In 2006, an army of police surrounded Banco Rio in Acassuso, Argentina, and spent hours negotiating with a brazen gang of thieves inside.
The criminals took hostages and demanded that police bring them pizza while the nation watched on live TV. Snipers sit in trees, ready to fire if necessary.
Eventually, a robber told police they were ready to surrender. But when the police entered the bank, no perpetrator could be found. They disappeared without a trace and allegedly took $20 million in cash and valuables from safe deposit boxes.
“We use[d] [a] Tunnel, not to break in, but to break out,” says Fernando Araujo, mastermind of the robbery, in new Netflix documentary Bank Robbers: The Last Great Heist, which premieres Wednesday.
“No one [had] ever planned to commit a robbery this way.”
The plan
Fernando Araujo had been planning for years how to tunnel into the bank. Courtesy of Netflix
Araujo, an artist and small-time pot grower, began devising the plan in 2003 when he rented a house near the bank and began exploring the sewage tunnels below. Partly inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he dubbed his venture the Donatello Project.
Posing as an architecture student, he called the public works authority in Acassuso for information on how the ground could handle tunnels. He then convinced Sebastián García Bolster, a local motorcycle mechanic, to join his team as a civil engineer.
They calculated how to bore 15 meters diagonally into the embankment, essentially making their tunnel a triangular hypotenuse between the building’s basement and the sewer. This would require some heavy machinery.
Sebastián García Bolster was brought in as the engineer for the robbery. Courtesy of Netflix
“To make a hole the size of a soda bottle [with pickaxes] lasted an hour. It was impossible. So we had to bring a 220-watt generator so we could use an electro-pneumatic drill,” says Araujo.
As their plans came together, they found more men to take part in the raid. Career crook Rubén “Beto” de la Torre was recruited as a muscleman, and Luis Mario Vitette Sellanes also joined – he was to become the designated police negotiator. They recruited another man, referred to in the film only as “the Doc,” who is said to be both a lawyer and a sophisticated thief.
After years of tinkering, the plan crystallized. Instead of going through the sewers to local waters, as law enforcement would likely predict, Araujo’s team would go deeper into the bowels of the city.
The robbers converted a van so they could climb through the floor straight out of the sewers. Courtesy of Netflix
The crew bought an old van and fitted it with a floor hatch so they could park it over a manhole and climb straight into the vehicle without ever having to step out onto the road. They recruited a man named Julián Zalloecheverría as the driver and someone named “The Kid” as extra muscle.
D day
The hostages were freed after the perpetrators fled through their tunnel. AFP via Getty Images
At approximately 12:38 pm on Friday, January 13, 2006, the robbery team burst through the front door of the bank, guns in hand and ready to take hostages. Sellanes went to the top floor to get the bank manager and then took the man down to the basement where the safe and safe deposit boxes were located. There he forced a security guard to surrender his gun and then exit the building.
Araujo and Beto focused on the bank’s ground floor, managing hostages and securing exits.
The police quickly got to the bank, and Sellanes began phony negotiations with the police to give his accomplices more time to collect the loot. He donned a fake mustache, a kippa and glasses to deter police officers and snipers peeking through the bank’s windows. At 2:30 p.m., he made a point of releasing two hostages.
Luis Mario Viette Sellanes disguised himself during negotiations with the police. Courtesy of Netflix
Meanwhile, Bolster was in the basement using a special cannon to break open lockers as quickly as possible.
“I didn’t stop to see what was inside or if it actually opened or anything,” says Bolster. “Just pick, pick, pick all the locks.”
After two hours they had broken open 143 boxes and it was time to escape. Sellanes told authorities they were ready to give up.
“Bring us some pizzas, bring us some lemonade, we’ll have some food and surrender,” Sellanes recalled telling the negotiators. He knew they would leave the building when the troops entered.
The robbers demanded that the police give them pizza and they would surrender. AFP via Getty Images
The robbers sprayed chlorine all over the bank to cover their DNA and tossed random strands of hair to scare off investigators at the scene. Then they escaped without a trace into their tunnels and into the sewers.
Two small boats awaited them there, one with a motor. But the engine wouldn’t start, so the men had to paddle through the sewers to reach their van 14 blocks away. Araujo lay stretched out on the booty in one of the boats to secure it.
They successfully made it to the van and drove to her safe house. The cops didn’t know any better.
Police surrounded the bank during the robbery. They negotiated with the robbers. AFP via Getty Images
“The first thing I wanted to do was turn on the TV right away and make sure they weren’t lagging behind,” Araujo says in the film. “Here we were so far away with the money.”
The men then divided the money evenly among themselves and parted ways.
Sellanes says he drove away with “four garbage bags full of cash.”
Authorities were initially taken aback by the escape. They didn’t even realize the gang had tunneled out until a bank teller spotted a misplaced piece of furniture covering the hole.
It was a high tension situation in Argentina when in 2006 a bank was robbed and hostages were taken. AFP via Getty Images
Inside they found booby traps and a note from Araujo that read in Spanish, “In a wealthy neighborhood, with no guns or grudges, it’s all money and no love.”
It was a perfect job, the recording was massive, the police had no leads and nobody was hurt. Araujo and company seemed to have gotten away with the robbery of the century and would be able to enjoy their riches in peace.
A loose end
In 2006, a gang of thieves pulled off “the heist of the century.” But one woman led to her downfall. Courtesy of Netflix
Then, weeks after the robbery, Beto realized something was wrong.
“I’ll be back [home] one day and find mine [stash] Bag is out of place,” he says in the film. “I saw the stack of money fall down, quite a bit.”
His wife, Alicia di Tullio, admitted to him that she took about $300,000 and some security loot from Beto without asking permission.
Alicia Di Tullio led to the arrest of Rio Bank suspects.
The two, who had been together for 18 years, got into a heated argument. Beto told her to bring back what she had taken immediately and angrily left the house with his remaining loot. Enraged, di Tullo called the police and handed her husband over.
The men realized their perfect plan had been foiled. Sellanes recalls the doc frantically calling him and saying, “De la Torres’ wife is going to report us all soon, she’s asking each of us to pay her $300,000, if we don’t she’ll give up on us.”
Sellanes replied, “Doc, she can fk herself. I won’t give her anything, let Beto sort it all out with her and let me out of this.”
But Beto couldn’t fix what his wife had done.
“Beto” de la Torre was hired as a muscleman for the robbery. Courtesy of Netflix
Beto, Bolster, Sellanes, Araujo and Zalloecheverría were all arrested and charged, with di Tullio serving as a confidential witness.
“She told us she was aware of the situation… for the purposes of this case, there is no evidence to allow us to say what happened in between [Beto and Di Tullio]“, says prosecutor Gaston Garbus in the film. “I have a feeling it was money related and not caused out of malice over another lady’s presence.”
Beto confirmed her motive was money. “She guessed [it] more than family and that was it, the tragic end of my story, I think of everyone’s too,” he said.
In 2010, Beto was sentenced to 15 years, Araujo to 14, Zalloecheverría to 10 and Bolster to nine. Sellanes agreed to a separate, expedited trial in which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison not only for the robbery but also for other various crimes he was associated with at the time. The doc and the kid were never caught.
A happy ending for everyone?
Fernando Araujo was the mastermind behind the robbery. Courtesy of Netflix
Neither man has fully served the sentence and all are now free and being hailed for their infamous mugging.
“There were people who suddenly adored that and saw it as, I don’t know, something extraordinary,” says Araujo.
Sellanes has amassed over 30,000 Twitter followersand the gang’s history was immortalized in a 2020 thriller comedy, The Heist of the Century.
Araujo says her story has a happy ending.
“Everyone who played a role in this story won. Prosecutors made careers, police officers later became detectives, and judges gained recognition. Victim insurance gave them more than they had,” he says.
In the documentary, several of the men imply that much of the cash and valuables stolen were never recovered.
“Everyone is curious, it’s great … where is [the rest of the loot]? It’s in the Cayman Islands in the CBU, better write that down [account] Number 24!” says Araujo sarcastically.