Albert Spaggiari: The Man Who Stole 45m Francs And Was Never Caught
They say fortune favours the bold, but sometimes it also favours those willing to crawl through sewage. Albert Spaggiari certainly thought so. A small-time crook turned criminal mastermind, he orchestrated the most audacious bank heist in French history—breaking into a supposedly impenetrable vault, making off with millions, and vanishing without a trace.
Spaggiari’s life was anything but ordinary. Born in 1932, he was a rebellious child who couldn’t keep out of trouble. His father died when he was just three, and his mother, who ran a lingerie shop, remarried. But Albert despised his stepfather and left home at 17, joining the Parachute Regiment just as France was embroiled in the conflict against Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces in Indochina.
He proved himself a tough soldier, even earning decorations for bravery, but his old habits resurfaced. In 1953, he was caught breaking into a milk bar in Hanoi, attempting to steal the takings. That stunt got him shipped back to France in chains, where he served time in prison.
By the late 1960s, it seemed like Spaggiari had put his wild past behind him. He married a nurse, moved to the sunny south of France, and opened a photography shop in Nice. He quickly gained a reputation as a charming and talented wedding photographer, snapping society events and rubbing shoulders with the wealthy.
But the quiet life didn’t suit him. The itch for adventure never left, and when he learned that the sewers beneath Nice ran close to the vaults of the Société Générale bank, a daring plan started to take shape.
Ever meticulous, Spaggiari first rented a safety deposit box inside the bank to test security. He placed an alarm clock inside, set to go off at midnight. If there were any seismic or acoustic sensors in the vault, the ringing clock would trigger them. Nothing happened. The bank, like the owners of the Titanic, believed their defences were unbreakable.
Now confident, Spaggiari recruited a team of criminals from Marseille. For two months in the summer of 1976, they waded through filth in the sewers, digging an eight-metre (26-foot) tunnel reinforced as carefully as a mine shaft. They even strung up electric cables for lighting. To keep morale up, they decorated the tunnel walls with racy pictures of women—because, why not? Police would later find the remains of meals, empty wine bottles, and cigarette packs scattered along the passageway.
The gang made their move on the Bastille Day weekend, knowing the city would be in the throes of celebration. Late on Friday night, they broke through into the bank’s vault. Their first move? Sealing the heavy vault door shut from the inside with a welding gun. Now, they had all the time in the world.
Over the next two days, they methodically cracked open 371 safety deposit boxes, sifting through their contents. If some accounts are to be believed, Spaggiari even brought a meal—complete with wine and pâté—and the gang took a break to enjoy a picnic in the vault.
The bank had no inventory of what was inside the deposit boxes, meaning the true value of the haul would never be known. Estimates ranged from 30 million to 100 million francs in cash and jewels. When the bank finally forced open the vault door on Monday morning, they found it ransacked, littered with discarded boxes, wine bottles, and leftovers from the thieves’ feast. On the wall, scrawled in large letters, was Spaggiari’s parting message: “Sans armes, ni violence, ni haine” (Without weapons, violence, or hate).
For weeks, the police had no leads. But eventually, a tip-off led to the arrest of one of the thieves, who spilled the beans and named the entire gang—including Spaggiari. At the time, he was in the Far East, travelling as a photographer with the Mayor of Nice. The moment his plane touched down back in France, he was arrested.
At his trial, Spaggiari pulled off his greatest escape. He requested a private meeting with the judge in chambers, supposedly to discuss information. Instead, he suddenly bolted for the window, flung it open, and leapt out. As he landed, he turned back with a grin, shouted “Au revoir!”, and disappeared on the back of an accomplice’s waiting motorbike.
French police never caught him. In his absence, he was sentenced to life in prison, but he spent the rest of his days drifting between South America and Europe, rumoured to have occasionally snuck back into France to see his wife. By the late 1980s, he was living under an alias in Italy, where he eventually died of lung cancer in 1989.
His legend lived on. In 2008, a French film titled Sans armes, ni haine, ni violence was released, portraying Spaggiari as a mix of a romantic rogue and a delusional fantasist, marooned by a hotel pool in Argentina.
Spaggiari himself wrote about the heist in his 1977 book, Sewers of Gold, while French journalists René-Louis Maurice and Jean-Claude Simoën documented the case in The Heist of the Century, later adapted by thriller author Ken Follett.
The stolen millions? They were never recovered
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