In 2012, a group of men rented a property and set up shop posing as a landscape company a few blocks from the Banco Internazionale Italia, in Italy. Showing complete awareness of street level cctv, and potential shop cameras, these men were able to operate their incredible "hollywood" style heist, going completely unnoticed. It is believed that they spent nearly 13 weeks digging a tunnel about 224 feet long and 14 feet below street level from their office to directly below the bank.
Over the course of a weekend in December, they used the tunnel to get into the bank and managed to avoid or disable all the bank's censors, failsafes, and detection security. How this information was obtained is still unknown, but the level of intel required was incredible. Bank employees have stated that there was absolutely nothing suspicious going on in or around the bank that would have alerted them to call the police on the lead up to the actual robbery.
The gang managed to disable all vault door security locks and lasers with no sound being detected, and without raising alarm amongst employees or customers who were in the building at the time. Despite the vault being steel-reinforced, and having a thickness of nearly 5 feet, the group managed to enter the vault, stealing 4 large boxes containing just upwards of 6 million euros.
Bank employees didn't know anything had happened until they arrived at work on Monday morning. By then, the money was gone, the vault had been closed back over, and the robbers, were miles away.
The Zodiac group of international thieves claimed responsibility, and they did so in their usual taunting manner. They left behind a two foot spraypainted "Z" logo on the reverse side of the vault door. What was strange about the whole case, was that two months later, each of the employees received 20,000 euros in envelopes to each of their home addresses. In addition, six of the most prominent investigators of the robbery also received packages to their home address, containing roughly around the same sum of money, this time with a note attached that simply read:
"They have stolen from you, your family, and the Italian people for a great many years, this is your compensation. Keep up the good work that you do. Remember, you work for the people, not the government; not the elites."
It is not understood just how many employees, investigators, or other people, had received money from the group, with exception to the numbers above, but after the money stunt by the Zodiac, each and every person who received the money was investigated, however no one was convicted due to insufficient evidence. The money was also confiscated from everyone who received such a package.