though he lacked a uniform or musical instrument, made his way into the White House by following the Marine Corps Orchestra band. Secret Service said they thought he was with the band, and the band leader said he thought Latta was White House staff.
Latta, a Denver man in town for the inauguration, spent about 15 minutes hanging out in the White House before he was detained. "I just wanted to see the ceremony. I'm kind of patriotic," he told the Associated Press.
- Photo: Bob Collowan / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.010506 VOTES
A Man Named Colonel Blood Slipped Into The Tower Of London's Master Of The Jewel House And Put The Sovereign's Orb In His Pants
The 17th century was a tumultuous time in British history. The English Civil War created a combative culture between those who supported Oliver Cromwell and those who supported the proverbial crown. In the middle of all the insanity was an Irishman named Colonel Thomas Blood. Blood, an opportunist, pledged allegiance to whichever side seemed to be winning, eventually settling upon being loyal to Cromwell.
Colonel Blood hatched a peculiar plot to swipe the Crown Jewels from the barricaded basement within the Tower of London. In 1671, after posing as Parson Blood and becoming friendly with the Keeper of the Jewels Talbot Edwards, Blood managed to gain entry into the basement, where he crushed St. Edward's Crown with a mallet, stuffed the Sovereign's Orb down his trousers, and sawed the Sceptre of the Cross in two for easier transport. Colonel Blood and his accomplices were swiftly apprehended by guards. King Charles, amused by Blood's audacious plot, ultimately pardoned him.
- Photo: Matt H. Wade / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.011501 VOTES
Two Reality TV Stars Crashed A State Dinner At The White House
The Real Housewives of D.C. stars Tareq and Michaele Salahi flexed their privilege when they sauntered into a high-security state dinner hosted by President Obama back in 2009. The couple, who were not invited, made it through multiple security checkpoints without having their names checked by Secret Service before they were allowed into the White House East Room, where a ritzy reception was in full swing.
From there, the Salahis made it to the Blue Room, where they shook hands with President Obama and the former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They proceeded to rub elbows all the way to the South Lawn, snapping selfies with then-Vice President Joe Biden before sneaking out ahead of the 9 pm scheduled dinner. The Salahis faced no consequences for this publicity stunt.
- Photo: Vince / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.012450 VOTES
A Former Folsom Prison Inmate Broke Back Into The Facility To Reminisce About His Time There
Most people who serve jail time never want to set foot in prison again. This wasn't the case for Marvin Lane Ussery, a former inmate at Folsom Prison in California who was discovered hiding in the tall grass behind the facility in 2011. When guards tracked Ussery down after thermal imaging equipment indicated someone had scaled the fencing around Folsom, he told security officers he returned because he felt nostalgic.
In reality, authorities suspect Ussery wanted to smuggle contraband items into the California state prison. Instead, Ussery ended up with a felony charge for breaking into Folsom, which is known for its harsh conditions.
