He robbed a bank in the middle of the military dictatorship and took the subway with two bags full of dollars: the incredible story of the “King of the Boqueteros”

“At the bank they did an alarm drill. The manager says it is impossible to steal.”outlined without concern the cousin of Claudio Silva Silva and Joséat a lunch at the brothers’ mother’s house. However, that was the only thing they had to hear to start creating a plan. The year is 1976, full military dictatorship in Argentina.

The idea? Rob the Galicia Bank located at Marcelo T. de Alvear 670 where the cousin worked in cleaning. The problem was that the Uruguayan Claudio, although he was a legend of the underworld, He was just a 25 year old rookie.. Anyway, they started with a tip, since she had an asthma attack and asked for leave, so José ran to replace her and was. Soon I had the keys to enter every morning.

What was the Galicia bank robbery like in 1976?

So it was that Claudio and José They began studying the bank and armed themselves with two more: El Loco, an electronic technician, and El Negro.. It was the weekend of August 7 and 8 that was chosen to carry out the robbery. And the day began calmly: in an act of unconsciousness, They got ready and ate some sandwiches before starting..

They began to make the hole to reach the vaults. The hole, made in a hidden wall between an old roof and a new, lower ceiling, led them to the safe deposit boxes, which in total were 1,976. José stayed outside, since he was the only one with a justified presence in the place.

The thieves took everything: a loot of five million dollars, 50 kilos of jewelrySwiss francs, pounds sterling, gold bars, jewelry, a container of antiperspirant, a denture, and even a set of false eyelashes. They even stole the boxes of former vice president Vicente Solano Lima, the actress Mona Maris, the union member Casildo Herreras and they even kept money from the succession of Aníbal Troilo.

The escape was a curious moment. Claudio Silva Silva, With two heavy bags in hand, he goes down to a subway station and is intercepted by a police officer.. He thought he would be patted down and consequently taken to jail. But the answer was quite the opposite, since He asked for a light. “I don’t smoke,” he replied.. Then, when he went to buy the ticket, The salesman asked him: “A lot of work, master?” Silva responded: “Yes, I worked all night, but the truth is it was very profitable.”

The thieves They hid everything in their own houses, under the tiles and in wells in the gardens.. However, they were not careful enough and In one month they were all imprisoned.

In a 1994 article with Diario Popular, Silva Silva stated: “I am the king of the punchers, if you give me a while I will enter Banco Nación making a hole in the shape of a heart”.

Who was the “King of the Boqueteros”

“A thief is not a public person. He must live in the shadows”Silva Silva had declared in one of the meetings he had with a journalist 16 years ago. In fact, today his whereabouts are unknown and he is presumed dead.

He was an inspiration for Fernando Araujo, one of the ideologues of the Robbery of the Century at Banco Río in 2006.mainly for debunking the myth that only professional thieves could pull off such a huge robbery scheme.

However, Silva Silva laughed when they told him that those in the Robbery of the Century were professionals: “Professionals of what? Now when I see on television that they talk about those who robbed the Río bank being professionals I’m laughing because we weren’t professionals and look what we did.“.

On the other hand, he said that he would not commit crimes again, due to the torture he suffered at the hands of the military during the so-called “National Reorganization Process.” In any case, he was nostalgic for that robbery that remained in history: “Do you know what I don’t forget? The smell of new twine”.