Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Most Successful Heist in History - The Albert Spaggiari Story

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Albert Spaggiari was a French criminal known for masterminding what was called the “heist of the century” — the 1976 break-in of the Société Générale bank in Nice. He and a team dug an eight-meter tunnel from the city sewers to reach the bank vault, breaking into hundreds of safety deposit boxes and stealing millions of francs in money, bonds, and valuables.

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and Albert, he's kind of a dirt in the past. He's been to prison a couple of times, but he's out now and he's living a clean life working as a photographer. Good for him. However, Albert runs into a problem. This middle-class existence he's been living lately, it's kind of boring. he misses his old criminal life, and that was really exciting for him. And one day in 1976, he discovers a way to get that old thrill back. Because he walks into a local bank.

And when he steps into the safe deposit room, he notices something interesting. The room has no alarm system. And that is when he gets an insane idea. What if he were to rob the bank? That might be exciting. And so he starts scoping out the place. and he opens an account and he makes frequent visits acting like a normal customer. But when he's there, he takes a bunch of photos of the vault's layout.

But here's the thing. Although the bank has no alarm system, pretty quickly Albert realizes that breaking in through the front door, that's just way too risky. So he starts thinking, what if I break in through the sewers? Maybe I could access the vault through there. And so at night, when no one's around, he goes and he scouts out the city's sewer system in the area, trying to find the best way that he can get from there into the bank. And he spends like six days going in and out of the sewer tunnels like a frickin' ninja turtle.

But with no signs and no maps and no directions down there, he keeps getting lost. And so he heads over to the city office and he requests the blueprints of the entire sewer system. And I guess the staff there thinks Albert's some kind of builder working on a home project so they hand them over to him with no problem. Once Albert starts studying the sewer layout, he realizes, this he's going to be big. He's gonna need more manpower. And so who does he get to help him? The mob. And so Albert, he goes and he recruits 10 mob members and 10 of his other friends to join him. And so, boom, they all get to work, working during the night in the sewer digging a side tunnel little by little.

Here's actually an image of the tunnel they spend all their time building. Meanwhile, all this is going on underground and no one seems to notice, not even the people in the buildings above. Or maybe they do hear it and they just think it's like city workers or something, I don't know. But no one reports anything. And two months go by. And finally, they reach the concrete right beside the bank's vault and just a few inches more and they'll be in. And so I'll bear and the guys wait. They wait for the weekend when the bank is closed.

Then they cut through the concrete and finally they make it inside the vault. But their work's not done yet. Clearing out this entire vault, that's going to take them a couple of days. And so they get to work and they use welding tools and they weld the vault door shut from the inside. I guess to like buy themselves some time in case the police arrive. Then they crack open the safe deposit boxes and they start taking everything out of them. Cash, jewelry, gold, gemstones. and they keep this going all weekend long.

I mean, they are there all weekend long. Like they cook food in there, they eat and they drink together in there, they sleep in there. They poop in like containers? Ugh, they can just go out in the sewer and poop and come back in. Why you got to use a container? But that's what they do. But here's where the story gets really wild. So Monday morning comes and the heist is finally done.

They have everything they need and they crawl all the way out of the time. and they leave the scene. And no one spots them and they all get away. And a few hours go by. And it's time for the bank to open up. And so the bank opens up and some customers show up like any other normal day and some of them want to access their safe deposit boxes, which are in the vault. And so a bank employee goes to open the vault and boom, it doesn't work. The door won't open because remember, Albert and his team welded it shut. And so the bank employees are like, Sacrily Blue, what is going on? And they keep trying, but the door won't open. They even try to break the door, but that still doesn't work. And hours go by, and they finally get

some guys to show up who end up using jackhammers on the wall beside the door, and they're able to create a small hole. And when they look inside that hole into the vault, they realize it's empty. They've been robbed. And when they finally get inside the vault, they discovered that 317 safe deposit boxes have been cleaned out and Albert has stolen nearly 46 million francs, or about 10 million US dollars. That is a lot of money in 1976. That's a lot of money now. And so of course they call police and police start investigating all this. And pretty quickly, someone flips and police learned that Albert was the mastermind behind the whole heist. And so bam, they arrest him, here's his mugshot.

And Albert, he seems to be a nice guy, so he confesses. He's like, I did it. And so it looks like he's finally going to pay for his crimes. Until. Here's the thing. Albert, he's not ready to go to prison. Like, he really seems to be enjoying the thrill of this criminal life that he's gotten back into. And so he comes up with a plan to escape.

And one day in 1977, he's at a hearing in the judge's office, He hasn't been sentenced yet. And Albert says that he's feeling hot, and so he goes to open up a window. And he opens it up, and right then, boom, he straight up jumps out of it, and he lands on a parked car. And then skirt, a motorcycle pulls up, and one of his friends is driving it. And so he hops on the back of it, and the guys take off. And it all happens so fast that police, they don't even realize what's going on. And by the time they do, Albert has already fled.

I guess Albert and his friend apparently had this whole escape planned out. And so police, they look everywhere for him. But they can't find him. He's long gone. And two years go by. And it's now 1979. And the court sentences Albert anyway. Like he's sentenced to life in prison even though they have no idea where he's at.

Meanwhile, Albert, he's out there living his best life. He's got a ton of money from his share of the heist. And he's apparently like living a life of luxury. But he ain't trying to get caught, so he's always on the move. And he's always in disguise, he's like always wearing wigs and using fake passports and moving between Brazil and Chile and Argentina. He even gets plastic surgery at one point so that no law enforcement will recognize him.

And it works like no one finds him for years. Here's actually a little bit of footage of him in disguise, and you can see what is clearly a fake beard. And so over time, Albert even starts to get a little cocky, thinking the police will never catch him. Apparently, he starts mailing pictures of himself to newspapers and magazines saying, Hello from Albert! Just letting everyone know that he still hasn't been caught. It's like he's taunting the police.

Not only that, this dude writes three books during his time on the run, bragging about the heist he pulled off, and he somehow gets them published. And this goes on for the next 12 years. And so it's now 1989. And Albert still hasn't been caught. In fact, he never gets caught. Like they never catch him. He eventually dies from cancer, still a free man. And to this day, the police never found the millions of francs of stolen money that he took. Not a single bit of it. Plus, out of the 20 people involved in the heist, only three were ever caught. sentenced. Like I said, like one of the most successful heises heists in history. And a huge shout out to leonardo.a.i for sponsoring this video. If you make videos and you want to make really badass art for those videos like this or like this like this, like look at how cool that is. Sign up for leonardo.aI.