In 1997, a gang of amateur crooks made off with CHF53 million ($54.8 million) after holding up Zurich’s Fraumünster post office.
This 2020 docu-fiction by Swiss public television SRF retells the story of the “post heist of the century” – one of the most spectacular cases in Swiss crime history.
During the elaborately planned robbery, the thieves posed as postal workers, using false identification papers and a delivery van with stolen licence plates to gain access to the Fraumünster post office in central Zurich.
They held postal workers at bay with guns and stuffed the van with containers of cash from a loading dock, before driving off. At the time it was the biggest post office theft anywhere in the world.
Ten days after the hold-up the investigators caught the suspected ringleader, three of the robbers, a number of accomplices and the post office employee who had passed on insider tips before spilling information when arrested.
Finally, seven men – three Italians, three Lebanese and one Swiss – were found guilty of the heist and received prison sentences in Switzerland. But over half of the stolen money remains missing.
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