Heist heads absolutely feasting this year !
Reuters-
Thieves drill into German bank vault and make off with millions
BERLIN, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Thieves used the quiet Christmas period to drill their way into the vault of a German retail bank and make off with at least 10 million euros' worth of money and valuables from customers' deposit boxes, police said on Tuesday.
The perpetrators drilled through a thick concrete wall at a branch of Sparkasse bank in the western city of Gelsenkirchen and then broke into several thousand safe deposit boxes and stole a sum estimated in the double-digit millions of euros, the police said in a statement.
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Most shops and banks close in Germany over the Christmas period starting from the evening of December 24, and police only discovered the hole after a fire alarm went off in the early hours of Monday, December 29.
Dozens of angry customers gathered in front of the bank on Tuesday loudly chanting "Let us in!".
A hole gapes in a wall after thieves drilled into the vault of a Sparkasse savings bank in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, December 29, 2025, in this image released December 30, 2025, by the police.... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more
"I couldn't sleep last night. We're getting no information," one man told the Welt broadcaster as he waited outside the branch, adding that he had been using the safe for 25 years and that it contained his savings for old age.
Another man said he used his deposit box to store cash and jewellery for his family.
A spokesperson for the Sparkasse bank in Gelsenkirchen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Police said witnesses have reported that they saw several men on Saturday night carrying large bags in the stairwell of an adjacent parking garage.
There were also reports of a black Audi RS 6 leaving the garage early on Monday morning with masked men inside. The vehicle's licence plate was that of a car stolen in Hanover, more than 200 kilometres to the northeast of Gelsenkirchen, police said.
Reporting by Rachel More; Editing by Hugh Lawson
??? make this make sense
I've never seen an ATM that was only open during bank hours. However, a lot of smaller branches have switched over to not having the ATMs open 24 hours anymore and will close doors sometime around midnight or so. This is due to theft risk. Over recent years, it has become a fairly common heist tactic to attack ATMs, originally with methods like "put a steel cable around it, tie it to a truck and pull the entire thing out of its armaments to carry it away and crack it later", but nowadays they usually just pump propane gas into it and blow it up. Yes, i know, the money cache inside is secured with paint bombs and things like that, but apparently there are ways around that if you know what you're doing. And the crews who specialize in these heists absolutely do, because they took a pretty close look at the inner workings of ATMs back when they still stole the entire machines. Cops actually found a workshop in the Netherlands where these things up were set up to practice both cracking the money caches and blowing up the machines to get to the caches. And these people are fast. Takes them just a couple minutes from arrival to speeding away in something like the Audi RS6 mentioned in the article (high speed getaways are a standard part of these heists).
This happens a lot. Like, we're talking a break-in every other day in Northrhine-Westphalia (the state bordering the Netherlands), and this thing has been going on for a couple of years. The cost of reinforcing all ATMs would be too high compared to the amount of money inside the machine, so the banks have decided that their solution to this is to restrict opening hours instead. Their customers are used to being treated like shit by their banks anyway, so they go along with it.
well and here in NL most non standalone ATMs (such as the ones with residents around or above) close at 10 pm to lessen the chance of ppl getting blown up.
It's Germany, almost none of it makes sense. What's even more upsetting is that everyone knows lots of things don't make sense, but they will stubbornly insist you follow all their rules, because 'they're the rules. They must be followed'. Also forget about suggesting the rules be changed into making sense, then you're being 'difficult' and 'not contributing to the common harmony'.
The ostensible reason is that many ATMs are inside bank branches, and if the branch is closed, the ATM is out of reach, so, no ATM. If you point out this is silly, and defeats the purpose of having ATMs, and what if you need cash at a time the bank isn't open, you'll be tut-tutted and told to "plan better. Your lack of preparation isn't everybody else's problem" (they love saying this about everything)
Many German people are lovely people, and I love some of them, but they can be infuriating sometimes.
I don't know where in Germany you have been, but every single bank I have visited here has a foyer that is either unlocked, or accessible with your ATM card and the ATM will be in that foyer. Usually the bank will have very banky business hours (9-12 and maybe 15-18 a few times a week), but keep the foyer unlocked for the day and lock it at night, but as I said you can use your card to get in.
Banks used to have their ATMs accessible from outside the branch, but that has led to crafty thieves blowing the ATMs up to get the money, so they moved them. I don't know why that helped, but I haven't heard about this happening as much any more, probably due to better security camera coverage etc.
I do agree that it would be nice to have ATMs in other places, but what you can also generally do is get money from grocery stores where you are already paying with your card. Just tell them you need X00€ and they will add it to your total and give you the cash.
I admit most of my German experience has been in rural bits of Eastern Germany, and I was exaggerating a bit. However, it did happen to me that I needed cash on a Sunday and was told "no, the ATM isn't open on Sundays". The whole thing about never questioning the rules and being blamed for not being prepared has happened to me with Germans from all over the country though.
Dunno why i don't feel comfortable getting cash from places that are not banks or bank-related. Here you can get cash from tobacco shops, or other places, but i've never used it because it feels weird. Maybe that's my most boomer trait.
You know what: Valid. if Germans are one thing, it's grumpy and resentful of helping anyone. They will help you, but they will let you know that it is an inconvenience and that you are to blame.
From my experience where I've lived in Germany, it sometimes depends on which bank in which municipality you're in. The town I grew up in had the bank rule of "no ATM after the bank closed", the next town over had two branches of banks that had 24/7 ATMs, but the other two branches in the city had the same "no ATM after the bank closed" rule. It's not regulated, like so many other things here are.
Well the bank teller that lives inside the machine needs to go home sometime.