Stories
The stories behind our episodes
The Schiphol Diamond Heist
Two men in KLM uniforms, in a stolen KLM cargo van, drove onto a Schiphol tarmac in 2005 and walked through the front door of an airport with a hundred and eighteen million dollars in diamonds
The Unlucky Bike Thief
A Copenhagen man stole a Christiania cargo bike, rode it for ninety seconds, and was hit by a car. The driver was the bike's owner
The Just Judges
One panel of twelve, cut out of the Ghent Altarpiece in April 1934. Never recovered. The single most famous unsolved art theft in northern European history
The Instagram Fugitive
Nine years on the run. Then a Mallorca routine. Same beachfront restaurant, same Thursday lunch, same seafood platter, geotagged to the address
The Singer Laren Van Gogh
An early Van Gogh, taken from a closed Dutch museum during the first month of COVID lockdown, on the painter's birthday
The Drug Delivery Pigeons
A Bucharest prison's sanctioned pigeon-keeping programme became, over eight months, the smoothest air-mail smuggling operation in Romanian penal history
The Caravaggio
A 1609 Caravaggio, cut from its frame in a Sicilian oratory on a rainy night in October 1969. Almost certainly destroyed. Never recovered
The Courthouse Robber
A man tried to rob what he believed was a small Naples bank. The plaque on the door read Tribunale di Napoli. Inside were twelve Carabinieri
The Hatton Garden Heist
Average age 62. The eldest 76. Easter weekend, a 75-kilo industrial drill, three overlapping holes through 50 centimetres of reinforced concrete
The Snoring Burglar
A man broke into a Cologne apartment, finished the job, and lay down on the homeowner's bed for what he meant to be sixty seconds
The Boat Heist
Two car bombs in central Stockholm, three masked men inside the Nationalmuseum for three minutes, and a small motorboat at the back dock with the engine running
The Kebab DNA
A Leicester burglar got hungry mid-job, ate half a kebab from the victim's fridge, and was convicted on the bite marks
The Big Maple Leaf
A 100-kilogram solid gold coin, lowered eight metres from a Bode Museum window, into a wheelbarrow waiting on a Berlin railway track
The Cleaning Burglar
A man broke into a German house, stayed for four days, used the toothbrush, scrubbed the windows from inside with the family's own Windex, and left a note
The Spider-Man of Paris
Vjeran Tomic came for one painting. He left with five — Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Léger, Braque — because the museum's alarm system had been broken for eight weeks
The Undercover Police Bar
Two Dutch drug dealers walked into a new Arnhem bar to sell cocaine. Every patron was a police officer. The bartender was a sergeant
The Scream
Edvard Munch's most reproduced work has been stolen twice from two different Oslo museums in ten years — once by ladder and postcard, once at gunpoint
The Snitch Parrot
A Calabrian household, a wiretap, an armed robbery, and an African Grey parrot who would not stop saying the suspect's name
The Bührle Heist
Three men in ski masks walked into a Zurich villa on a Sunday afternoon and removed a hundred and forty-one million euros in three minutes
The Locked-In Gym Robber
A Stockholm man crawled twelve metres through a ventilation duct to rob a gym safe — and discovered that every door in the building was magnetically locked until Monday morning
The Art Thief
Stéphane Breitwieser stole over two hundred artworks from European museums for love. His mother destroyed most of them in a kitchen sink and a wood stove
The Spider-Man Burglar
A Turin man tried to climb a residential building like a film stunt and ended up suspended three storeys up by his own trousers, in front of an audience
The Green Vault
A Saxon treasury assembled over three centuries, opened with axes in five minutes by four men who started a fire to do it
The Payslip Hold-Up
A Berlin bank robbery written in pen on the back of a German employer payslip — name, address, and tax ID included
The Antwerp Diamond Heist
Two and a half years of patient infiltration, ten security systems defeated, and a forensic case made by a half-eaten salami sandwich in a forest
The eBay Burglar
A Vienna burglary, a verified eBay account, and the woman who recognised her own bedroom curtains in the listing photo
The Golden Toilet
A solid-gold artwork stolen from Blenheim Palace, melted within forty-eight hours, and the satire that completed itself
The Pocket-Dial Burglar
A Surrey burglary, a phone in a pocket, and twelve minutes of unbroken live audio recorded by the suspect for the police
The Rogue Trader
How one trader in a two-room Singapore office hid £827 million and ended a 233-year-old British bank in six weeks
Eighty-Two Seconds
The attack on Brussels' Jewish Museum and the trial of Europe's first ISIS returnee
The Chimney Burglar
A man spent two days stuck naked in a Barcelona chimney trying to rob a clothing store
The Christmas Raid
Machalikashvili v. Georgia — when the failure to investigate becomes the violation
The Cocaine Wheelchair
How a man smuggled €650,000 of cocaine through Dublin Airport by sitting on it
The Empty Frames
How two men dressed as police officers stole half a billion dollars in art — and got away with it
The Liquidator
Ridouan Taghi, the Marengo trial, and the Dutch state's nearest brush with narco-capture
The Man Who Stole a Smile
How a Louvre handyman carried the Mona Lisa out of the museum and kept it under a bed for two years
The Middlemen
Unaoil, the Ahsani family, and the decade when European corporations outsourced their bribery to Monaco
The Mother Who Burned the Monets
The 108-second Rotterdam heist, and what may — or may not — have ended up in a Romanian wood-burning stove
The Road to Chevaline
The Al-Hilli murders, the girl who lay under her mother for eight hours, and thirteen years without an answer
The Salt Cellar
An Austrian alarm technician stole a Cellini masterpiece, buried it in a forest for three years, and then called the police himself
The Speedboat
A daylight heist from a Swedish cathedral, a getaway across a lake, and the traffic stop in Denmark that ended it
The World's Worst Getaway
Five methods. Five failures. How three men robbed a jewelry store perfectly and then couldn't leave.
Three Crimes, Zero Brain Cells
A robber defeated by a door, a brick that fought back, and two men whose disguise was a Sharpie
The Facebook Burglar
How a Dutch thief left his full name, photo, and employer at the scene of his own crime