Robbery on the Bank of the Republic

[2] Bonilla and National Police lieutenants Juan Carlos Carrillo Peña and César Augusto Barrera Caicedo met in Alfonso López Square to specify details of the robbery plan.

[9] Bonilla asked Lt. Juan Carlos Carrillo Peña the details of the bank building in Valledupar and the security scheme that protected the place.

[7] Days before starting the robbery, on October 13, 1994, the assailants sent two sophisticated welding equipment, tools, and several oxygen tanks from Cali to Valledupar to destroy the security systems of the bank vaults.

Second Lieutenant Varón was ordered to move his patrol 10 meters away to facilitate the entry of the truck into the bank, without alerting other police officers.

[10] Bonilla ordered the gang of 14 assailants,[7] led by 'Camilo', 'El Chema' and 'El Pana', to spend the night inside the Colchoflex mattress store, owned by Ociel Echeverry López, to whom they offered $50 million pesos.

Suárez Rincón and Bonilla Esquivel, settled in rooms 202 and 306 of the Sicarare Hotel,[10] which overlooked the bank, from where they coordinated the robbery operation using radios.

[12][7] The driver of the truck, who was wearing a white coat with bank logos,[7] identified as Luis Ernesto Vásquez Agudelo, asked several passers-by for help to push.

[12] Inside the bank were the other guards Dinael Ramírez, Pedro Arias and Mario de la Hoz, who were threatened and tied up by the assailants.

It took the assailants about an hour to deactivate the alarms and set up the welding equipment,[2] which included 23 oxygen cylinders (17 60-pound and 6 40-pound), one acetylene cylinder, more than 35 meters three-phase cable, two air compressors, an exhaust fan, a mallet, a pair of surgical gloves, a crowbar, screwdrivers, pliers, socket wrenches, pliers, and black plastic liners.

[22]The gang led by Bonilla was made up of 21 people divided into four groups of assailants who came from the cities of Bogotá, Valledupar, Barranquilla and Bucaramanga to commit the assault.

[13] Colombia's leading jurists began a debate to determine whether the stolen bills, which had not yet been issued by the republic's bank to the public, were legal or not and should be covered by insurers.

[4] Some time after the robbery, investigators found bales of banknotes, with the serials reported as stolen, in a farm at the Hacienda 'El Paraíso', owned by the governor of the department of Cesar, Lucas Gnecco.

[13] On October 17, 1995, the authorities reported that they had carried out 280 searches, detained some 90 people, 45 of them implicated, and had recovered close to $2 billion pesos.

The details of the robbery have been reflected in books such as "Así robé el banco", written by the journalist Alfredo Serrano.