The Uncatchable Outlaw: Greece’s Helicopter-Riding Robin Hood

Vassilis Paleokostas, and his big brother Nikos, grew up shoeless in a Greek mountain village. When the boys moved to a city, they discovered a talent for robbery — and honed it with a mysterious criminal known locally as The Artist.

Before long, the trio were pulling off some of the most daring heists in European history. At a volatile time of financial crashes, leftwing guerrillas and political corruption, the brothers dove into a new gig: kidnapping billionaire business magnates.

What confounded cops the most was how Vassilis Paleokostas distributed his loot among the poor, and how the Greek people loved him for it. If authorities did catch up with the country’s Robin Hood, there wasn’t a prison in the land that could hold him for long. Cue decades of capers that could keep a Hollywood writers’ room busy for months.

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