As Scandi thrillers go, the Västberga heist of 2009 ranks up there with the best Hollywood movie plots but a fatal error mars the crime-of-the-century heist.‍

Under the cover of darkness at 5:15 am, a stolen Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter touches down on the rooftop of Stockholm’s G4S cash depot. It’s September 23, 2009, and the team is about to commit a meticulously planned smash-and-grab robbery.

Armed with a sledgehammer, the assailants shatter the reinforced glass of the rooftop skylight and lower themselves into the building with two 20-foot ladders. As they move toward their target, the three men carry powerful saws and strategically place small bombs in the facility. The explosions, calculated to blow open security doors, echo through the silent night.

Amid the chaos, two security guards hide under a desk fearing the building will collapse under the explosions and the overnight staff lock themselves in a safe room. The masked robbers, wearing helmets and dressed in black, know the layout. The main vault is on the second floor but the cash is counted in a room on the sixth floor. They use buzzsaws to break through padlocks on the cash cages and swiftly load bags of money into the helicopter.

The krona will be counted later, but they know it is a sizeable haul - there’s $150m inside the cash facility, so even a slice of that will make a comfortable retirement fund for the boys. Swift as shadows, the perpetrators use rope lines to hoist themselves back into the helicopter loitering above. They are airborne with the stolen loot by 5:35 am.

Policing the skies‍

The alarm is triggered and Swedish polis arrive while the robbery is still in progress but officers are handicapped by reports of submachine guns and bombs. Police cars speeding to Stockholm’s Västberga neighborhood discover their tires are blown out by caltrop spikes scattered on the roads. Meanwhile, their helicopters are grounded when a decoy bomb is found at the base.

Luckily the robbery is captured on  CCTV and, after three excruciating hours, crucial evidence is found. The abandoned getaway helicopter is located, ditched in the woods north of Stockholm, allowing police to piece together the aftermath of the crime. A handful of male suspects are initially apprehended but the mystery deepens. There are rumors about a connection to former BIA Red Berets - Serbia’s once-feared secret police known as the Security Information Agency (BIA). 

There is also a revelation. A month before the robbery, Serbian police tipped off Swedish authorities that a man tried (and failed) to recruit a Serbian helicopter pilot for a heist in Sweden but the authorities don’t know when or where it might take place. It’s enough to go on though and Sweden zeroes in on a suspect: Goran Bojovic, 38, the Swedish-born son of Montenegro immigrants. RKP - Sweden’s special organized crime police division - bug his phone and car but Goran seems to text and speak in coded conversations.

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The not-so-long arm of the law

A massive investigation kicks into high gear after the heist with Sweden's finest using wiretaps, DNA analysis, and IT forensics. One of the robbers cut his hand on the ladder and the fatal error allows police to quickly identify Iraqi-born Swede Safa Kadhum through his DNA. Acting on another tip - this time from US Drug Enforcement agents - Swedish police charter a private plane to the Dominican Republic where Kadhum is lying low.

Another suspect, helicopter pilot Alexander Eriksson, is met by a Swedish special ops unit watching the airport in the Canary Islands. Suspected mastermind Goran Bojovic, who’d been spotted driving his new BMW around town, is arrested in his apartment where a bag of cash is seized.

In all, 10 men are charged with robbery or complicity in a trial held in the basement of Stockholm’s police HQ so there’s no chance a helicopter can land on the flat roof of the courthouse. Seven men are imprisoned. Kadhum, who confesses, and Eriksson, who pleads not guilty, get 7-8 years each. Bojovic gets 3-4 years for planning the G4S robbery - he can’t be definitively placed inside the helicopter - and another four for an unrelated arson. Their accomplices get five years or less.

The enigma persists, however. Most of the stolen cash - believed to be somewhere between $5m to $8m - is still missing. Investigators suspect around 20 people are somehow linked to the heist, which means more than half of the crew is still on the loose. The rest are out of prison.

“The brains live in freedom,” as one Swedish columnist said, “and can drink dry martinis and eat lobster for many years to come.”