Police parade criminals during a public sentence at the Xian Railway Station in Shaanxi Province, China, in this Jan. 14, 2006 photo. (Photo : Getty Images)
Police in central China’s Henan Province have arrested a real estate tycoon suspected of robbing a bank 16 years ago with four other suspects, the authorities announced on Tuesday.
The billionaire, Shi Erqun, was apprehended on Oct. 21 in Zhumadian City. Three other suspects were detained the same day, while the fourth suspect was seized on Oct. 24, said the Public Security Bureau of Zhengzhou City, the capital of Henan.
On Dec. 5, 1999, Shi and the other four suspects allegedly robbed a bank of 2.08 million yuan ($320,000) in cash.
They shot the bank's security guard in the head four times before cracking the bulletproof glass inside the branch with hammers, according to the Beijing Times.
The suspects then fled the bank with three bags of money, leaving another female bank employee injured during the heist.
The robbery shocked the nation, with the five suspects eluding capture until now.
The police encountered a lot of challenges in the investigation, as surveillance footage from the bank was unavailable and they were unable to find a match for the only footprint left at the crime scene, Zhengzhou police officer Shen Baocheng told the Global Times.
The police finally caught the suspects using advanced technology in early October.
The five suspects confessed that after leaving the bank, they crawled through a wall near a garbage station, and returned to their rented apartment on bikes.
They then returned to Zhumadian and fled to Yunnan Province in southwest China before they had a chance to split the money.
Police said that Shi, who was the alleged mastermind of the robbery, took most of the money from the robbery and used it to finance real estate projects in Zhumadian, earning him billions.
