Prologue, How to rob a bank. Here's the thing about robbing a bank. As soon as you walk in the door, every single second counts, so you better have a plan. When Greece's top bank robber does a job, he and his crew have it down to a science.
Can press.
The three of us enter the bank with our faces uncovered.
As the other two step team. I stood near the entrance. Let's get a close up on this guy. He's in his thirties, medium build, handsome with a square jaw. His name is Costas Samaras. The press calls him the Artist because he designs these brazen yet perfectly heists, with every detail accounted for. The clock is ticking, but the Artist is relaxed. Focused. He hangs back by the door while his partners walk up to the teller and flash friendly smiles.
They also wave the semi automatics their kring, you know, to move things along a little bit.
Dam Good morning, how are you doing.
We've come for a loan.
Yeah, they're not here for a loan. They keep it light, but move fast. They know they have about four minutes before the cops show up. And here in the small city of Columbaca, Greece. There really isn't anywhere to hide.
A parents with them.
My two friends go to the central cass here in the buck.
His friends they're brothers, and they're kind of famous in these parts. Mikos is the older one. They call him the Ghost. He's got a real talent for avoiding arrests. He can't be god. Then there's the kid brother of Vasilis. He's actually the reason I'm telling you this story in the first place. Vasilis doesn't look like much, stocky, balding, a little unassuming, but they call him Robin Hood because
he's the generous one. Whether he's a hero or a criminal, well that depends on your perspective, but right now he definitely looks more like a criminal. Robin Hood points his gun at the teller and notices the man is shaking, so he reassures him gently. Which is here to take the bank's money, not your lives. Still, this is a robbery, and they've got three minutes left the key.
Key.
Robin Hood and the Ghost walk over to the manager who's frozen behind his desk.
Open the safe.
Now they're down to two minutes. The artist has his gun tucked under his coat, and he's watching the front door.
At some point, the lady offers starts walking into the bank. I'm standing next to her and say, come on in, lady, come on in, but se notices the other two holding guns.
He turns back.
No, I'm leaving. I'm leaving, she says.
What this lady doesn't know is that these guys live by a simple do no harm code. No drugs, definitely no killing. They just want the cash. They don't want to get caught up with blood on their hands. I sawed to the brothers finish up. The brothers fill up a few canvas bags with cash, and then time's up. They need to exit.
Now we go outside, We get in the car, we start driving, and within a few meters.
Someone is soothing others instead of minding her business. The lady went for help, and now a cop has taken aim at their getaway car like he's some kind of hero. But these guys are pros. They don't even bother returning fire. They just laugh and hit the gas, speeding toward one of the stolen cars they'd stashed around town.
We took the road north, where it's where the other getaway car was changed. Car changed close.
And just like that, the three men disappear into the dark mountains that loom over Columbaca. That was June nineteen ninety two, and they've made off with a crazy amount of money. It's the equivalent of about one point four million US dollars. In fact, it's the biggest bank robbery in Greek history. This wasn't their first bank job, and it wasn't their last either. To date, they've held up
dozens of banks. They've evaded police with comical ease, and even when they did get caught, they broke out of prison not once, not twice, but ten times. These days, the artists and the ghost they're out of the game. But Vasilis Palio Coostas Robin Hood, he's still on the run. He's one of the most wanted men in the world, with a bounty of more than a million euros on
his head. Despite the best efforts of the Greek police, various intelligence agencies, and even inner poll it's been fourteen years since anyone's caught a glimpse of him, and that's turned into a bona fide folk hero. He's like a storybook character with all these tales following him around. Of being a criminal with a conscience of sharing his lute with the poor mountain folk he grew up with. The thing is this Robin Hood. He isn't a character someone invented.
He's actually real. I'm Miles Gray from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts. This is the Good Thief Chapter one, Cops and Robbers.
You know something, Robin.
I was just wondering, are we good guys or bad guys?
You know?
I mean, are Robin the rich to feed the poor? Rob That's a naughty word. We never rob so to borrow a it from those who could have thought it. When I was growing up, every kid I knew loved Robinhood, and there was no shortage of versions. I mean, there was the nineteen ninety one movie, you know, shout out Morgan Freeman, The Painted Man. There was the other nineteen ninety one movie Robin Hood Men in Tights, and then there's that animated Fox. I mean, look, there's a lot
to choose from. Obviously, the Og legend has been around a lot longer. For hundreds of years, people have composed ballads, poems, books, plays, and now a podcast about this idea of a lone swashbuckler who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. It's an idea that just doesn't get tired, and these
days we need it more than ever. You see it in the news all the time, rich and powerful people patting their pockets at everyone else's expense, and if they break a few laws along the way, they don't care. For every evil billionaire that gets caught, there's one hundred more getting away with it. But robin hoods, they give us someone to root for and something to believe in. It's the idea that we can take back what's ours.
That's what drew us to Vasili's Paliocostas. He sounded like a crook with a conscience, a real life robin Hood who's out there right now. But Vasilis Paliocostas is a total mystery. Nobody knows where he is or who he really is, how he got this way. We don't even know if all the fantastic stories about his generosity are true or if people just want them to be true.
So oh fuck may okay.
We assembled a team in Athens and decided to find this robin hood ourselves.
It's like three as a woman, and what looks like is that you can't see.
One of my partners in cracking this case is Daphne, our producer and lead reporter in Athens. Daphne, I'm guessing you'd heard of us Elis before we reached out to you.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, everybody in Greece really knows the name Palo Costas. When we were children. I remember hearing about them on TV, in the newspapers, you know, our parents mentioning their names.
So what did you know about them?
I mean, I'd heard that Vasilis specifically got started early in life, you know, in this kind of line of work, partly because it runs in the family. He's got a big brother, an older brother, Nikos, who he often partnered with, the one you called the ghost.
And as we discovered, these brothers had a pretty wild upbringing. Here's Christina, a reporter on Daphne's team.
Vasilisa Nikos grew up in a very poor farming family in the mountains of northern Greece. The brothers were very isolated until their teams and eventually they moved near the city Strikla, and when they finally got a taste of urban life, they well, they took advantage of it. Even early on. The petty crimes they committed were pretty daring.
There's so many stories about them, but I think that my favorite one from their early years was how as Nikos was just starting in his life of crime, he robbed a jewelry store directly across the street from a police station. And what he did was that he padlocked the police station doors and then walked right across the street, smashed the window, and took off with a bunch of jewels, and the cops couldn't do anything about it because they were stuck inside.
I mean, to be clear, I don't condone stealing from small businesses, but that's just funny.
It's creative, which became the hallmark of the Palokostas brothers. They didn't just commit crimes, they did it with flair.
Of course, not everybody buys into the hype, including Vasilis Fimiu, a cop who worked in the trica La police department. He spent years trying to track the brothers down and he knows better than anyone what they're capable of. So Daphne headed north to meet him.
I'm with my team and we're driving to Tricarla, and I should say tri Calai is not the grease you probably know from tourist brush shaws. It's not like colin ruins and sparkling beachside villas. It's a bit more provincial. There's rocky green peaks, cliff top monasteries and these zigzagging dirt roads.
Isn't it lovely how the mountains from a distance always look blue. It's a bit strange looking at those mountains whilst working on this project. I can't help but wonder if the silica is somewhere close. Rumors do suggest that he has secret hideouts all over, and there's others that say that a network of supporters is out there helping
him stay hidden. The team was driving to Tricola to meet with the man who once led to the effort to catch Paalo Costas, retired police officer named Vasili Sefimu. In two thousand and three, he received a special assignment to scour those same mountains in search of the country's most wanted man.
O Mother.
The team was formed to chase a Costas brother had four people feeling this case on a daily basis around the Clockma.
Is retired now, so we met with him at a cafe in the old tricala prison that's now been turned into a museum. He still maintains the gruffness of an old school cop. He started police work back in the eighties and proudly claims that during all that time he never picked up a pantophile a pre investigation report. He
was always on the streets where the action was. In nineteen ninety nine, he was working the streets of Athens, but he decided to take his big city shops back to his hometown and well, it didn't really take him very long to find where the action was.
Attend the Printristulian and it was right before Christmas. December two thousand and three, Sunday, we had intel that a car had been stolen.
Ftmu and his partners are driving an unmarked car through the mountains when they hear the dispatch radio crackle.
The car was seen on the mountain range of so my team and I drove into the mountains to locate him and track.
The police accelerate up these steep inclines. Suddenly Ftmu spots the stolen car racing ahead and figures he can catch up.
But then when he sezes in the mirror, he speeds up and drives higher again.
Ftmu steps on the gas and the engine grinds into high gear. He's white knuckling it around a series of hairpin turns. He thinks he's going to catch them, and then he comes upon the car.
Give me a U turn and turns the car the sideways bas The stolen car is just.
Parked there, and for a moment Ftmu is convinced he has the fugitive trapped. But that thought only lingers for a second.
We hear a barrage of shots. Bang, bang bang.
It's a gun, and not just any gun.
He had a scorpions, a machine gu The bullets were flying everywhere above us, to the right, to the left.
Ftmu slams on the brakes. He opens a driver's side door, dusts. He's rolling out onto the dirt.
We go out of the car and took cover.
He reaches for his service weapon and then opens fire. Bullets fly. The police scramble for a ditch.
One of our bullets hit his car on the passenger side and went through the windshiels then he refers to left for the mountain.
If the Mu watches as the stolen car speeds away, disappearing behind a cloud of dust. The officer's heart is still racing. He looks around and notices something unusual. His car is fine, like none of the bullets got anywhere near him or his team. The crook, he realizes, was shooting toward them, not at them, and that confirmed f the MEU's suspicions. It has to be a Palocostis boy behind the wheel. Chapter two, Hometown Heroes. Officer Ftimiu has
chased Vasilis Palocostis around Greece for years. There have been high stakes chases and bullets flying, but he has a funny relationship to his target. While he made clear to us that he does not like Vasilis, in fact, Ftmiu considers him a terrorist, he has come to have a level of admiration for Vasilis's skill. Vasilis, he tells us, isn't like other criminals. He's dangerous for sure. I mean, dude is armed to the teeth, but he never shoots to kill and his ability to get away every single
time is frankly impressive. But Christina, my colleague that we met earlier, she discovered that in Vasilis' hometown, the admiration goes a lot further.
As we were trying to get a read on how locals view the Palocostas brothers. We met with Valiant claud, a journalist who spent a lot of time in tricolars reporting on their ures. She told us that the first time she visited, she was struck by just how many people sympathized with Vasilis. The locals, they were very reluctant to talk to her, and the people who did talk they said really good things about both Vasilis and Nas. Apparently she encountered a man that was hitch hiking. They
decided to pick him up and they introduced themselves. They said that they were journalists, that they wanted to do a story on Costas, and the man turned around and said.
Vasilis is a good guy.
We we were classmates at the sixth primary school. He said, I don't believe he's a common criminal. He's helping people, and he pointed at the value that Costas brothers hadn't killed anybody.
Valia kept hearing stories like this. People told her that Jaaliocosta stole cars and returned them in mint condition with wads of cash on the passenger seat. Others have reported that he put young women through school, helped poor farmers pay off loans. One time he stole a farmer's tractor and returned it with the wagon filled with fresh hay. Others said that when he robbed banks, he tossed money out the window of his getaway car to the pedestrians.
It struck Valia that nobody had any real criticisms of this guy, I mean, with stories like that. Of course, Vassilis and his brother were celebrities here, but Valia noticed that nobody seemed to have first hand experience with all this generosity. Either it was always from a cousin's neighbor or a friend of a friend, which felt suspicious. And
also she couldn't really nail down the details. The stories are always a little vague, and when she pushed for more, it seemed like there was something they didn't want to say.
In the perier, It's a strange thing.
It was as if they were trying to protect the brothers and Vandigotta's feeling that they didn't want to say too much. They only wanted to say the best things about them. She would push back, but what do you think. You know, they've lived a life of hard crime, and they would always answer, I'm sure, but they've also been helping lots of the locals.
I don't know about you, but this made my ears perk up, Like why was everybody so tight lipped? Is it possible they knew where Vasilis was hiding? After all, this is his home turf. Those rugged mountains outside the city, they're the perfect place to hide if you know your way around. So is somebody watching out for Vasilis Palo Coostas. We asked Vali if she ever got to the bottom of it, but she said no. Every time she raised the question of his whereabouts, she always got the same answer.
Vasilis Palio Costas is untouchable.
They were talking to Valley about Robinhood Balo Costas, and they said, Vasilis is gone. The man knows the mountains, he knows how to hide, he knows how to disguise himself. He's brilliant, and no matter what happens, they will never find him.
Chapter three, The Artist's Apprentice. For the past fourteen years, Vasilis Palo Costas has been m i a, avoiding the spotlight and the Greek prison system. Some say he's in Athens, Others say he's hiding in the mountains of northern Greece. Still others suggest he's kicking back, sipping on Margarita's on one of the many far flung islands where Greeks go to disappear. It's all hearsay. Daphne and her team spent months pulling on threads, chasing internet leads and hitting dead ends,
but one name kept popping up. Of course, that's Samaras oh Cosa Samaras Yamara.
We interviewed dozens of people, handful more that spoke off the record, but many of them kept mentioning the name Samaras.
Coursta Samaras, also known as the Artist. Does the word artist ring a bell, well, you should costa. Samaras is the Artist, the criminal mastermind who was guarding the bank entrance at the top of this episode.
Samaras is a career criminal. He spent twenty one years in prison. He's seen the inside of twelve or thirteen different jails, and he's also a bona fide escape artist. He's escaped prison five different times.
George, another reporter on Daphne's team, dug deep into Samaras's background to find out why this guy is so important.
Turns out Samaras actually played quite a big part to Vasilis's origin story. Samaras is one of the main people that help Vasillis go from poor Mountain kit to one of Greece's most wanted criminals. And the trajectory is actually kind of funny because originally Samaras was actually friends with the older brother Nikos, but eventually he take Vasillis under his wing.
And this was when in the in the nineteen eighties.
Yeah, that's right, Vasillis was about twenty years old. And what's really interesting is that, you know, in addition to teaching him how to pick locks and steal cars, Samaras apparently taught Vasillis that the crime doesn't always need a victim. You know, that crimes can be done morally and that there can be this real honor amongst thieves in a sense. We wanted to learn more about this so called moral code to crime, so we track down somebody who wants
interview Samaras. An investigative journalist from Reporters United named Doloris jdro Janos or Cos Samarass told us cost Us Samaras obsessed with fighting any system that hurts the week and He told us that what struck him is how Samaras and the Palo Costas brothers were always thinking of things in moral terms, Like he gave us this example of a bank robbery and the fact that they're robbing a bank. They're not, you know, robbing the people. They're not stealing
grandma and grandpa's pension. They're stealing from the strong. And a lot of people would see that as a positive thing.
Okay, think about it. What have big, faceless corporate banks ever done for you except try to nickel and dime you with overdraft fees that don't make sense. A good old fashioned bank robbery is kind of a perfect crime. The banks are ensured the customer's personal accounts aren't touched, and meanwhile the execs are probably committing white collar crime literally as we speak. At least that's what Vasili Sin Samaras thought, and that's what made them such a good team.
They punched up up, never down. Besides, it wasn't just some of US's philosophy that impressed the Ladis. He was also blown away by someone Us' determination to be free, Like even when he got caught, he always found a way to break out. Oh, somebodras. I'd better this for this.
So Thoris loved the facts that Samaras never gave up. You'd expect that he commits a crime, gets caught, goes to jail, and it's over. But no, he never let the system or un arrest anyway get the better of him.
He just had this crazy never say die attitude, which obviously rubbed off on Vassilis. One time, some of us had just done a robbery and as he's racing away, he gets cornered on a rooftop with nowhere to jump. Caught, he ends up cuffed and taken down town. But just a few days later, some of us puts his natural charms to work. He befriends this prison guard and starts shooting the breeze with him. They even share a meal together,
grubbing on chicken. When Samaras looks down at his hands, where Greece has collected on his fingers.
Or go to samarasda idiot.
Samaras sees the opportunity. He asks the guard if he can go wash his hands, and he lets him go very calmly. Samaras goes into the bathroom and he heads out of the bathroom window, and he goes out, hops onto the roof terrace, looks around and heads to the stairs, and at some point there's this lady and she's shouting, hey, one of them is trying to get away police, but he just jumps off the stairs and makes a run
for it. Samaras hadn't even been in prison for more than a week, and he's already got his sight set on freedom. You know, he wants to get out. He's got this fire to be free.
And that's not even like one of the better Samaras stories. One time he broke out by digging through walls and hiding in the pits below vault toilets. Another time police were transferring him by truck and he chiseled a hole in the bottom of his holding cell while the truck was speeding down a highway like Looney Tune style. He just sawed his way onto the road and made a break for it. And after that escape, who do you think he called to come get him? That's right, his
young pupil Vasilis Palio Costas. For years, Samadas mentored Vasilis. He taught him everything he knew how to commit an ethical crime, one where no one got hurt how to plan a heist and get away when there was no exit in sight, and he taught him how to do it with flair. But long after these lessons were over, and long after the pair had parted ways, Vasilis paliokosa Us would one up his mentor, hatching the jail break that would make him a legend. Chapter four, A Great Escape.
Vasimply Spilio Costas is the legend he is today because his mentor, Costas Samaras, taught him the ropes. Together they perfected the art of the bank robbery. But here's the strange thing. When Samadas talked to journalist told hodro Janos, he was downright humble about his role.
He was actually surprisingly modest. He didn't take any credit to teaching Greece's most wanted man. He just indicated that there was this unbreakable bond between him and Vasilis. For Samaras, when you're living in a legal life, it doesn't really matter who teaches who, you know, what's more important is that the camaraderie lasts.
I mean, there's a phrase thickest thieves for a reason. After all those years of stick ups and escapes of course, he's not just gonna go and snitch on his boy. But the Laris wondered if it was something deeper than that, Like maybe there's something else some of us doesn't want to talk about, like how Vasili's escaped prison with more panache than anyone before him, how he secured his place
as Greece's greatest living folk hero. Because forget the bank robberies and the stories of his generosity, this is the part that no rider could make up. Vasilis Paliocostas has pulled off not one, but two of the most absolutely insane prison breaks of all time, and once you hear this story, it's easy to see why some of us might be just a little jealous of his pupil Cut to Athens, February two thousand and nine. Corridalos the biggest
maximum security prison in Greece. Corridaalos is Greece's Alcatraz. It's where the countries of most dangerous criminals are detained, and among them is Vasilis Paliocostas. He's been locked up for just a few weeks on trial for a pass that finally caught up to him. The verdict is coming soon, and he knows he's probably facing a life sentence. Vasilis is under heightened surveillance, kept in solitary with armed guards
and cameras monitoring his every move. Around three in the afternoon, the beat of helicopter blades creates this Inside the jail cells, a helicopter is hovering just above the roof of the prison, right on top of the roof covering the solitary confinement with a rope ladder drops from the chopper. People in nearby apartments lean out their windows to see. Some grab their cameras and start filming. Suddenly guards appear on the roof.
They start chasing after a shadowy figure scrambling up the rope ladder into the helicopter, and then the chopper begins to rise. The guards open fire, brace they're too late. The helicopter rises above the hail of bullets and keeps climbing. It reaches altitude, rotates northeast, speeds off towards downtown Athens, and then the prison yard erupts with shears. Every inmate knows who just escaped, and soon the world will.
Too feistinish sociality that the europo le Vai costas.
Vo escaping the Greek Alcatraz by helicopter is impressive, But the most incredible thing is this wasn't the first time.
Just two and a half years earlier, Vasilis Palio Costas had broken out of the exact same prison the exact same way. Whatever heightened security measures were in place, they weren't enough, because he managed to catch people off guard. It's like a magician who performs a trick, explains how he did it to the audience, then somehow does it again, astonishing everyone. On February twenty second, two thousand and nine, Vasilis Palio Costas disappeared into the sky. Since that afternoon,
fourteen years ago, nobody's seen him. The Greek police, Interpol, even the world's top intelligence agencies. None of them know where he's hiding, but that hasn't stopped them from looking. Because Vasilis Paliokostas is much more than a clever fugitive on the run. He humiliated the people who were supposed to keep him behind bars. He is widely considered a genuine threat to the rich and powerful. The authorities aren't gonna let that slide, and yet so many people are
rooting for him to stay free. Maybe even me. There's just something about a heroic outlaw getting one over the system, a living, breathing exception to the rule that the rich get richer. Maybe it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe we just need the fairy tale to come to life every once in a while. Either way, I want to go deeper. I want to get lost in the Greek mountains trying to find this guy. I want to
understand his motives, his instincts. But the first step has got to be with the man who inspired the Greek robinhood. We need to find his mentor the man they call the artist Kostas.
Some of us.
This season on The Good Thief. Would this have been a place that Panel Costas would come and hang out in these villages?
If you say anything bad about Polo Costas, they will kill you.
We went over to the embassy and there's this big, humongous six foot rocket smoldering.
One of the reactions is to look for in a robin hood. You put your hope in this robinhood.
It's brilliant and no matter what happens, they will never find him.
The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. It's hosted by me Miles Gray. Our executive producers are Mangesh Chatikadur Kosaslinos Oz Wollashan and Kate Osborne. From My Heart executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etor. We are so grateful to our partners at the Greek Podcast Project in Athens, without whom this show would not
be possible. That's executive producer Daphne Carnesis, field producers Christina Pilioni and George Miatis, and sound designer Nikos Sclavenitis, who edited and mixed this episode and provided the English voice of Kosa Samaras. Here in the US, Mary Phillips Sandy is our supervising producer and Shane McKeon is our producer. The show is written in research by Lucas Riley. Donya Suleman is our fact checker, sound design and final mixed
by Soundboard. This episode featured the voice of George I. Valiotis. There's gonna be a lot of great music in this series, and that's thanks to a Mom Baldi who wrote our theme song and Botany who composed additional music. If you want to hear more from them. We've put links in the show notes, or you can find them on your favorite music streaming service. Last, but not least, you want to thank Will Pearson, Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman, and John Mary Knapolis. Thanks so much for listening.