In what authorities are describing as a meticulously planned assault on one of the country’s most secure institutions, a team of unidentified thieves executed a multi-day bank heist over the Christmas holiday, tunneling their way into a vault and methodically looting nearly every safe deposit box inside.
The target was a Sparkasse branch in the quiet district of Gelsenkirchen Buer, its doors officially closed from December 24 to December 29, 2025. While the city celebrated, an operation of startling precision was unfolding beneath its feet.
Investigators say the perpetrators gained entry to an underground parking garage adjacent to the bank. From there, using what is believed to be professional-grade, industrial drilling equipment, they bored through a formidable concrete wall—a barrier designed to deter exactly this kind of attack. The breach granted them direct access to the heart of the bank: the high-security vault.
Once inside, the thieves had time as their greatest ally. Shielded by the holiday shutdown, they are believed to have spent several days within the vault’s confines, working undisturbed. Their systematic search resulted in the compromise of approximately 3,000 safe deposit boxes—a staggering 95% of the total. The contents, primarily cash, gold bars, and family heirlooms of jewelry, were stripped clean.
“This was not an impulsive act. This was a calculated, professional operation planned with immense technical knowledge and patience,” a lead investigator stated during a press briefing, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing probe.
The scale of the loss is still being calculated, but initial estimates from insurance adjusters place the figure between €30 and €31 million (approximately $35-36 million). Law enforcement officials grimly note that the true value, accounting for uninsured items and sentimental pieces, is likely far higher.
The crime remained undetected until bank employees returned to work on the morning of December 29, discovering the architectural violation and the ransacked vault. Police, who have made no arrests and released no descriptions of suspects, are now scouring international databases for similar heists and reviewing months of local surveillance footage for any preparatory activity.
The Gelsenkirchen heist echoes a bygone era of elaborate bank robberies but executed with modern, silent tools. It raises acute questions about the security of safe deposit boxes, long considered impregnable, and highlights how the cloak of a major holiday provided the perfect cover for a breach carried out not with blazing guns, but with the relentless whir of a drill.
For the hundreds of customers now facing the violation of their private financial sanctuaries, the new year begins with a painful inventory of loss and the unsettling realization that for five days over Christmas, someone was methodically working in the dark, just on the other side of the wall.
