[5] Following his release, he moved to North Africa and joined the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a right-wing group that wanted to prevent Algerian independence.
According to a CIA document declassified in 2000 and published by the National Security Archive, Michael Townley, the DINA international agent responsible for the Assassination of Orlando Letelier, a member of Salvador Allende's government, in Washington, DC, 1976, was in contact with Spaggiari.
[11][9] In 2010, Jacques Cassandri published a book, The Truth about the Nice Heist, in which he claimed responsibility for the 1976 robbery and that Albert Spaggiari only played a small part.
[12][2] Cassandri said that he made the equivalent of €2 million from the robbery and quickly spent it, although prosecutors noted that he continued to lead a lavish life from the proceeds.
Spaggiari chose Jacques Peyrat, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion who belonged at the time to the National Front, as his defence attorney.
Spaggiari first denied his involvement in the break-in, then acknowledged it but claimed that he was working to fund a secret political organization named Catena (Italian for "chain") that seems to have existed only in his fantasy.
While judge Richard Bouaziz was distracted by the document, Spaggiari jumped out of a window, landing safely on a parked car and escaped on a waiting motorcycle.
He is reported to have had plastic surgery to change his appearance, and to have spent probably most of the rest of his life in Argentina, visiting France clandestinely to see his mother or his wife "Audi".
While publishing his last book Le journal d'une truffe a 15-minute interview with him by Bernard Pivot was recorded, reportedly in Milan, Italy, for the TV program Apostrophes.
French authors René Louis Maurice and Jean-Claude Simoën wrote the book Cinq Milliards au bout de l'égout (1977) about Spaggiari's bank heist in Nice.
Their work was translated to English in 1978 by British author Ken Follett under the title The Heist of the Century; it was also published as The Gentleman of 16 July and Under the Streets of Nice.