There were many good reasons not to attempt a robbery in the underground vault of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre.
The fact that it was two floors down and behind a foot-deep steel door with a magnetic security alarm, two-part master key and a second lock with a million possible combinations.
That, once inside, there were movement, heat and light sensors galore to navigate. Video cameras everywhere. Oh yes, and honeycombed along the vault walls were 189 brushed metal safe deposit boxes, all locked and each needing its own key and three-part combination code.
On top of all that, with a staff of live-in guards, the Diamond Centre office block was the most heavily protected building in the Belgian city’s diamond district.
Which, in turn, was festooned with more than 50 cameras, barriers, security systems and its own police force. And no wonder, given merchants in those three streets traded goods worth up to $200million a day. Even Hollywood’s Ocean’s Eleven crew would have thought better of it.
But on February 15, 2003, Leonardo Notarbartolo, along with three others from the School Of Turin criminal gang – Speedy (Pietro Tavano), The Monster (Ferdinando Finotto) and The Genius (Elio D’Onorio) helped by The Key Master, the best locksmith and key maker in the business, who has never been identified – ransacked the deposit boxes, stealing up to $500 million worth of diamonds, cash, gold and jewellery, and fled.
No alarms sounded. No violence was used. No one was hurt. It was the biggest and most outrageous heist of the century and made headlines around the world.
Their ingenuity, planning and extreme resourcefulness – using household items such as mops, hairspray and black gaffer tape to disable key parts of the state of the art security system – was more preposterous than any film.
So it almost seemed a shame when, within weeks and, ridiculously – thanks to the DNA on a half-eaten salami sandwich – all bar The Key Master were caught and jailed. Ever since, there have been books, documentaries and articles on the heist, but questions have remained. How did they crack the combination code? And who was the ultimate mastermind?
How many others got away? Who was The Key Master? What happened to all the loot, worth up to half a billion dollars and never seen again?
And now, 22 years later, it seems we’ve finally got some answers, thanks to an extraordinary interview with Notarbartolo – the surprisingly charming thief at the centre of it all who came from Piedmont and loved good food, his wife and family, but spent three years painstakingly preparing for the heist.
He rented a fifth floor office inside the Diamond Centre – which, astonishingly, never checked his credentials – as well as a safety deposit box in the basement vault. He lived in a modest flat nearby and blended into the diamond community, getting to know the back office staff, monitoring the myriad security systems and always planning, planning, planning. The revelations are part of an excellent new Netflix programme – Stolen: Heist Of The Century – from Mark Lewis, the brains behind the streamer’s hits Don’t F**k With Cats and Vatican Girl.
Stolen, which airs next Friday, also features three members of the Federal Police’s 22-strong Diamond Squad who handled the investigation. And who all sit scratching their chins in disbelief as Notarbartolo – now grey but still twinkly – takes us, step by step, minute by minute, through how they did it.
Revealing how they disabled the externally monitored magnetic security system on the vault door. How they cracked the code with a teeny video camera. And how the team had accessed this supposedly secure building more than 30 times in the run up to the heist. ‘They were in and out of the place like a Swiss cheese!’ he says.
And, ultimately, how they got caught out by a mistake so stupid that it beggars belief. In fact, quite a lot of it beggars belief.
Including Notarbartolo’s assertion that the real mastermind was not him, but a shadowy character called Alessandro – who has never been identified. And that Alessandro insisted that Notarbartolo – who knew the building best – remain outside in the car as a lookout throughout the robbery.
But for now let’s go back to Saturday February 15, 2003, Valentine’s weekend in Antwerp.
The monthly diamond shipment from De Beers (the British-South African company that made Meghan’s engagement ring) had just arrived. The company was also sponsoring The De Beers Diamond Games, a professional women’s tennis tournament attended by the great and the good of the diamond world, all keen to see Serena Williams battle it out to win a diamond-encrusted gold racquet. As a result, the world’s diamond capital could not have been more awash with gems.
Most were in the Diamond Centre’s 27ft by 28ft vault, known as the most secure in the world.
To get to their prize the gang, wearing gloves and masks, entered the building in the dead of night via the ladder through the first-floor window (not through the garage as was always assumed), and took the lift down to the basement.
Popping a couple of crumpled bin liners over the security cameras in the lobby outside the vault, they went to a storeroom to retrieve a video recorder hidden in a fire extinguisher.
According to Notarbartolo, this was linked to a tiny camera that had been hidden in a light hanging above the combination lock on the vault door. Standing in front of the vault just before midnight, they watched the film, which showed the combination used the night before (it was changed once a week) and, hey presto, code cracked.
Which left the two-part key and the magnetic security seal on the vault door. The key was potentially troublesome as it was made of two parts that slotted together and stored separately – so, apparently, The Key Master had fashioned a complex replica, working from video and photographs.
But as luck would have it, sloppy guards had left the key intact and hanging in the storeroom, so it seems they just used that (though Notarbartolo is a bit woolly on this point). Meanwhile, the magnetic alarm – which would sound off-site if breached – had been disabled days before by a team member posing as a tradesman.
So with all systems overridden, the vault door swung open, leaving an inner gate, which they propped open with a tub of paint and got to work disabling the sensors inside the vault: the light with a single strip of black gaffer tape while the heat sensor was neutralised with a shield made of polystyrene that absorbed heat. Notarbartolo had already deactivated the movement sensor a couple of days before with a liberal squirt of hairspray during a routine visit to the vault.
And they didn’t bother about the video cameras, because no one watched the feed live – so they could swipe the tapes from the deserted security office on the way out.
Which left the 189 safe deposit boxes. But no need to bother with Each with their keys and number combinations – they popped open 123 of the boxes with a tool that looked like a giant steel corkscrew, putting pressure on the locks until they burst, emptying the contents on the floor.
Then they rammed as many diamonds, emeralds, gold bars and millions of dollars in cash into their bags as they could, before making their way back out – up the lift, along the corridors, a quick stop to steal the relevant video tapes and down the ladder. By six in the morning they were all back in Notarbartolo’s seventh floor flat, first gaping at their loot, then climbing up onto the roof to listen. No alarms. No sirens.
‘We felt so proud for doing something so strong and powerful,’ says Notarbartolo.
No one realised there had been a robbery until the Monday morning when security staff found the vault door open and the floor littered with diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, empty jewellery boxes, briefcases, Rolex watches, gilded bond notes, even a gold bar. They hadn’t even bothered to take all of it. Naturally, the raid caused a massive furore and some very red faces in the Diamond District. This was a building which prided itself as Antwerp’s Fort Knox and it had been breached by a gang wielding extendable mops and a can of hairspray.
In many ways it seemed the perfect crime.
Apparently impossible. No one was hurt. An awful lot of insurance claims. And no way of ever really estimating how much had been stolen.
Though not everyone got their money back. One box holder lost a million dollars in cash alone. Family heirlooms were gone. A diamond dealer called Emmanuel Frisch had all his assets wiped out. Because the vault was supposedly so secure, many had not bothered with insurance on top.
Meanwhile, the diamond police were full of grudging admiration.
‘I was very impressed,’ says former commander Agim de Bruycker. ‘It was flawlessly executed.’
And also daunted at how they’d ever solve it. As it turned out, they were only able to crack it because, after all that meticulous planning, the robbers then made a series of almost childlike errors.
Firstly, with the rubbish from the flat. According to Notarbartolo, instead of burning it in a remote location, as planned, he and another man dumped it in a hurry in the Floordambos Woods 40 miles south of Antwerp.
Which, sadly for them, was patrolled by an anti-litter fanatic called August and his spaniel, Luki. August, a farmer, found the bags the very next day, put two and two together after all the news reports and called the police.
They diligently sifted through it, finding everything from diamond wrappers to jewel bags, empty video tape boxes, bits of safe-breaking tools, Sim card records that pinpointed locations, and food – most notably that half-eaten salami sandwich which was a gift to the DNA testers.
Also dotted among the haul were torn-up bits of correspondence addressed to Notarbartolo’s office, which seemed odd because his safe deposit box, number 149, had not been opened.
Notarbartolo’s second mistake was to return to Antwerp, where he planned to avoid suspicion by continuing life in his office in the Diamond Centre. This time his supportive wife came, to give his flat a spring clean. ‘My wife is obsessed with cleaning apartments,’ he beams. ‘It’s in her nature.’
Sadly for him, this time she didn’t clean quite quickly enough.
After arresting him, the police took him to the flat just in time to find his wife and a couple of friends emerging into the night with a red carpet still studded with tiny emeralds that matched those found in the wood.
Inside were dirty glasses, plates and toothbrushes, all bristling with DNA that linked Notarbartolo to the half-eaten sandwich found in the woods. ‘I do love a salami sandwich,’ he says with a glint. So off he went to prison. He was given 10 years and was out in six. The others got five each.
And you know you shouldn’t, but it’s hard not to warm to him, just a bit. Or giggle when we learn that the police found hundreds of metres of discarded video tape and, in great excitement, gathered the full team to watch what really went on in the vault – only to discover it was a porn film. ‘I’ve never been so disappointed in a porn movie as I was then,’ says one of the police squad ruefully.
There’s no doubt that it’s a great story and it would make a brilliant feature film.
But is any of this new stuff more believable than previous accounts? The police certainly think the camera story is ‘bulls***’ and insist very firmly that, back then, the camera battery would never have lasted long enough. They also don’t swallow the ladder account. A cleverly adapted allen key had been found at the time by the access door from the garage – but why on earth lie about it?
And surely no one in their right mind would believe in the existence of a shadowy mastermind called Alessandro, who no one has ever heard of.
But perhaps the most unbelievable thing is Notarbartolo’s assertion – looking straight at the camera with his twinkly blue eyes – that he never made any money out of the heist. ‘I got nothing. I never got a penny from anyone.’
Those De Beers diamonds and jewels and all that cash would have been sold on in days, hours even, and were worth hundreds of millions. Only a single diamond from the haul has ever been recovered.
But he’s sticking to his story, so perhaps we’ll never know.
Though maybe one day, someone will spot him, or his very loyal wife – or perhaps, more likely, one of his children – roaring around Turin in a brand new Ferrari.
Stolen: Heist Of The Century airs on Netflix on August 8
