Woman Armed With Toy Gun Robs Bank To Recover Her Own Money

A desperate woman stormed into a bank in Lebanon armed with a toy gun to retrieve money from her account. According to Reuters, the woman was told she could only withdraw $200 a month in Lebanese pounds from her account due to tight currency restrictions enacted during an economic crisis that started in 2019.

The woman said she needed access to all of her money to help pay for her sister's cancer treatments.

"I had begged the branch manager before for my money, and I told him my sister was dying, didn't have much time left," Sali Hafez said in the interview, according to the Associated Press. "I reached a point where I had nothing else to lose."

Hafez said that she got so desperate that she considered selling her kidney at one point.

On Wednesday, Hafez had enough and, with a group of activists who call themselves Depositors' Outcry, went to the BLOM Bank branch in Beruit to demand her money.

The group poured gasoline around the bank and threatened to burn it down if Hafez didn't get her money. Eventually, the bank manager provided her with $13,000 of the $20,000 she had in savings.

While several of the activists were taken into custody, Hafez managed to escape and has gone into hiding. Hafez's bold actions have made her a hero in Lebanon as millions of people have been unable to access their money.

On the same day, another man in the town of Aley tried to rob a bank armed with an unloaded shotgun. He was unable to retrieve his money and was taken into custody. Last month, another man took hostages at a bank and held them for nearly seven hours. He was eventually detained but was released without charges after the bank dropped the issue.