A man who stole 62 lbs of gold worth nearly 1 million GBP from a bank with just a screwdriver and a blueprint downloaded from the darknet has been jailed for four years.
Local media compared the heist with scenes from the hit film ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ in which George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon managed to break into a casino vault using an elaborate plan.
Israeli-Canadian dual national Benjamin Zev Gur, 31, was sentenced to four years in prison for the theft of gold and jewellery worth over 1.1 million EUR (940,000 GBP) by a court in Linz, the capital of the Austrian state of Upper Austria.
Zev Gur, a father living in Ukraine who used a forged Danish passport and alias, managed to gain access to 11 safety deposit boxes of a Linz bank using just two screwdrivers.
He managed to open the boxes by following a blueprint which he found on the darknet.
Zev Gur said: “You can find everything on the darknet. In videos, you can see exactly how to open safety deposit boxes.”
According to reports, he first broke into a bank in Graz but found that the safety deposit boxes were empty.
He then went to a bank in Linz where he used the same plan and gained access to the safety deposit boxes.
Zev Gur opened a current account and rented a safety deposit box using the fake Danish passport he bought on the darknet.
As well as the gold, he reportedly walked out of the bank with cash and jewellery worth around 1.1 million EUR (940,000 GBP).
Zev Gur boasted: “It was easy”.
However, he clumsily left his fingerprints all over the scene and the cops quickly discovered the robber’s identity.
Zev Gur admitted to the crime in court, but said he committed the heist to pay for a kidney transplant for his brother.
According to media reports, Zev Gur used 80,000 EUR (68,315 GBP) he received from a gold trader in the Hungarian capital Budapest to stay in luxury hotels.
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Story By: Koen Berghuis, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
