'The Great Heist' aka 'El Robo Del Siglo' Ending Explained: How Chayo managed to be the last robber arrested?
Spoilers for 'The Great Heist' aka 'El Robo Del Siglo'
The six-part limited series titled 'The Great Heist' is a thrilling combination of 'Narcos' and 'Money Heist' even though it isn't a "faithful reproduction of reality." On October 16th and 17th in the year 1994, a group of thieves stole 24.072 billion pesos from the main vault of the Colombian Republic Bank - that would amount to 41 U.S. million dollars today. The heist, considered to be the "biggest in the paper currency in history" was called "the robbery of the century" by media during that time, and as of today only two robbers that were involved in that heist are still alive. Netflix' 'The Great Heist' may have added emotion to each character given them narratives that many watching would relate to, but managed to deliver a gripping series that we couldn't believe actually happened. With all the robbers eventually falling victim to their actions, we find out how Chayo who called himself Roberto Lozano and who's real name was Gilberto Torres managed to be the last one caught? To be honest, the heist would not have been possible if the people involved were not desperate for the money they needed - while some stole for greed, others stole for necessity - either way, desperation worked in their favor.
The people involved in the entirety of this well-planned crime involved Roberto Lozano aka Chayo (Andrés Parra), Vicente Morale (Juan Sebastián Calero) aka El Sardino, William Gonzales aka Boris, Jairo Molina Valencia (Christian Tappán) aka El Abogado (The Lawyer) and his wife Romy (Katherine Vélez), Jackie Atehortua (Marcela Benjumea) aka Mrs. K, Ulises Diaz, Wilmer Yidi, Areli Torres aka Maguiver, Richard Reina aka Estiven, Gabriel Herrera (Waldo Urrego) aka the Dragon, Jhon Jairo Acosta aka Goliath, and Lieutenant Jorge Luis Monroy and his partner Javier Nino.
Chayo, the original mastermind behind wanting to pull off a heist this big was told about this job by Boris. Weight down by huge debts owed to some every dangerous people, Chayo finds himself "drowning" and unable to provide for his family. With that, he decides to speak to Molina, an old partner he had last done a job (stealing) with over two years ago. That mission had gone astray when Molina had gotten shot twice leaving him cripple to the treatment of dialysis. In order to get information about the bank building and it's interior, Chayo asks Mrs. K, who he already owes money to, to front him as Molina, Mrs. K and Chayo meet Ulises Diaz in Valledupar. Chayo was able to pick up two important people - Mrs. K had the cash, and Chayo had the brains - to make sure this heist was a possibility. Through Ulises, they find out the only way they will be able to take the money is directly from the vault in the bunker of the Colombian bank building because the trucks bringing it in will be armed and guarded by the military. An important point to note here, the information given does nothing to help the trio set up a decent plan, and Mrs. K tells them that though she had the money, she had to borrow the cash amount from "the people" who we later find out is a high-end gangster named Kike.
Now, with their lives in danger, they decide to move forward with the plan and recruited their crew - Yidi a guard that works in the control room of the bank, Maguiver to disable the alarm that can only be done from inside the building, Estiven, a mechanic to help open the vault, Dragon and Goliath to melt the vault, and Lieutenant Jorge Luis Monroy to keep the guards busy and distracted so the crew could get in with a truck and equipment. While Chayo owned money and was in intense debt, he was able to only convince Molina to do be part of the heist through what we think was emotional manipulation. After getting access to Molina's medical records, Chayo found out that Molina was dying and bursts in his home telling him that he can buy his spot on the kidney transplant list with his cut after the job is done. Desperate and wanting to "try" before giving up on, Molina agreed as long as his wife Romy was okay with it. This way Chayo was able to build a crew that may not seem like much when looked at but were mostly young, desperate, and small-town thugs lured into committing the biggest heist in the world. Meanwhile, Chayo had managed to keep his wrongdoings away from his wife Carmen (Paula Castaño) and daughter Luisa (María Camila Zea) telling them that he was involved in jewelry deals - his job that he uses as a front.
After they find that that the guards that Yidi had promised were on their side had gotten sick and bailed out, they used public discomfort to start their well-planned heist. With Molina sick, he stayed at hotel Sinaita across from the bank executing the heist from a watchful distance. With Monroy distracting the guards during a shift change, Chayo was able to get into the bank with his comrades by posing as AC repairmen - Yidi had broken the AC and had gotten a manger from the bank to sign the maintenance order for it to be fixed. Even with Yidi's partner being suspicious that repairmen were working on Sundays, they still managed to get in with some coaxing, and from there on started a vaulting melting job that went on well into the next day. There were many tribulations even though Maguiver managed to disable the alarm - Molina was getting increasingly sick in the hotel room, the vault was not pure metal and was made of another unexpected allot confusing Dragon and his team, burning the vault inside caused smoke to leave the building (that was stopped through using all the fire extinguishers in the building) and the heist took way more than 6 hours because the vault just would not melt in time. Even though Chayo was extremely worried, the truth was that for each of the problems that arrived, he had a way to fix it, because his people were loyal to him and the mission. They were right to do so because every single one of them got their cut.
After the Heist was over, and through many struggles of moving large amounts of cash, Jean Carlo Peredes, the DA released the serial numbers of the notes that were missing since they weren't in circulation yet. The notes that took hours of intense dangerous activity to steal were now "monopoly money" because everyone that had them was considered to be an accessory to the crime. But, the cops weren't the ones closing in on the crew, it was Kike who wanted his money from Mrs. K back. Interestingly enough in this chase, Ulises lost his life, Mrs. K and her boyfriend lost their lives and so did Maguiver. When Chayo is threatened and taken to Kike, he gets lucky because the newspaper declared "New Measures: Stolen notes will be accepted." Yet again, as Kike tells Chayo, it wasn't his day. As for the cops, Dragon turned himself in after being exported by a cop named Miguel who happened to be Estiven's boyfriend, and so did Molina after he found out that a transplant couldn't save his life. Molina referred to himself as the "brains behind the greatest heist in the history of Colombia" - leaving Chayo with no responsibility to take up. While the ending of the series tells you the fate of the rest of the robbers, it took a whole three years before Chayo was found in an isolated home in the mountains where he revealed to cops that his real name was Gilberto Torres. He was the last of the robbers to be caught from the "the robbery of the century."
'The Great Heist' aka 'El Robo Del Siglo' is available to stream on Netflix.