The Diamond Heist of the Century, Antwerp, Belgium
These but a lot of them… $100 Million of them
On the morning of Monday, February 17th, 2003 a detective from the specialized diamond police known as the Diamond Squad called the alarm company for the Antwerp Diamond Center in Belgium.
He asks, “What is the status of the alarm?”
The operator checks the signal, confirms the alarm for the vault hasn’t been activated, and says, “The vault is secure.”
The detective looks around, seeing a hundred million dollars in diamonds, gold, and jewelry missing, and responds, “Then how is it that… I’m standing inside the vault?”
Today we’re looking at what is considered to be the heist of the century, one that would easily fit in the Ocean’s Eleven film franchise except this one took only five men to complete.
Part 1 - The Crew and the Vault
Leonardo Notarbartolo, widely considered an expert jewel thief had been conducting thefts all his life from a young age eventually leading a group of expert thieves, each proficient in different areas. They were known as the School of Turin.
Leonardo himself was charming, charismatic, and known to be able to talk people into doing anything he wanted. For him stealing and breaking into vaults wasn’t a job, it was a challenge. Around the year 2000 he found himself with a new challenge, could he break into the Antwerp Diamond Center vault in Belgium?
After a bit of surveillance he gathered a crew of four other men:
Pietro Tavano AKA Speedy is an overly anxious and paranoid friend of Leonardo. Fernando Finotto AKA The Monster; a tall muscular man who was an expert lock picker, electrician, mechanic, and driver. Elio D’Onorio AKA The Genius; is an alarm systems specialist. And finally, The King of Keys, real name unknown, is described as one of the best key forgers in the world.
For the next 18 months, they would prepare for a world-class theft. First, they would need access to the building for surveillance, being located in the Antwerp World Diamond Centre they couldn’t just walk around taking pictures.
Leonardo got around this by renting an office in the center and posing as a diamond merchant. With this disguise, he would make frequent visits to the Diamond Center building eventually getting a safety deposit box in the actual vault. Here he would continue making frequent visits taking pictures covertly with a pen camera.
The building and the vault contained state-of-the-art security. The door to the vault had a built-in seismic sensor, a combination dial, required a large foot-long key, and a magnetic plate with a sensor. Once the door was opened, a large metal grate had to be unlocked to access the inside of the vault. The vault itself had a light sensor, heat sensors, motion sensors, and of course cameras both in and outside of the vault.
Breaking in would take a lot of practice.
Part 2 - The Plan and Execution
From Leonardo’s frequent trips and his pictures of the vault, the men were able to construct an exact replica of the vault. For months they practiced getting in and out of the vault, and they counted the exact steps it takes to reach the sensors from the vault door, something they would need to know since they were going to have to work in the dark to avoid triggering the light sensors.
At some point, they were able to replace a fire extinguisher in the storage room near the vault with another fully functional fire extinguisher that housed electronics. These electronics picked up a signal from a small camera Leonardo was able to get into the room with the vault.
The camera was placed right across the vault door giving them a clear image of the key and combination, this allowed the King of Keys to make an exact replica.
Meanwhile, the Monster was creating a sensor bypass to disable the heat and motion sensors once they were inside the vault, of course, the problem would be getting into the vault without triggering them, to begin with. But Leonardo already had an idea, hair spray.
Their way into the room with the vault would be through an abandoned building that shared a private garden, from here, they could climb up through the balcony and go through the window.
The obstacle here was an infrared camera watching the balcony, this was The Genius’s task. He built a polyester shield to cover the group and also worked on creating a custom aluminum plate that would be used to bypass the magnetic sensor on the vault door.
The men practiced over and over for months to get the right steps in order and be able to determine where they were in the vault while in the dark. Finally on February 14th, 2003 the men were ready to put their plan into action.
During the day of Friday, February 14th, 2003 Leonardo took one last trip to his safe deposit box, while there he pulled out a small can of hairspray and in a quick practiced motion sprayed the motion and heat sensors. The guards were so used to his presence there, that they weren’t watching him and no one noticed him spraying the sensors.
The following night the men made their way to the diamond center, Leonardo stayed in the car as the getaway driver and monitored a police scanner while the other four, The Genius, The King of Keys, The Monster, and Speedy entered the abandoned building.
The Genius led the group through the building into the back where the garden was and lifted his polyester shield to hide them from the heat sensors. When he reached the sensor he placed the shield over it and signaled the rest to cross over into the balcony.
Through the window and down the stairwell they made it to the vault room. They placed black garbage bags over the cameras and turned on the lights. The Genius then began working on the magnetic plate of the vault door. He placed his makeshift aluminum plate on the magnetics and worked on the bolts.
Once he was done the King of Keys slid in the key and the Monster turned off the lights in order to avoid triggering the light sensor within the vault once they opened it. The Genius entered the combination and they opened the door. The King of Keys then picked the lock of the metal grate in the dark.
He slid open the grate and now The Monster was up. The hairspray Leonardo used the day before wouldn’t last long to mask their heat and motion, he had to work quickly. In the dark, he took eleven steps to the center of the vault, pushed open a panel in the ceiling, pulled out the wires of the sensors, stripped them, and connected them to his device, effectively rendering the sensors useless.
Speedy ran up the stairwell every so often to let Leonardo know what step they were on and Leonardo in turn let him know if the police scanner was picking up anything.
The Monster signaled the rest that it was safe to enter the vault and as a precaution, they placed a styrofoam box over the heat and motion sensor and black tape over the light sensor. Using a hand crank drill the men took turns opening each safe deposit box and began filling their black duffel bags.
By 5:30 am the men had to make their way out of the vault in order to be able to transfer everything into Leonardo’s car without being spotted. It took them an hour to transfer all their duffel bags through the buildings and into the car but in the end, no one saw a thing and they made out with around $100 million dollars worth of diamonds, gold, silver, jewels, and cash.
Their plan worked.
Part 3 - The Downfall
The men made their way to Leonardo’s apartment, emptied out the duffel bags, and divided the loot. Speedy and Leonardo’s last job was to burn the evidence. Originally the plan was to make their way to France and burn the evidence there but Speedy began having a panic attacks and recommended burning the evidence in a nearby forest.
Leonardo reluctantly agreed. They split the evidence and as Leonardo burned his evidence, Speedy had another panic attack and just dropped the evidence in the forest when he heard someone passing by. He ran back to Leonardo, explained what happened, and together they decided no one would ever find the evidence so it didn’t matter.
They were wrong.
On Monday, after the heist had been discovered, a hunter found the evidence in the forest. Seeing the envelopes from Antwerp Diamond Center he immediately called the police and they, in turn, immediately came.
Among the evidence were receipts for a surveillance system belonging to Leonardo Notarbatolo, a business card for Elio D’Onorio, the Genius, and a receipt for salami sandwiches that included a timestamp. When police traced back the timestamp in the deli they saw the man making the purchase was Ferdinando Finotto, the Monster.
With their suspects now known they looked at the phone records and found during the time of the heist Leonardo’s phone continuously kept in touch with Pietro Tavano, Speedy. It didn’t take long to arrest Leonardo especially since he was trying to keep up appearances at the Diamond Center to throw off suspicion, had he known the police were already suspecting him he might have left Belgium.
Leonardo never gave up on the four other men but the police eventually arrested Speedy, The Genius, and the Monster. The King of Keys was never identified. Leonardo was sentenced to 10 years in prison; the other 3 were sentenced to 5. The police found several diamonds and some of the stolen loot in their possession but it was never all recovered, tens of millions were lost.
Part 4 - A Possible Other Heist
While in prison Leonardo Notarbartolo was interviewed multiple times by Wired magazine, and the details of the heist he gave painted a different picture. In his account the idea to rob the Diamond Center wasn’t his, he and the rest of the men were hired to do it back in 2000 by an unknown diamond merchant.
And once they completed their mission, when at Leonardo’s apartment they discovered there wasn’t $100 million, there was only $20 million. Leonardo claims he was tricked into participating in an insurance scam. He believes the diamond merchant had his associates remove their diamonds and other valuables from the vault before the heist, then after the heist took place, they could claim their valuables were stolen and file insurance claims for it, essentially doubling their money.
Of course, that’s his story, the vault, turns out, wasn’t insured and only some of the money and diamonds were insured, making his story a little hard to believe.
In the end, after serving time in prison Leonardo and the rest of his crew still made out with estimated millions in diamonds, gold, silver, and jewels. So that’s the story of what became known as the Heist of the Century.
