Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend — but they’re a thief’s, too. Their small size, their liquidity, their extreme value and their virtual untraceability make them the ultimate underworld prize.
On Feb. 15, 2003, a ring of robbers known as “the School of Turin” pulled off the largest diamond heist of all time — breaking into the supposedly impregnable subterranean vault in the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with $128 million worth of diamonds, gold, gems and cash — without any violence.
Lawyer Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell, the author of “Blood Diamonds,” tells the story with the gripping pace of a true-crime “Ocean’s Eleven.”
The head of the crime outfit, the dashing Leonardo Notarbartolo, infiltrated Antwerp’s Diamond District — where some $200 million in diamonds are traded daily — by renting an office and posing as a lowly diamond merchant for two long years, while he cased the joint for weaknesses. Using a hidden camera, he recorded each nook and cranny of the fortress-like building — especially the vault, where 160 lock boxes contained untold wealth.
He sent the videos back to his cronies in Turin, a motley crew of Italian safe crackers, alarm experts, getaway drivers and muscle men who would wait patiently until the time was right. Although the Diamond Center was reputed to be the last word in security, laziness had made the guards complacent, and the School of Turin used that to their full advantage.
The thieves bypassed the motion alarm by spraying it with a film of hair spray, the heat detector by covering it with styrofoam, and the light sensor by masking it with electrical tape. Then they cracked almost every single lock box with a special tool they’d designed for that purpose. Diamonds, jewelery, cash, coins and precious gemstones in a galaxy of colors spilled out. They walked away with 100,000 carats of rough and polished diamonds, 33 pounds of pure gold, $1.5 million in cash, and piles of jewelry, all shoveled hastily in duffel bags.
Although the magnificent heist went off without a hitch, within days police zeroed in on the Turin group thanks to a pile of trash they left on the side of the road with a series of receipts in it that pointed to Notarbartolo. A vigilant groundskeeper saw the bags and called the cops after hearing news of the crime.
The men were all apprehended — but, amazingly, the loot was missing, and because of lack of evidence all the thieves are now out of prison. The authors believe the diamonds (most of which were uninsured) could have been laundered through legitimate businesses.
Selby says the School of Turin robbery may have been the perfect crime, and that the goods are likely back on the streets. “Anyone could be wearing one of the diamonds. Polished diamonds are very hard to trace, and in Antwerp they can change hands several times a day.”
Flawless
Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell
Union Square Press