Crimes That Read Like Movie Pitches
Most bank robberies are forgettable: a note passed across a counter, a getaway that ends within blocks. The ones people still talk about decades later are different. They involve tunnels dug by hand, hostages who bonded with their captors, and gunfights broadcast live on television. Here's 20 of the boldest bank robberies in history, in roughly the order they happened.
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1. Clay County Savings Association, Liberty, Missouri (1866)
A band of former Confederate guerrillas, likely including Jesse James, robbed this small-town bank of roughly $60,000 in cash, gold, and bonds, killing a bystander as they fled. It's remembered as the first daylight bank robbery committed in peacetime in the United States.
Americasroof at en.wikipedia on Wikimedia
2. First National Bank, Northfield, Minnesota (1876)
The James-Younger Gang rode into town expecting an easy score and ran into a wall of armed citizens instead. When the cashier refused to open the safe and was shot dead, townspeople killed two robbers in the street; only Jesse and Frank James escaped, and the gang never recovered.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown on Wikimedia
3. Manhattan Savings Institution, New York City (1878)
George Leonidas Leslie spent three years planning this heist, rehearsing every step on a full-scale replica of the vault built in a Brooklyn warehouse. His gang carried it out without him, after his own murder, and walked off with roughly $2.7 million, the largest bank robbery in American history at the time.
George W. Walling on Wikimedia
4. San Miguel Valley Bank, Telluride, Colorado (1889)
Butch Cassidy pulled off his first bank job here with Matt Warner and two accomplices, netting around $20,000. The gang alerted the whole town by firing pistols into the air as they fled, but nobody recognized them, and Cassidy became a full-time outlaw.
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5. Coffeyville, Kansas (1892)
The Dalton Gang tried to rob two banks at once in their own hometown, in broad daylight. Townspeople recognized them instantly, grabbed rifles from the hardware store, and killed four robbers in a fifteen-minute gun battle that ended the gang for good.
San Francisco Examiner on Wikimedia
6. Willie Sutton's forty-year career (1920s–1952)
Sutton robbed roughly a hundred banks over four decades by simply disguising himself as a mailman, cop, or maintenance man and blending into the morning routine. He stole an estimated $2 million and escaped prison three times before a tailor's son recognized his expensive suit on a subway.
Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer on Wikimedia
7. Pretty Boy Floyd's Midwest run (1930–1934)
Floyd hit around thirty banks across Ohio and Oklahoma, favoring machine guns and speed over careful planning. Rumors that he burned mortgage papers to free indebted farmers made him a folk hero before FBI agents killed him in a cornfield in 1934.
8. Bonnie and Clyde's Barrow Gang (1932–1934)
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow's gang actually robbed more gas stations than banks, but their willingness to shoot their way out of anything made them the era's most feared outlaws. A police posse ambushed and killed them both on a Louisiana road in 1934.
9. John Dillinger's Midwest spree (1933–1934)
Dillinger's gang hit roughly a dozen Midwest banks in fifteen months, once netting $75,000 in under five minutes at Greencastle, Indiana. He escaped jail using a gun carved from wood before FBI agents shot him outside a Chicago theater in 1934.
10. Baker Street, London (1971)
A gang tunneled forty feet from a rented shop into a Lloyds Bank vault, emptying hundreds of safety deposit boxes over a weekend for an unknown sum estimated in the millions of pounds. The plot unraveled only because an amateur radio enthusiast overheard their walkie-talkie chatter.
mattbuck (category) on Wikimedia
11. Chase Manhattan Bank, Brooklyn, New York (1972)
John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile tried to rob this branch to fund gender-affirming surgery for Wojtowicz's partner, only to find the vault already emptied. What should have taken minutes became a fourteen-hour hostage standoff, later dramatized in the film "Dog Day Afternoon."
12. Kreditbanken, Stockholm, Sweden (1973)
Escaped convict Jan-Erik Olsson took four employees hostage inside this bank, demanding cash and a friend's release from prison. The six-day standoff ended with the hostages more afraid of police than their captors, giving psychiatry the term Stockholm syndrome.
unclear press photographer on Wikimedia
13. Hibernia Bank, San Francisco (1974)
Two months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, heiress Patty Hearst appeared on security footage carrying a rifle as her captors took roughly $10,000. Whether she acted willingly or under threat became the central question of one of the decade's most watched trials.
14. Société Générale, Nice, France (1976)
Albert Spaggiari's crew spent two months tunneling from the sewers into the bank's vault, walking away with an estimated 46 million francs over a long weekend. They left a note reading "without weapons, nor hatred, nor violence," and Spaggiari later escaped by leaping from a courthouse window.
Bert Verhoeff for Anefo on Wikimedia
15. Bank of America, North Hollywood, Los Angeles (1997)
Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu robbed this branch in body armor with illegally modified rifles, then shot their way out when police arrived. The 44-minute gun battle involved nearly 2,000 rounds and permanently changed how American police departments arm patrol officers.
16. Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad (2003)
The night before the US-led invasion began, Qusay Hussein withdrew nearly a billion dollars from Iraq's central bank on his father's written order. It's often called the largest bank robbery in history by dollar value, even though it was technically authorized by the country's own ruler.
Iraqi State Television on Wikimedia
17. Northern Bank, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2004)
Armed men took bank employees' families hostage overnight, then forced the staff to help empty the vault of £26.5 million the next day. Authorities publicly blamed the Provisional IRA, a charge it denied, and the fallout strained Northern Ireland's peace process for months.
18. Banco Central, Fortaleza, Brazil (2005)
A gang posing as landscapers spent three months digging a 250-foot tunnel into a central bank vault, hauling out 3.5 tons of cash worth close to $70 million in a single weekend. Several of the men involved were later kidnapped and held for ransom by their own associates.
19. Banco Río, Acassuso, Argentina (2006)
Fernando Araujo, known as "The Fox," spent over a year planning a hostage heist that ended with the gang escaping through a storm drain disguised as police. They made off with an estimated $20 million from safety deposit boxes, never recovered, later dramatized in a Netflix series.
Editorial Pita y Catalano on Wikimedia
20. Securitas Depot, Tonbridge, England (2006)
A gang posing as police kidnapped a depot manager's family to force his cooperation, then cleared out roughly £53 million in cash overnight, the largest cash robbery in British history. Most of the money was never recovered, and the true masterminds were never caught.
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