Worlds Biggest Diamond Heist | $100,000,000

It began with a vault that was said to be impenetrable. Ten layers of cutting-edge  security buried two floors underground in the heart of the world’s most heavily guarded diamond  district. It ended with 100 million dollars in diamonds, gold, and cash vanishing without a trace.  million in diamonds, gold, and cash vanishing without a trace. For decades, Hollywood has given us slick, impossible robberies in films like Ocean’s Twelve.

 But in February 2003,  a real-life crew of five men outsmarted one of the most secure facilities on Earth.  No alarms, no witnesses, no sign of forced entry. This is the true story of how a secretive gang  from Turin, Italy, armed with nerves of steel, an arsenal of criminal expertise, and a plan  two years in the making, pulled off the largest diamond heist in history and nearly got away with  it.

 What was the largest diamond theft in history? Where did this occur?  Who was involved?  What and how much was stolen?  What happened to the perpetrators and the stolen loot?  Hello, I’m Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome  to this episode of Forgotten History.

 Five men who became known as the School of Turin due to their living there as they planned  the robbery were a secretive group, even from each other, and they operated under the aliases  of Speedy, the Monster, the Genius, and the King of Keys.  The group was led by Leonardo Notobartolo, and they planned and executed the largest  theft of diamonds as well as gold in  history in Antwerp, Belgium.

 They plotted to carry out the theft in secret and silence in the diamond  district over the weekend of February 15th to 16th, where they stole at least $100 million  worth of diamonds, gold, other precious metals, jewelry, and cash. Notobartolo’s best friend,  Speedy, was in charge of updating Notarbartolo, who was the  lookout on the team’s progress throughout the course of the robbery, remaining in constant  contact with him by radio to ensure a swift escape.

 In breaking down the team individually,  it was claimed that Speedy was known for being an anxious person and that the rest of the team  deemed him a security liability  prior to conducting the heist. Notarbutolo stated that the monster was an expert lockpicker,  electrician, mechanic, and driver, who also boasted impressive physical strength,  the perfect man to trip alarm systems, as was the genius, who is also an expert in electronics and specialized in complex  alarm systems.

 The King of Keys, who was the oldest member of the group by many years, was a master locksmith  and key forger and was considered to be one of the best in the world.  They were hired to conduct the crime on behalf of a diamond dealer in Antwerp.  Nodar Batolo also claimed that he was approached by a dealer a few years prior to  the heist and was offered 100,000 euros, around $115,000, to rob the main vault in the Antwerp  Diamond Center. But how did they do it? The vault that housed the diamonds was situated two levels

 below the main floor. It was protected by 10 layers of security and intricate mechanisms,  including a vault lock with 100 million possible combinations. The building also had infrared heat  detectors, a seismic sensor, Doppler radar, and a magnetic field detector. The building itself had  a private security force and was located in the heavily guarded and monitored Antwerp Diamond District,  which had security cameras all along the exterior and on the streets.

 Amazingly,  Notar Bartolo’s team individually bypassed it step by step. He rented out an office in the  Diamond Center building at 911 Schupstraat in the Antwerp Diamond District since 2000.  This office provided him access to a safe  deposit box in the vault beneath the building.

 It took him over two years to prepare for  the robbery and, like in the film Oceans 12, he gathered a team of experts. Notar Batolo  also conducted detailed surveillance of the Diamond Center and the gang installed a small  camera above the vault to monitor the patrolling guards and record the vault’s combination, transmitting footage to  a storage device concealed in a fire extinguisher.

 But that was problematic because the vault’s  combination was changed on an irregular basis. The vault’s magnetic lock, which relied on a magnetic  field between two plates to trigger an alarm, if broken, was bypassed by carefully  removing the bottom portion of the screws securing the plates. During the heist, they used custom-made  aluminum plates to hold the magnetic plates together, preserving the magnetic field and  preventing the alarm from triggering as they opened the vault door. In preparation, the alleged diamond dealer had even built an exact replica of the vault,

 likely using stolen blueprints, allowing the crew to rehearse and perfect every step of  the break-in.  The vault replica allowed the burglars the time and opportunity to figure out the manydifferent ways to bypass the vault’s security systems, which included a combination  wheel, magnetic locks, and seismic light, heat, and motion detectors.

 To break into the Diamond  Center, Speedy, the Monster, the Genius, and the King of Keys all allegedly snuck in through a  small balcony on the building’s second floor. They also had to be wary of walking security guards who  could have spotted them during one of their patrols.

 The timing had to be wary of walking security guards who could have spotted them  during one of their patrols. The timing had to be perfect, but that was the easy part.  To bypass the heat sensor, the genius placed a homemade polyester shield right in front of the  detector to prevent it from picking up the team’s body heat, which, if detected, would send a silent  alarm to police.

 This allowed him to then disable a motion  alarm sensor on one of the balcony’s windows, allowing the gang to enter through the window  reaching the center while Notar Botolo waited nearby in a getaway car. The forensic investigation  showed that the robbers sprayed women’s hairspray on the vault’s heat detectors to temporarily  insulate them from sensing the room’s fluctuations  in temperature while the genius is believed to have used a custom-made slab of aluminum to  realign the vault’s magnetic sensor away from its door. They covered the vault’s light sensors with

 tape allowing them to bypass what was believed to be an impenetrable fortress of security.  The king of keys is believed to have  used a long two-part three-dimensional key to open the vault door along with its combination.  They turned off the lights when opening the vault door.

 Once inside the vault, they opened 109 out  of 189 safe deposit boxes and stole whatever they could in jewels and cash.  The fact that they did not bother to open all of the boxes despite having plenty of time indicated they already knew in advance which boxes were worth opening,  depending upon the contents, meaning one thing. This was an inside job.

 They left the building  before sunrise, entered the vehicle, and all rallied at Noto  Bartolo’s apartment before making their escape to Italy, but many questions still remained.  How they entered the Diamond Center proper is still a mystery to police who always believed  that the group entered through the center’s garage and made their way to the building’s  ground floor by forging a key, which would make sense.

 Antwerp Police Detective Patrick Pays, in a 2004 report from ABC News, said,  quote, It was unbelievable, really. It’s unimaginable that something like that happens because the buildings are secured quite well. The majority of the evidence leading to the gang  was found in a garbage bag thrown on the side of a highway near Brussels.

 Notar Batolo claimed that he and Speedy were driving along the E19 motorway north  of Brussels to get rid of an incriminating trash bag when Speedy had a panic attack. Instead of  burning the bag, Speedy threw the contents of the garbage around in a random dirt road off the side  of the highway to get the job over and done with quickly. But Speedy’s irresponsible action would be their doom.

 The property where the trash  was scattered belonged to August Van Camp, who called police to report the illegal dumping on  his property. During his interview, Notarbartolo admitted that he was concerned about the trash at  the time but ignored it thinking that nothing could link the trash to the group.  He and Speedy joined the others in Italy where they equally divided the valuables.

 But Notarbottolo should have been more concerned because during the analysis of the garbage,  police found an invoice with Notarbottolo’s name, a business card with the D’Onorio’s  aka the genius’ address, and phone, and several other random tidbits that led them to other culprits.  However, despite all of this, the case against all of the gang was circumstantial.

 There were no videos of the robbery, no fingerprints,  none of the stolen loot was in their possession, and the police had no eyewitnesses.  and loot was in their possession and the police had no eyewitnesses. The best they could hope for was that one of the gang members would take a plea deal and roll over on the others.

 As stated,  most of the loot was never recovered, yet despite the weak case against him, Noto Bartolo was  arrested in Antwerp just days later, brought to trial and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  In November 2007, Finotto, the man believed to be the  monster, was arrested in Italy and sentenced to five years in prison, but also on circumstantial  evidence.

 The genius, DiNorio, was extradited to Belgium in November 2007, where he was also tried  and sentenced to five years in prison. The last member captured was Tovano, the man thought to be Speedy.  He was arrested and sentenced also to five years in prison.  The King of Keys has never been identified nor apprehended.

Offers to all four members for early release to divulge his identity were not accepted,  and he still remains at large.  Some theories are that the men incarcerated may have  known who the King of Keys was but never divulged his name because they had an agreement. Another  theory was that the King of Keys was sheltering the loot until the others were released, so there  may be honor among thieves after all.

 Police are still trying to track down the stolen diamonds  which has proven difficult as they are easily transportable and sold commodities. As for Notarbartolo, he was released from prison on parole in 2009,  but in 2011, a European Interpol arrest warrant was issued for him after he was found to have  violated his parole conditions.

 One of these conditions was that he needed to compensate  the victims of the heist, which he never did.  As a consequence, he was arrested again in 2013 at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris  during a layover from the United States to Turin  and was made to serve the remainder of his prison sentence until 2017 when he was again released.  Nodar Batolo now lives with his wife in the countryside near Turin, Italy,  and runs a small business making wood pellets typically used for fireplaces.

 The whereabouts  of the other three is unknown. But what was the purpose of the theft? Nodar Batolo stated that  the heist was all part of an insurance scam for diamond dealers to file claims on some of their  lost gems and turn  an extra profit.  But police seem to disagree with that assertion, but it would explain how the robbers had such  detailed information on the internal layout of the diamond exchange and the highly complex  security system.

 One reason to doubt the insurance theory is due to the fact that the vault itself was  uninsured.  As the insurance company  realized, the security flaws would have never given it an insurance policy. There was actually  very little insurance money involved, casting doubt on Notarbartolo’s account.

 Though the  decades have passed, most of the stolen goods have never been recovered. The diamonds alone  were valued at roughly $100 million, not including the gold, cash, and other valuables taken from the security boxes.  What continues to baffle authorities is how the gang managed to breach the underground vault’s  sophisticated defenses, bypass its layered motion and heat sensors, and outwit its time lock.

 The exact method remains a mystery,  a secret the thieves took with them,  and one that may never be revealed.  Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History.  If you liked what you saw, please click like, share, and subscribe.  And if you would like to assist with the ever-increasing cost of production,  please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page. Please check out our merchandise store.