Under the Streets of NiceThe Bank Heist of the Century

Albert Spaggiari engineered the European crime of the century–a 1976 bank heist accomplished, as a note left in the empty vault said, “Without guns, without violence, without hate.” He and his men dug a twenty-five-foot tunnel from the city sewer system into the back, where they spent a weekend cooking meals, drinking wine and clearing our millions of dollars in gold, jewelry, gems, and cash reserves. Later tracked down and captured, Spaggiari escaped from the French gendarmes by leaping out of a magistrate’s window and onto the back of a motorcycle. Convicted in absentia and sentenced to a life in prison, he retired to a ranch in Argentina where he taunted the police until his mysterious death in 1989. The loot was never recovered.