At least 50 heavily armed robbers. Nearly $12 million stolen. Four crime scenes. A total of 457 pieces of evidence. More than 580 total samples generated; 125 evidence samples and 20 reference samples in just over a week. Ten forensic scientists working over the course of 10 days.
When the Brazilian media dubbed the military-style robbery of security company Prosegur the “Robbery of the Century,” they were not being hyperbolic. This transnational investigation of a major Brazilian gang has the markings of a history-altering moment—which is one of the reasons the case was selected as the 2020 DNA Hit of the Year just minutes ago.
Speaking at the Human Identification Solutions (HIDS) conference, Tim Schellberg, president of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs, announced that the 2017 robbery investigated by Brazilian Federal Police has been selected as the 2020 DNA Hit of the Year.
In its fourth year, DNA Hit of the Year is a global program designed to recognize the value of DNA database technology to solve and prevent crime. Every year, GTH-GA partners with a group of international judges to determine which case will be recognized. This year, 50 cases from 20 countries were submitted, with six finalists chosen by the seven judges. The cases of the five finalists will be profiled in the coming days on the Forensic website and in the e-newsletter.
But, according to judge Walther Parson, a professor at the Medical University of Legal Medicine in Austria, Brazil’s Robbery of the Century case stood out amongst the pack for not only the “overwhelming” amount of work and evidence, but also its lasting impact on the advancement of forensic science in Latin America.
“The solving of this case is of particular importance for Brazil and Latin America in general, as the societies in these countries suffer from organized crime. In that respect the Brazilian government made an important decision by recognizing the importance of DNA intelligence databasing and providing funding for such a program,” Parson told Forensic. “The societies can therefore expect that more of these crimes will be solved in the future, which contributes to the reduction of crime in Latin American countries.”
The crime
On April 24, 2017, at least 50 heavily armed robbers used cars to close off the perimeter around a Prosegur office in the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este. During a three-hour assault, the criminals were reportedly able to access at least one of the three vaults inside, getting away with about $8 million USD. One police officer was killed and several were wounded. Shortly after the heist, a group of the robbers were intercepted in Itaipulandia, during which a gun battle broke out and three suspects were killed and four were arrested. Paraguayan police believed the robbers were Brazilian—associated with the country’s First Capital Command gang—and had crossed the border into Paraguay to commit the crime.
Crime scenes directly connected to the robbery of Prosegur. The stars represent profiles with identified sources. Using that information, the Brazilian federal police located a staging house nearby, where they collected almost 200 pieces of evidence. Bags and backpacks abandoned near Itaipu Lake, where the robbers were intercepted, yielded another 100 evidences. In addition to recovered vehicles and the Prosegur branch office, evidence collection totaled 457.
With the goal of obtaining genetic profiles to supply to the Brazilian National DNA Database (BNPG), 10 forensic scientists spent the first 10 days after the crime generating 20 reference profiles from suspects and about 80 crime scene profiles from 125 pieces of evidence. A month later, the number was about 300 samples; a year later, 580 samples had been generated.
“Given the large amount of materials received in the lab, the experts carried out a segmented analysis of the evidence, working together to analyze the largest number of traces and reference materials in the possible shortest time,” Ana Paula Vieira de Castro, Federal Forensic Scientist with the Brazilian Federal Police, told Forensic. “A laboratory benchwork team, responsible for all workflow from extraction to amplification, processed the samples generated by the sampling team and promptly delivered the raw data obtained to the experts for analysis and writing of reports.” The initial report was filed 14 days after the crime took place.
Link to other crimes
In all, 47 different genetic single-source profiles and two genetic mixture profiles with quality for confrontations were found and uploaded to the DNA databases, 11 of them coincident with suspects arrested or killed three days after the robbery.
“It was a big challenge for us to compare all profiles obtained to identify matches with reference profiles, especially those that could not be uploaded to the DNA database due to absence of judicial authorization,” de Castro explained. “It was also difficult to identify duplicated profiles and the unique ones with quality to be uploaded to the National DNA Database. We had to create one big internal database exclusive to this case. Every time we identified a unique profile that didn’t match a suspect’s, we named it “Individual + sequential numbering” to facilitate the citation of them in reports.”
Incredibly, 14 profiles uploaded to BNPG matched others from 18 unrelated crime scenes throughout Brazil, including the murder of a prison officer in 2016. The profile, recovered from the staging house, also matched DNA left at an ATM explosion in 2017.
Another profile obtained from the staging house was matched to one initially found in a house used by members of one of the largest criminal organizations in Brazil. The source was identified, and is now the main suspect in the theft of jewels worth $28 million from Guarulhos Airport in 2019.
Also in 2019, two years after the Robbery of the Century, three security vans owned by Brinks were mugged at an airport. DNA recovered from the scene matched that of a profile obtained from the staging house in 2017.
In general, most profiles have been connected to other felonies of cash-transit companies or banks. A single profile that has not been identified yet has been linked to five different crime scenes between 2014 and 2018. Another was linked to a prison escape in 2014 and two additional cash-transit assaults in 2016 and 2017. Five individual profiles have also been connected to three different assaults on the cash-transit company Protégé between 2013 and 2018, with one source identified and arrested for another robbery of a private bank in 2018.
“We will probably have hits for years to come,” de Castro said. “Already in 2020 we had one offender hit and four forensic hits.”
Vital role of DNA database
The Brazilian National DNA Database has been almost 20 years in the making. It was first proposed in the 2002 National Public Security Plan. In 2007, a working group was established to help the public—and individual forensic laboratories—understand the importance of a DNA database that spans across the entire nation. Finally, in 2013, legislation was passed to formalize the National DNA Database.
Even with the law firmly in place, implementation was painstakingly slow. Thankfully, in the last three years, funding has caught up to the legislation and there has been a massive push to develop the database—no doubt helped along by the unexpected implications of the Robbery of the Century.
By May 2020, the Brazilian National DNA Database boasted more than 82,000 profiles from laboratories in 18 states, the Federal District and the Federal Police. That is compared with the 31,000 profiles it had just a year earlier in May 2019.
“This increase is due to a strategic project by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security and the commitment of laboratories in the Integrated Network of DNA Databases (RIBPG) to collect and process reference samples from individuals convicted of heinous crimes,” de Castro said.
At first, due to lack of specific legislation, only profiles relating to missing persons and criminal evidence were uploaded to the DNA Database. Suspects and convicted offenders were added a few years later with the enactment of Law 12,654, which de Castro calls an “important advance to criminal investigation [by] allowing the collection of reference DNA and the use of genetic profiles as a form of criminal identification, adjusting the Brazilian legislation to the most modern available.”,
More recently in 2018, Brazilian authorities collected DNA from convicted offenders in prisons, increasing the number of reference samples by 2,675% and the number of matches by 277%.
“The major goal for years to come is to process the backlog of more than 150,000 rape kit samples stored in all the labs. It is a work in progress,” de Castro said.
The outcome
Thus far, seven individuals allegedly tied to the Robbery of the Century have been tried by the Brazilian courts. The penalties have ranged from 24 to 31 years in prison, plus fines for theft followed by death, car theft, kidnapping and use of false documents. Other individuals are still waiting for judgement.