Motive Was Noble, but It Was Still an Armed Heist

It was the biggest armed robbery in the history of Austria, but what truly sets this particular 2013 heist apart was the motive: the desire to build an orphanage in Africa. A story at Atavist Magazine unspools the tale of how a onetime elite Vienna police officer, haunted by a violent childhood and shaken by the poverty he saw while training security forces in Gabon, became fixated on building "Blue Sky Village"—and decided the only way to fund it was to steal more than $3 million from an armored van from the security company Loomis. Matthew Wolfe tracks how the officer—identified as Gabriel E.—teamed up with a Loomis employee, Tamara S., whose own "helper syndrome" and exposure to extreme poverty pushed her to give away almost everything she owned.

The pair's near-clinical need to help others morphed into justifying a gunpoint robbery, and they actually pulled it off as a Loomis van stopped on a street to replenish an ATM. The article follows the meticulous planning, along with what did them in: Tamara didn't know the ATM had a security camera that automatically took photos as it was being stocked. She was eventually identified from the blurry images. Both were arrested and have since been released from prison after serving eight-year sentences. Wolfe catches up with a remorseful Gabriel, who now maintains that "a crime remains a crime, even if the intention behind it is noble." But as for the idea of building Blue Sky Village, it remains his "lifelong dream." Read the full piece.