🕳️ Famous case · Fortaleza, 2005
The Fortaleza Central Bank heist (2005): what we know
On Monday, August 8, 2005, the staff of the Central Bank branch in Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil, walk into the vault and find a hole in the floor. Over the weekend, a gang made off with about 164 million reais through a tunnel dug from a nearby house. Here is how this heist unfolded, as the sources tell it.
Three months under the street
In April 2005, the gang rents a downtown house on rua 25 de Março, close to the bank, and sets up a fake artificial turf company there. Its so-called owner will say that the police, the electricity company and the health inspectors visited the house without noticing anything. In three months, the gang digs by hand a tunnel of about 80 meters, 70 to 75 centimeters wide, lined with wood and plastic sheeting, with electric lighting and ventilation, under a busy avenue.
One weekend
In the early hours of Saturday, August 6, 2005, the bank is closed. The reinforced concrete floor of the vault is broken through from below. With pulleys, hooks and barrels, the gang hauls through the tunnel mostly used 50-real notes: about 164 million reais, nearly 3.5 tons. The theft is only noticed on Monday.
The investigation
The Federal Police takes over the case. Four days after the heist, it seizes 2.5 million reais in a truck carrying eleven new cars from a Fortaleza dealership. Eight people are arrested before the end of 2005. Among the convicted: Antônio Jussivan Alves dos Santos, known as "Alemão", who came up with the tunnel, and Jorge Luiz da Silva, the owner of the fake company. In all, 133 people will be prosecuted and 119 convicted. About 60 million reais have been recovered in twenty years. An alleged financier of the tunnel is kidnapped in October 2005 and found dead despite a ransom.
A heist that became a film
This extraordinary heist inspired the Brazilian film "Assalto ao Banco Central" (2011) and the Netflix documentary "3 Tonelada$: Assalto ao Banco Central". According to the sources, about 25 people took part in the heist itself.
Your turn to reconstruct the heist
In Enquetix's famous case, you reconstruct the heist by pure deduction: who was in the gang, with what cover, what tools, and where it dug. The facts are documented 📚. The convicted go by their real names 📚; those whose identity was never established by a judgment have a made-up name 🔎.
🔎 Reconstruct the Fortaleza heist The other famous cases
Sources: Diário do Nordeste ("20 anos", 2025); Folhapress; Correio Braziliense; Wikipedia ("Banco Central burglary at Fortaleza"); Metrópoles.