We want a pizza the action! Crooks steal €160,000 from Milan bank after digging through the wall of a Domino’s next door

• Robbers were able to use a closed Domino’s to bust through the wall of a bank
• The chain shut all its stores nationwide last year, failing to win over the Italians 

Audacious bank robbers stole €160,000 from a bank in Milan today after digging through the wall of an adjacent pizzeria.

A gang of four broke into the BPM in Piazza Salgari around 9:30am having burrowed through the wall of a permanently closed Domino’s next door.

The group – being referred to as the ‘hole gang’ by Italian media – claimed to have weapons and took seven hostages before looting the safe.

As much as €160,000 was taken from the bank before the crooks made a daring escape, vanishing undisturbed before police arrived around 10am.

Four men are understood to still be at large as detectives scour the scene for clues.

The men are understood to have dug a tunnel through a closed pizzeria next door

Picture shows a hole in the wall of the bank during a crime scene investigation in Milan, Italy 

Forensic teams were brought in to investigate the hole and other pieces of evidence

Victims told police the men had entered the bank and tied their hands and feet with cable ties.

Two employees were then released for long enough to carry over the cash in boxes. 

They said one of the men had a Campania accent and the three others sounded Sicilian.

The men told the hostages they were armed, but ‘it seems that no one saw guns or knives’, Italian outlet Fanpage reported. 

The men reportedly had their faces ‘distorted’ and have not yet been identified. 

Images from the crime scene showed police later investigating the hole smashed through the wall of the bank, labelled ‘A’.

The small hole appeared to be big enough for one person to crawl through at a time.

Forensic teams were called out to investigate as detectives were brought in to track down the robbers, Corriere Della Sera reported. 

Photographs from the scene later showed the area had been partially cordoned off as police cars arrived.

The bank is positioned just south of a closed Domino’s pizzeria on the Emilio Salgari in the Calvairate district of the city.

The Italian palate rejected Domino’s, forcing the US chain to retreat from Italy last year after struggling to find an audience in the Bel Paese.

Domino’s Italia lasted just seven years after setting out with an ambitious plan to build 880 outlets nationwide by 2030, filing for bankruptcy in April 2022 after opening 29 branches.

Agrodolce, which first reported the story, cited the pandemic, a dramatic decline in sales and an ‘exponential increase in competition’ as the reasons for closure. 

Police stand outside the cordoned-off bank in Milan after robbers stole 160,000 euros 

Policemen stand guard at the BPM bank in Milan after a robbery earlier today, December 6

Investigators examine the small hole carved through the pizzeria into the bank, on Wednesday

Outlets made a temporary first in Milan in 2015, before settling in Turin, Bologna, Parma and Rome. 

None made it as far south as Naples, the proud historic home of the pizza margherita.

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