Movies

The Quiet Ones

BBG News

Over the summer of 2008, Denmark experienced its largest theft ever, an event vividly portrayed in Frederik Louis Hviid’s new film, The Quiet Ones, now in theaters. The movie chronicles the story of Kasper (played by Gustav Giese), a boxer grappling with juggling his rising career and a criminal lifestyle. When Kasper is presented with the chance to assist in planning the nation’s most audacious heist, targeting a money-processing facility in Copenhagen, the allure proves impossible to resist.

Kasper, a character in the movie, is modeled after Steffen Baadsgaard Andersen, who was part of the 2008 heist and contributed significantly to the creation of The Quiet Ones, according to director Frederik Louis Hviid. Andersen caught Hviid’s eye when he read the book Røver by Peter Sloth, which delves into Andersen’s lengthy criminal past and details his role in the heist. Eventually, Andersen agreed to collaborate with Hviid on the film and share his experiences. An interesting parallel can be drawn here – a similar approach was used in the French heist film Le Trou (1960), where real-life criminal Roland Barbat, known as Jean Keraudy, was cast in the movie and also served as a consultant for the production.

Andersen isn’t present in the movie, but his knowledge was indispensable in accurately portraying the heist scenes, as per Hviid’s statement. He emphasized that from the moment they get into the vehicles until their return to the farm, everything is depicted with complete accuracy. This claim is made with confidence because Steffen, upon watching the film, said “This is 100% accurate as I recall it.

Here’s what to know about The Quiet Ones and the biggest heist in Danish history. 

How did the heist portrayed in The Quiet Ones happen in real life? 

The robbery took place at a Danish money handling facility, specifically a Value Handling site, which was situated inside a storage unit within Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital city. This facility is one of five in the city and handles around 20% of all transactions in the city. The cash processed here would eventually be delivered to banks. It might seem impossible to understand the layout of this facility, but surprisingly, a video on the company’s website gave the robbers crucial information that made the heist possible—a detail that the movie “The Quiet Ones” discloses.

In simpler terms, Hviid described a video tour of the company’s facilities where they displayed storage areas for various currencies such as Euros and dollars. He emphasized that knowing the exact location of everything was astonishing. However, the video is now lost online, and Hviid thinks it symbolizes Denmark’s mindset during that time. As he reflects, it appears strange that they openly showed their machinery back in 2008. Yet, Denmark was naive at that time, unable to fathom that such a breach could occur or that someone might exploit them in this manner.

Much about the intricate workings of the heist remains somewhat enigmatic, such as the exact number of individuals participating, although Hviid speculates that approximately 25 individuals were involved. Only six men appeared in the surveillance footage, but there were also the drivers of the garbage trucks and presumably many more criminals operating behind the scenes. Given the size of this group, it’s no surprise that tensions ran high, with suspicion permeating most of the planning process—a process that spanned an unexpectedly long period of two-and-a-half years, contrary to the portrayal in The Quiet Ones.

In this group of criminals, everyone went to considerable efforts to hide their true identities. They rarely knew each other’s real names and were often identified by the towns or cities they originated from. Some took even more drastic steps; for instance, as per Hviid’s account, one individual always wore a pillow beneath his shirt to prevent other criminals from accurately identifying him. Another limped pretentiously, while others donned fake hands—all in an attempt to evade detection by both fellow criminals and the police. These physical characteristics were not included in “The Quiet Ones,” as Hviid notes they seemed implausible and somewhat amusing.

Among the criminals, there were several factors that led to mutual distrust. Many of these issues stemmed from paranoia. As Hviid explains, the crew was composed of individuals recruited from either extreme right criminal groups within Sweden or Sweden’s immigrant community. This mix was volatile in itself. Political disagreements, conflicting gang loyalties, and racial tensions created a tense atmosphere. However, these issues were temporarily set aside for the sake of their shared goal: acquiring large amounts of money.

As a film enthusiast, it’s clear we all concurred that the earnings wouldn’t be shared evenly among us. The distribution of funds was contingent upon the level of risk we were willing to undertake. If one aimed for the grand prize, they had to be part of the operation. However, there were those who orchestrated heists on garbage trucks, and they would have pocketed merely a fraction compared to their counterparts – the ones yet to be apprehended. Each participant had to weigh significant personal decisions. Would I rather secure a million dollars with a high probability of getting caught, or settle for around $15,000 while likely evading detection? Interestingly, some who held high-risk positions did manage to slip through the cracks, such as the man who piloted the Caterpillar bulldozer straight through the wall.

On August 10, 2008, around dawn, the burglary took place in Glostrup, a suburb of Copenhagen. To pull off this clever scheme, the thieves made off with several garbage trucks, strategically positioning them across the city to impede access to the crime scene. One was angled at the police headquarters in Albertslund, obstructing vehicles from leaving. Other trucks were torched throughout the region, disrupting highways and entry routes.

As a follower, I can share my account of an intriguing incident: Six of us, equipped with Kalashnikovs, navigated straight to the cash facility, guided by a corporate video. We strategically used a Caterpillar boom lift to smash through a wall, providing us direct access to the vault. Overflowing sacks filled with valuable currencies like Dollars and Euros were our prizes, which we swiftly transported away in Audis stolen from Stockholm.

An intriguing detail emerged from Steffen, lending an air of authenticity to the heist scene in The Quiet Ones: The bags brimming with cash are incredibly heavy. Hviid recounted Steffen’s description: “It’s a large hockey bag. If you’ve ever changed paper into a printer, you know how much a bag of paper weighs. If you take three of those and place them in a hockey bag, it will weigh approximately 50 kilograms…We dragged two of those bags at once, so we were pulling around 100 kilos over debris and onto the road. Despite being in top physical condition, dragging those bags out was some of the toughest exercise I’ve ever experienced.”

This account is corroborated by real-life surveillance footage, which depicts the perpetrators laboring under layers of clothing and sweating profusely.

What happened after the heist?

As a cinema enthusiast, I’d rephrase it like this: After dodging garbage trucks, the cops finally made their way through, only to discover that their tires had been punctured by scattered caltrops – clusters of nails thoughtfully strewn by the fleeing Audi drivers on nearby roads. In that moment, the heist was an unprecedented triumph. Not a single arrest was made that night, and the loot was nothing short of breathtaking: approximately 70 million kroner, equivalent to nearly USD 10 million today, vanished from the facility.

After the robbery, numerous arrests occurred in the subsequent months and years. Many were caught due to careless phone usage; an unremarkable occurrence according to Hviid. The police were able to track their movements by analyzing cellphone data, which showed they had been at the facility and the farm where they hid the guns and vehicles prior to the heist. Andersen’s arrest proved more challenging. He fled almost instantly to Málaga, Spain, where rumors swirled about his potential involvement in the robbery and his alleged vast fortune. Local gangs became interested in him. Hviid shares a chilling detail: “Steffen informed us that there was an instance where two men had visited Andersen’s children’s daycare, asking about his whereabouts because they wanted to know if he had the money.” Upon hearing this from his wife and perceiving it as a direct threat, Andersen tried to return to Denmark, but was apprehended by authorities at the Swedish border. He served an 8-year prison sentence and was released after 5 years and 4 months.

Two years following the monumental heist in 2010, a group of fifteen individuals were sentenced to collectively serve over a century behind bars. To date, only a mere fraction – four million out of the estimated 70+ million – has been recovered. Despite the varying motivations among the participants, I remain intrigued by Andersen’s unique drive. When I inquired about his involvement, he simply replied, “I wanted to test my abilities. I had nothing else.

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2025-02-21 18:06

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