Robbers loot Samsung phones and computers from Brazil factory

Police say gang carted off 40,000 finished products in trucks after hijacking bus bringing night shift to Campinas factory


Thieves haves raided a Samsung electronics factory in Brazil during the night shift, subduing workers and guards before making off with about US$6.3m worth of mobile phones and computers.


The gang of heavily armed men captured eight plant employees as they neared the factory in a company bus just before midnight, said civil police in São Paulo state.


They stole the workers' ID tags and took two of them with them as hostages as they entered the factory in the college town of Campinas. The remaining six employees were taken to an unknown location.


Once inside the gang overpowered security guards and spent more than three hours in the plant trucking out the electronics.


"They subdued the guards, took their weapons and their ammunition and told them to continue working as if nothing had happened," police Lieutenant Vitor Chaves told Globo television. Some workers were held captive in a separate area and others were told to hand over their phones so they wouldn't call the police.


In total police suspect that 20 robbers participated, carting out more than 40,000 finished products in seven trucks in the early hours of Monday. Samsung said it was still trying to find out how much money it had lost.


Investigators were looking at security video around the South Korean company's facility north of São Paulo to see if they could identify the thieves.


Samsung said in a statement that it was "very worried about the incident" but clarified that none of the employees were hurt. "We are fully co-operating with the ongoing police investigation and we will do our best to prevent this happening again," the statement said.


Police said the scale of the theft indicated thieves had insider help.


Campinas is known for its industrial parks where technology companies such as General Electric, Hewlett Packard and Dell have established some of their operations. But what is often called the Brazilian Silicon Valley has also seen a spike in cargo thefts – from 425 in 2012, to 657 in 2013.