The Greek Robin Hood Who Kidnapped Billionaires and Escaped Prison in a Helicopter

In the mountains of Thessaly, Greece, lived the klephts—mountain bandits who retreated to the peaks in the 15th century to avoid Ottoman rule. They robbed merchants, farmers, and travelers, but they also robbed tax collectors and Ottoman officials. After Greece won its independence in 1821, historians recast these bandits as freedom fighters, heroes of the resistance. The story of Vasilis Paleocostas—a man who grew up in those same mountains hearing those stories—raises the same question the klephts do: can you be both a criminal and a hero at the same time?

The Making of a Gentleman Thief

Vasilis Paleocostas was born in 1966 in Moschofyto, a village so remote and poor that winter snows cut it off from the world. His father herded goats, his mother worked rocky soil, and the family of five lived with dirt floors and no running water. His older brother Nikos had to carry him three miles to school on his shoulders through waist-deep snow. When Vasilis was a year old, a dictatorship seized power in Greece. For seven years, the secret police arrested thousands, torture was common, and you couldn't listen to the Beatles. The dictatorship fell in 1974, but the government that followed was riddled with corruption. Banks were controlled by oligarchs. Regular people got poorer while the rich got richer. Vasilis watched all of this and began asking the question that would defin