From Helicopter Prison Breaks to Missing Millions: The French Bank Robbers Who Became Heroes
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Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want.

I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. It's 11.15 a.m. on July 1st, 2018, in the isolation wing of Rail Prison.

around 30 miles southeast of Paris. Redouin Faid, one of France's most notorious gangsters and a serial bank robber, is speaking to a family member in the wing's visiting room, when suddenly a helicopter touches down on the turf outside. Two men emerge. They're dressed in black with police armbands and Kalashnikov rifles. The men burst from the chopper and toss smoke grenades all around them. Guards are stunned and then quickly overpowered.

The men leap to action. Using an angle grinder they force open the visitors door room and grab Faid, dragging him to the chopper and escaping into the blue summer sky. It's all over in a few breathless moments. Faid is gone, the chopper's blades are thwacking in the distance and Gallic justice has been embarrassed in spectacular fashion. Inmates celebrate, cheering and dancing as one of their heroes pulls off his nation's most daring prison break.

The helicopter was found soon after, burned and ditched in a field near Charles de Gaulle airport.

Its pilot will tell officers he was waiting to give an early lesson that morning when gunmen took him hostage and forced him to fly the bird into Rio. Fayed and his accomplices are long gone. They've hopped into a waiting car and they're sped far away before cops pick up the trail. Authorities fear he's already left France, dressed as an Orthodox Jew and blending into a faraway underworld in Israel.

It's not a wild guess. Faid has done this before, twice in fact. He even said so himself. 95 days pass. Faid is public enemy number one, a self-styled getaway king obsessed with Hollywood who shamed the prison not once but twice. It's bad timing for France's new president Emmanuel Macron who's in the middle of protests that will soon erupt into violent so-called Gilets Jaunes or Yellow Vest riots up and down the country.

Cops launched the biggest manhunt since the days of the guillotine. Almost 3,000 officers are put to task chasing Faid and his band of brothers, literally, as the 10th of 11 kids born to Algerian immigrants across France. Faid's gang are violent. They're cop killers. That doesn't stop an outpouring of support online.

God protect you, Redouin, writes famed actress Beatrice Dahl on Instagram. The whole of France is with you. I'm going to be dancing for hours to celebrate.

At the end of the 95 days, Faid is recaptured not in Tel Aviv but in a nondescript apartment block alongside a brother and two other men just moments from his birthplace in Creil just north of Paris. He's put back on trial days later and handed a hefty sentence to go alongside the others he's picked up over three plus decades of a life of crime. Still huge swaths of the French public are behind Faid

And they'll get on the Robin Hood thing a few months later again, when, a few hundred miles away in a London currency exchange, another robber and cult hero is re-arrested, trying to change almost $150,000 worth of euros into sterling. Are these alleged Robin Hood's messiahs, or are they just very naughty and very French boys? Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Underworld Podcast

Hello, greetings and welcome to the weekly crime podcast that gives you facts, sources, stories and top quality jokes. Of course, I'm Sean Williams, a features writer and established number five batter for Brooklyn Cricket Club in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And I'm joined as ever by the inimitable...

indomitable Danny Gold in New York City. My batting average is 25, Danny. What's yours? I think, you know, we lose enough listeners as it is with our love for banter. And now, you know, this guy wants to launch into five minutes of cricket rules discussions. Just unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah. Well, actually, I wrote this a couple of days ago and I got one yesterday. So my average has gone down quite a lot. Anyway, quick housekeeping. I know you don't need to be told to buy T-shirts or hats because you've all got them, guys, haven't you?

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Am I missing anything? Yes. Patreon.com slash innerworldpodcast. Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify as well or Patreon. I have an interview just up with Josh Davis who created the podcast Varnumtown, which is about a small town in the Carolinas that made a deal with Pablo Escobar to be like a trafficking hub. Like everyone in the town was involved. So it's fascinating. And yeah, shout out to Lily who does our TikTok because like Sean, I am also scared to download it and she does a fantastic job and I'm always late paying her.

Okay, anyway, today's episode is, well, it's a little shorter than usual, maybe because I'm actually sinking under the pressures of fatherhood, five different jobs and sleepinesses. Of course, I slept for about two hours on the son's bedroom floor a couple of nights ago. It's the worst night's sleep since Berghain 2016. Is this good chat? I don't know. Dad chat? I don't really have any other banter at the moment, unless you want to hear about my goal from the halfway line in Fiverside. No, no, you don't. Let's do some crime.

Yeah, for the 12 listeners still left that aren't tired of your Dear Diary interludes. Thanks for hanging in there, guys. France, France, wine and whining, frogs' legs and yellow bellies, fraternity but also chauvinism, Frank LaBeouf and that funny thing they do with a hot towel and a dead baby bird.

I've been raptured to hate the French from a young age and I proudly do. There's a reason all those lovely buildings in Paris escaped the Nazis intact, isn't there? But now and then something Gallic pops up on the feed and I am fascinated by it. And today it is the country's fascination with bank robbers, underdogs and this kind of near pathological obsession with calling everybody who points a gun in a policeman's face Robin Hood. Guys, we invented Robin Hood. He chased down a tax man with a bow and arrow. Get it right.

This show actually came about because I was researching heights in the Pacific for something I want to pitch Business Week. But I typed in French Caledonia and heights in Google and voila, some crazy ass story about a guy who went on the run after an armored vehicle robbery comes up. Turns out this guy is named Tony Muzzolin and he's a bit of a cult hero across La Manche and we're going to learn about him today.

He's not the helicopter guy, right? He's not the helicopter guy. That's Fahid. Yeah, that story was everywhere. That's a crazy story. I'm excited to learn more. Yeah, he's a really interesting character. But yeah, so we're going to give you maximum value for money on this show because you do listen in every single week for nothing. So I'm thrown in a second French bank robber, Redouin Fahid, who's frankly insane prison break you just mentioned and you just heard about in the cold open episode.

I mean, the whole thing just reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, which is very much not a coincidence, as we're going to find out soon. So we've got two robbers, both French, very different characters. They've both acquired this cult Robin Hood status in their home nation via their crimes. Kind of like one of those compare and contrast high school lit exams, only this is a lot more interesting than romantic poetry and romance.

Of course, the hero robber isn't just a French thing. I mean, you guys have got your Dillinger's and your Bollie and Clyde's, Patty Hearst, Ned Kelly, the Gladbeck hostage takers, and Britain's no stranger to the exaltation of street criminals either. You've got your craze, the Brinks mat robbers, including Kenny Noy, who, if I'm correct, I think used to drink Mild Man or something, before he got done for murder, not after. And then there's the Hatton Garden heist, which I'll definitely do a show about, and, of course, the great train robbers.

Yeah, I mean, there's just something romantic, I think, about bank robbers that just goes back, I think, in every country, you know, that just goes back hundreds, hundreds, thousands, who knows, a lot of years, basically, in terms of like, I think what appeals to people just, you know, striking out against the man robbing from the bank.

Sticking a sawn off in a service worker's nose. Is that real? I'm not saying I endorse it, but it's very different. I think the way people view it is very different from the kind of guy who's like a stick-up kid on the street. You know what I'm saying? Or like robbing a bodega. Yeah.

It's viewed very differently. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to hear about an interesting part of this today. I mean, we're all looking for that bad old boy with a heart gold, right? Which is Robin Hood. And France has got tons of them. Writes Time magazine, quote, Generations of French children have been enamored with traditional guignol puppet shows in which the protagonist, guignol, that's a shock, fights with a rotten, bumbling policeman. The nation is also obsessed with the comic book hero Asterix.

a puny but cunning Gaul warrior who always gets the better of Julius Caesar's Roman armies despite being overmatched and outnumbers. I mean...

That is a sweeping generalization, especially from a country that's colonized half of Africa. And there is a guy called Albert Spagiari, if you want to look up someone else interesting, who definitely will get his own underworld episode in due course because his spectacular 70s heist of a Societe Generale bank in Nice was a great caper. But we know you don't like too many names here. So one French robber gangster stands out among all of them. His name is Jacques Mesrine.

Petty criminal, turned armed robber, turned murderer, turned Quebecois, freedom fighter, turned martyr. I've been wanting to do a show on him for a long, long time because those movies with Vincent Cassel are brilliant. I've got to find a good angle in though.

So by the 1970s, all of these stories are swilling about in the French national conscience. You've got the May 1968 general strike, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist riots. Trade unions are rock solid. You get your glass of wine every couple of hours or whatever it is. But anti-establishment France at this time is heavy on the lookout for cowboy heroes. And both the protagonists of this week's show are born within two years of each other.

Tony Muzzolin is born in 1970 on the outskirts of Grenoble, which if you know France is in the southeast, a gateway city to the Alps, crammed full of insufferable Canadians and other nice people who ski and look healthy and happy and other disgusting things to my eye. His father, Vinko, came to France from Croatia as a young man, and he worked as an electrician, and his son Tony follows his old man's footsteps into the trade. The

Now, just two years later, over 400 miles north in Creil, a town about an hour from central Paris, Redouin Faid is born, the 10th of 11 kids. I mean, just saying that makes me give heart palpitations. God, 11 kids. To Algerian immigrant parents. So...

Both men are second generation French and their families hail from parts of the world that while white French society often turns its noses up at. And as a young kid, Faid in particular gets the shitty end of that stick. So we're going to follow him now. He commits his first theft aged just six, stealing clothes from a store where a security guard taunts him as a little merguez, referring to a North African sausage.

Age 12, Fade writes in a biography called Outlaw, Author, Armed and Dangerous, quote, I knew that robbery would be my career. And by age 14, he's committed almost 80 robberies. Robberies or, you know, like burglaries or shoplifting? Like, what are we talking about here?

It seems from what I was reading that he kind of makes his way up and sort of solidifies this gang around him and his brothers. So he's kind of just learning the trade at this point, but pretty small time stuff for the most part. But it's not going to stay that way. Here's Scott Johnson writing an airmail, which I think is Graydon Carter's post-vanity fair thing. I never quite figured that magazine out. Anyway, quote, in the mid 90s, while in his 20s, Fayed sets his sights on banks.

He bought a shotgun, several Beretta pistols and a holster, much like the one Clint Eastwood wore in Dirty Harry. Police estimate that Fade and a local crew, whose numbers varied depending on the job, had robbed around 30 banks within a few years, stealing millions. He moved to an apartment in the upscale neighbourhood of Chantilly, where he was living with the bankers he robbed. I think that's Chantilly of Chantilly Lace, maybe, I don't know. It's fair to say that Fade rates himself pretty highly.

And he says he brings something, quote, scientific to bank robbery. I mean,

He's clearly very good at it, right? He doesn't drink or do drugs and he claims to live by a thief's code of honour, never hurting anybody in the process of his crimes. He's got tips and hacks on all kinds of robbery-related things like surveillance, logistics and survival on the run from the cops, which, to be fair, would be a far more exciting Bell Grill show, town hopping through suburban France, begging and living off little pink macaroons. He writes Fayed in his book, quote, you are desperate for the adrenaline that you get from the hold-up.

Your body leads it like it needs a drug. In the end, you're not even doing it for the money. I mean, it's almost like he's going to do it again at some point. Honestly, he's kind of selling me on it. And, you know, it's one of those crimes where I feel like the most people who do bank robbies aren't that smart. Like if two smart guys like me and you really put our heads together and took like a couple months to plan something out, like maybe we could be good at it. I'm just saying. Although cameras these days sell...

It's got to be the pumps and dumps, right? It's got to be the crypto scams. That's what you're doing these days. I want to sit behind my laptop in a dark room. I don't want to get involved in all this shit. Anyway...

This guy, yeah, I kind of agree with you, right? It's getting pretty romantic at this point. He loves the movies. He's a big fan of Jacques Mesrine and he's always fixed to the TV screen. It's packed to Johnson's article, quote, as a boy, Fahid idolized the outlaws of Hollywood crime films. In his autobiography, Fahid writes that movies were a, quote, dream and a lesson in gangsterism. His crew cribbed tactics from Point Brink.

They once robbed a bank while disguised as former French presidents and reservoir dogs when they used colour-coded names for each other.

I mean, that's great. But also, like, doesn't every boy for the most part idolize the outlaws of Hollywood crime films? Like, who watches Ocean's Eleven and is like, I don't want to be like those guys? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this guy also thinks that Michael Mann is his, quote, professor and mentor. And he loves heat, which is obviously good and correct. And when the director is in Paris promoting his movie Public Enemies, Fayed actually comes up to him and says, quote, you were my technical advisor, right?

I mean, that's an amazing story. And a side note, I just started watching the original Miami Vice, which I think man-made. And it's incredible. But like low budget special effects and over the top in an 80s way, but really good so far. I mean, I just started watching a few episodes of the original Batman and oh my God, it's so good. What's his name? Adam, Adam, the guy. Adam West. Adam West. Man, that guy should not have been slipping into a leotard, but...

I don't know, man. It's pretty cool. It's better than these pumped-up guys these days. Anyway, Fahid's criminal pals even nickname him Doc after Steve McQueen's character in The Getaway. And, giving even Premier League footballers a run for their money, he watches Scarface ten times and he memorises the characters' lines and shouts them out during raids. Ha!

I mean, despite or perhaps because of this, Fahid is said to be a millionaire by the age of 23 and cops refer to him as the Terror of Creole, his hometown. But he's also well known to them, right? Which isn't a major hindrance as he simply goes on the run in Algeria for a while where he plots a mega heist that he believes will catapult him into the quote League of Champions of Gangsters.

So he's gone on the lam for a bit. He's known to them. But he's planning something big. And in 1997, Fahid and his crew, they pull it off.

who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu. Cribbing again from heat, they don ice hockey masks and rob an armoured van in Paris, equipped with assault rifles, machine guns and even a rocket launcher.

Faid gets shot in the shoulder during the assault, but they escape, and French society even starts praising the gang's professionalism. Some even copy them in similar knock-off heists all over the country. But as you might have gleaned from all of this, Faid's so-called thieves' code is about as flimsy as a French infantry line.

Later that year, French authorities charged seven of his eight-man team for armed robbery, dual theft and extortion all over Paris. And the eighth of them, by the way, he makes it out of France to Algeria. Faid, meanwhile, goes on the run for three years in, he later claims, Switzerland,

So he's not like an Algerian Jew, right? I feel like that's the only thing that makes sense here, but even though it doesn't, because, you know, Algerians aren't usually...

like that. He's also got to be the only person in the world to have ever gone on the run in both Algeria and Israel. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Shine a little bit. But yeah, he's caught eventually, right? So after these three years.

And Faid is sentenced to a cumulative 31 years behind bars, various robberies he's carried out over the previous years. But in 2009, he's let out for good behavior because France and he writes his biography claiming he's turned his life around and he goes on a mammoth media tour. I mean, so French. Faid tells a local radio station that, quote, when I was on the run, I lived all the time with death, with fear of the police, fear of getting shot.

A pretty crazy early life then, almost as mad as yours was, Danny. Yeah, and look at me now, you know, down to knock back 2.5 Negronis once every three weeks and call it at 11.30. Sounds beautiful. Tony Muzzolin then, our second guy. I mean, he really couldn't be more different. In fact, his early biography verges on Dole, but carry on listening, guys. He grows up in the Haute Savoye department near Grenoble.

which is a beautiful area not far from Lyon on the banks of Lake Geneva and the Swiss border. And he's a pretty normal kid too. I mean, he's into sports and cars and most of all money. I mean, I liked all of those things, but I only got one of them.

And towards the end of the 1990s becomes a cash delivery guy for a pretty huge Swedish firm called Loomis. If you live in Europe or the United States, you've seen their boxy security vans with this red triangle logo hauling stuff all over major cities. It's a blue collar job, but a well-paid one. So congrats, Tony. And he develops a taste for, quote, beautiful things, according to a friend speaking to a magazine.

Tony lives in a working class neighborhood in greater Leon, which is France's third biggest city with about 2 million people in it. He's low paid though. And he hates his job. He feels he's trapped with no future, even though he almost never calls in sick. And he's always on time to shift.

But then he starts passing himself off as somebody else, namely the manager of a luxury car company, which he gets away with mostly thanks to the fact he owns a Ferrari F430. You know, if you hate your job, don't buy a Ferrari. Just put money into like ETFs and sit on it because that's just, you know, you're not going to. I don't know. It's just it's bad decision making, to be honest with you. I feel like this is one of those. Can someone help me with the economy?

like 500 euros on rent 250 grand on a Ferrari F430 what's going wrong so this is I mean this shows that he is incredibly stingy with his cash right despite this modest salary he's able to buy a car like a six-figure car he saves a huge amount and he's tight enough that friends and colleagues call him the quote pliers

He's also not the kind of guy you're going to call bullshit on with this stuff. Tony's a shade under six feet tall. Love that. I'll call myself a shade under six feet tall from now on. And he weighs almost 16 stone, which is like proper rugby player territory. He's

He's fit, he lifts, he runs, and he's keen on Krav Maga, which is the Israeli martial art that's all about efficiency and movement and absolutely destroying your opponent from what I understand. He's not a man to mess around with, but he's also just a really quiet guy and he keeps to himself.

Well, on November 5th 2009, that's just as Redouin Faid is running about France boasting of his new and improved character, 39-year-old Tony's life changes forever. It's morning and raining in Lyon and Tony and two Loomis colleagues are loading a little more than 11.6 million euros, around 17 million dollars at the time, into their Mercedes van at the Lyon branch of the Banque de France.

That's Bank of France for our non-Francophone listeners. You're welcome. Then they fire up the ignition and they head out on a 10-minute journey to Rue Paul de Vivier, where they're scheduled to pick up more sacks. Tony is, of course, quiet. He's with two guys, one in the cabin, the other in the back with the cash. Yeah, you know, that job just must be like non-stop temptation to just make a run for it. Honestly, it must be so boring and so tempting. This is a piece of cake job.

But unbeknownst to his two colleagues, Tony has disabled the Mercedes' two GPS detectors. And at around 10am, while the other two head into the premises to pick up their second job, Tony puts his plan into action.

He gets behind the wheel of the van. He drives it just around the corner to a nearby room. Then he parks it to a white Renault Kango, which is like the most French car of all time. I don't know, maybe Citroen 2CV and the Twingo. Thoughts to our Gmail account, guys. Opens the Mercedes rear door and he carries 51 bags of cash from one vehicle to the other.

Tony then leaves the van, engine running, doors wide open, windscreen wipers still on, while he drives the Kangoo to a lock-up he'd rented eight weeks previous under a false name, and into which he's built a false wall with an almost invisible trapdoor.

Then he mounts a BMW 800 motorbike, one of those huge big touring things that incredibly cool people ride, with huge panniers, and he heads off into the sunset. He's not carrying the whole stash. It's pretty ingenious, right?

Thus begins an 11-day fugitive run, the details of which nobody can quite piece together. According to the newspaper Le Parisien, Tony passes through France on the BMW, apparently through the massive Mont Blanc tunnel before reaching Turin in northern Italy, where he leaves the bike in the train station parking lot and then hops on a train to Rome where he claims he eats ice cream, rents a hotel room and buys a briefcase.

But he'll later say he forgot the name of the hotel, and prosecutors say there's no hard evidence for the stop in Rome.

Then, Tony says, he makes it all the way down to Naples, where he says he, quote, walks around and, quote, does things. What an interview. Le Parisien pieces this together and has a theory of its own. Quote, in Naples, his passage is proven. Sorry, I'm translating for the French, obviously. The Odeon Hotel has kept his name in a register. A seedy establishment in a bad neighborhood. A stone's throw from the central station. Why Naples? Musselin said he wanted to admire the bay.

Isn't it a place of car trafficking with Montenegro? Hmm, chin scratcher. Maybe there is something to this though. Anyway, according to Tony...

He runs out of money in Naples, where apparently walking around and doing things are pretty expensive, and he gets back on a train to Turin via Milan and retrieves his rented bike. I mean, you really do got to hand it to European trains. No Mussolini jokes, they're just really love and miss trains. Tony then rides along to Monaco, where, on the morning of November 16th,

2009, he hands himself in to the Monagask cops. I bet he didn't know that was a demonym for Monaco. He's erased the BMW's GPS data, just like he did the van, and he's ditched his phone SIM card. All the cops find on him is a European roadmap. What's more, he remains firmly silent under questioning. It's his decision, his lawyer says. Tony Muzzolin is a responsible person. He commits offence, not a crime, and he decided to face his responsibilities.

I mean, I'm having trouble with the strategy here, though. I'm assuming he's counting on the typical like European slap on the wrist for his crimes, you know, getting out in four years, especially because he's turning himself in and just retrieving all that hidden cash that he pretends he has no idea where it is. Yeah, I think you're pretty much on the money. We'll see. There's a few more little wrinkles to iron out, but yeah.

It's a pretty strange tale, huh? Like this quiet guy accumulating a huge amount of wealth, but then also robbing an armored car and going on this odd journey. It's like it's a really, really strange story. And now we're going to switch back because we're going to go back to the narcissistic Redwyn Fayed. I mean, Tony Muslin's polar opposite, right?

and his tale is about to get a lot more Michael Mann-esque. Remember that conciliatory book tour? All the, I've changed my ways, I'm a different man stuff? Well yeah, obviously it's bullshit. And not long after he's tasted freedom, Faid goes back on the ponds with his guys. Within a year, he's back in court when a raid on another bullying-carrying armoured vehicle he plans goes wrong, and one of his gang shoots dead a policewoman.

Faiz's brother Faisal goes on the lam after the killing and is later convicted of killing the cop, who's a 26-year-old.

In 2011, Fayed is sentenced to 25 years for his role in the slaying. But in April 2013, he stages his first prison break. He's being held near Lille, which is in northern France, when he takes four guards hostage with a smuggled pistol and he uses explosives hidden inside tissue packets to blast his way out of the building. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Then he ditches the hostages and he runs.

But he's caught six weeks later at a hotel while trying to obtain false documents to get out of France and into, yeah, Tel Aviv. In the spring of 2018, staff at Rio Prison, where Frey is being held, notice drones flying over the premises. It seems like they're casing the joint, but have no fear. Philippe Veroni, head of France's Organised Crime Task Force, says he's unsure there's a criminal link.

Next minute, all hell is breaking loose. Fayed is getting whisked out of Rio in a stolen chopper with his armed pals and the country's biggest manhunt is getting underway. But you knew that already because you love the cold opens, don't you? 90 days later, of course, Fayed is caught in his hometown of Creole. At his next court appearance, a couple weeks later, prosecutors are keen to tee up Fayed's charisma to the jury, describing as a quote, gifted manipulator.

On one occasion, Fahid taunts a police officer standing behind him. You better let me go, he says. I like escaping. I'm sure that sounds better in French. Jacques Mariani, a well-known Corsican mobster called to testify, says that meeting Fahid is, quote, an honour. Fahid turns to the public gallery upon this glowing endorsement and he smiles. I mean, he does sound charming, you know? Yeah, I really wish he hadn't killed that 26-year-old cop for more reasons than this, but...

Yeah, it would be my story. Fahid describes himself as a, quote, freedom addict. Yeah, I mean, who, who is, like, I don't know. He's always in prison. I feel like most of us are. But yeah, but if you're always in prison, it's a weird way to describe yourself. Like maybe you would do stuff that doesn't,

get you into prison if you're a freedom addict. You know, just throwing out ideas here. Yeah, I'm a freedom addict. I like walking my dog and not robbing banks. But at the end of October, age 51, Fade is handed a further 14 years inside, which, in addition to his previous convictions, means that he could be locked up until 2060. Or, of course, whenever his remaining brothers manage to hijack another helicopter.

There is Fahey's wild third act dealt with, but what about Tony Muzzolin? Last time we checked on him, he turned himself into cops and he's kept shtum about everything that's happened over the past 11 days since his own daring raid. Media speculate that it's almost as if he's hidden his loot, content to take a few short years behind bars for his non-violent crime.

What he's unaware of, however, is that a few days previous the owner of the lockup he's stashed his Kangoo in recognises Tony off the news and alerts cops. Tony hadn't had time to put all the cash behind his false wall and police confiscate it. Oops. Although, actually, 2.5 million euros, which is, I don't know, like three and a half, four million bucks, aren't there at all. They're gone. Tony's apartment is empty and thanks to switching off the BMW's GPS,

They don't really know everywhere he's been on the lam and they reckon the bike's massive panniers are easy big enough to carry all of the 35,000 banknotes that would have comprised the remaining money. Here is some more good old-fashioned speculation from Le Parisien. Quote, By comparing the trip he claims to have made and the mileage of his two-wheeler, investigators believe that the account is not correct. Muslin would have driven 672km more.

In which direction though? The journey from Turin to Trieste on the Slovenian border is approximately 550. The road to Rijeka, Croatia is 620. But what about the return? If the man pushed as far as former Yugoslavia, he did not go there on a motorbike.

He denies having gone there at all. When he turns himself in to the police, he only had 100 euros in his possession, a few hundred dollars and some pounds sterling. I mean, these guys are desperate to pin some kind of Balkan criminal conspiracy on the man, as we all are. In addition, something pretty amazing is happening online. This is 2009 after all. It's the aftermath of the global financial crash and tons of French bankers and even leading politicians have been caught with their fingers in the cookie tin.

There's huge public hatred of banks and politicos, and Tony quickly becomes France's latest anti-hero. Here's Time magazine again, quote, So far, over 100 Tony Muslin Facebook fan groups have been created with names ranging from Run Tony Muslin Run to Tony Muslin for President.

The domain name TonyMuslin.fr was also promptly bought by a web designer who is now peddling Muslin t-shirts featuring his mugshot under palm trees and alongside catchphrases like I'm your girl, Tony and bumper stickers reading Tony Muslin without hate or violence. Like don't Instagram me crimes is better and there are t-shirts there guys. This heist, though illicit, made an impression on us because this was happening in real life.

We're only used to seeing this sort of sophisticated plot in movies, says founder of the Tony Muzzlin site.

The context of the financial crisis has also fostered sympathy towards this type of enterprise. His story reminds us that the society that we're living in is precarious even when you've got a job, getting up every morning to earn a salary that barely covers your needs. This is an example that people are cracking. So it's pretty clear to see where that guy's loyalties lie, but rarely are stories in reality so simple.

And at his Leon trial in 2010, Tony pours cold water on his newfound anti-hero status. Quote, people told me I was Robin Hood, but I'm not. I'm normal. I had a problem with my boss. It was not the right choice. I mean, incredible quote. And you got to love a guy who just like pours water all over a BS narrative. But also, wait, you know,

I mispronounce everything, but is it Leon? How do you say that? Leon. Yeah, you don't even say that. I don't know. Say it as nonchalantly and without as many letters as possible, and you've probably got it right. Tony maintains he also, shock, doesn't know where the rest of the cash is, and he instead focuses on his dead-end job and his crappy bosses. He tells the court that Loomis often made mistakes on his wage payment and shortchanged him on leave.

A colleague says that Tony was always warning that, quote, the bosses are going to pay. And Tony himself adds that, as I was single, I couldn't have holiday during the summer. They didn't pay me all of my hours. We were not respected. I respect the law, but at a certain moment I crossed over to the other side because of all these injustices.

Yeah, see, that's just – I mean, that's classic, right? Everyone can identify with hating a boss at one point or another. So who's going to get mad at that? It's just like one of my favorite – yeah, and one of my favorite journalism tactics is like when I'm interviewing someone or following someone who I know is going to hate something I've got to ask or something I've got to do. It's like, you know, I don't want to do this, but those bosses back home in their fancy offices, they're making me do this.

And, you know, it works every time. It's like the I'm sorry it's my first day, you know, of journalism. It's just a great mood. Yeah, I like the old some people are saying, what do you say to the people who I've heard saying that you are a shyster and a fucking loser? I mean, I do that. I do that a lot, too. But it's also it's the dude, the barstool dude, Caleb, who has like the funniest jokes.

five minute interview show on instagram with celebrities he always does stuff like that i think he has a t-shirt yeah he's great i mean that's he's made that into an art form yeah definitely um that tony tony gives another like brilliant quote that's there's like proper movie so he says it's always the little guys who have to take it so i decided to rebel i mean that is that is tony montana opening scene like voiceover is great robin hood's

No, of course. Hero? Maybe. I mean, Tony admits to his misdeeds and a judge finds him the equivalent of $57,000 and sentences him to three years prison, far less than Chief Prosecutor Mark Dessert tells press, quote, "...for the justice system, the case is not over. I can assure you that Mr. Muslin would not be able to enjoy in peace the 2.5 million euros he has or he thinks he's put in a safe place somewhere in Eastern Europe."

I mean, you want to make a joke about just desserts or icing on a cake or something? I don't know. I feel like we don't even need to. Mark dessert, folks. Anyway, Tony very much does live in peace. He drifts into obscurity other than a 2011 book about his life called 11.6, which gets turned into a movie in 2013, which just sheds another round of media light on the case.

It's not a very good movie, by the way. Don't watch it. Then comes the 2019 affair in London we mentioned at the top of the show, where Tony tries exchanging almost 150 grand, which he says he's gotten from the sale of a Ferrari, which according to a newspaper is, quote, strangely reminiscent of the car involved in the story that hit the headlines in 2009. It's a nice touch, I'd say. It's almost making me like the guys, despite his nationality. So there you have it.

Two French robbers, two very different lives, but both of whose mystique has vaulted them into the public spotlight and anti-hero status. Neither of them, by the way, is a Robin Hood character. I reckon we haven't found one still, despite about a thousand mentions. But interesting stories nonetheless. Some might even say great subjects for a podcast about global organised crime, but I'll let the fine folks who write two-star reviews have their say on that.

Yeah. Until, uh, until next time, member patreon.com slash underworld podcast, YouTube, Tik TOK, uh, pay for us on Spotify and iTunes. And, uh, yeah, until next week. Yeah.

so