Lawsuits Filed by Victims of Spectacular German Bank Heist

The first lawsuits were filed on Wednesday by victims of a spectacular heist of a German bank in December when burglars used the quiet Christmas period to drill their way into its vault and make off with millions, a lawyer said.

The lawyer, Daniel Kuhlmann, said three cases were lodged in a court in Essen, Germany, holding the bank liable for damages for what he called lax security.

Masked thieves last month accessed a branch of a savings bank in the western city of Gelsenkirchen through a parking garage, allowing them to bore into a vault with thousands of safety deposit boxes, police have said.

The episode shocked Germany and made headlines internationally.

The court in Essen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bank, Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has said itself was a victim of the crime and that its premises was “secured in accordance with recognized state-of-the-art technology.”

Among the lawsuits filed on Wednesday, one of the victims was a retired person who had stored cash from the sale of an apartment that totalled nearly 400,000 euros ($480,000), Kuhlmann said.

Another is a CEO of a medium-sized company who had stored cash, jewelry and a Rolex watch valued at around 120,000 euros, the lawyer said. The third victim had stored gold with a value of around 50,000 euros, he said.

($1 = 0.8348 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Sims, editing by Madeline Chambers and Thomas Seythal)

Photograph: This picture, provided by the Gelsenkirchen Police on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025 shows a hole in a wall of the savings bank branch in the Buer district in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (Police Gelsenkirchen via AP)