Original subtitles

The Antwerp World Diamond Center.

It's got hundreds of millions of dollars

in gold, diamonds, jewelry, cash.

It's home to one of the world's

most impenetrable vaults.

Who would be crazy enough

to even think of attempting this?

But one criminal mastermind thinks he has

the right team to crack it.

These guys are the best of the best.

If he's right, they could pull off

the biggest diamond heist in history.

Five feet away from a vault door, that's insane.

Tensions are through the roof,

and he starts to crack under the pressure.

If anybody sees and notices his erratic behavior,

it's all over.

[energetic music]

The masterminds behind every great heist

see what most people don't.

Risking everything to pull off the score of a lifetime,

it takes a bold plan, the right team,

and the skill to stay one step ahead of the law.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

It's 2003, and a team of top-notch Italian thieves

is about to crack one of the world's

toughest diamond vaults.

Getting this far has taken two years

of practice and planning

that starts with infiltrating

the city's well-guarded Diamond Quarter.

♪ ♪

[upbeat swing music]

The Diamond Quarter is where 80% of the world's diamonds

will pass through at any one time.

It's a small town, a small industry,

but it's maybe $35 billion worth of merchandise a year

goes through there.

Security is very, very high.

Within the Diamond Quarter

is an even more protected section

called the Secure Antwerp Diamond Area,

or SADA.

It's got its own police station.

It's got bulletproof glass.

There's CCTV.

There's security patrols.

There's only two roads, one in and one out,

both of which have telescopic barriers

that would stop any cars coming in or leaving.

The amount of wealth in this area is staggering.

It is not uncommon to see people walking

through the streets with attaché cases

handcuffed to their wrists.

That security is why people choose

to do their business here.

♪ ♪

All that security exists for one reason,

to protect the Antwerp World Diamond Center.

♪ ♪

That is the jewel in the crown.

It's the largest building within SADA,

and it's the home to all of the biggest diamond

companies in the world.

All of them have an office there.

To gain access

to the Diamond Center building,

you have to provide an ID, and a computer

marks down the point of entry and the point of departure.

There are 27 cameras around the Diamond Center facilities,

and those are monitored by guards

all the time during business hours.

In fact, the Diamond Center is actually broken down,

much like a prison, into three blocks.

There's A block, B block, and C block.

And two stories below B block is the Diamond Center's vault.

Stored in the underground vault

in these safety deposit boxes is gold, gems, currency,

but especially diamonds.

That vault is supposedly impenetrable.

There's approximately ten levels of security

just to get in.

The vault is something of an engineering marvel.

It's got a 12-inch-thick steel door.

The vault door is around three tons,

and supposedly, it would take more than 12 hours

for a drill to go through it.

And it has a seismic sensor to it,

so if anybody starts

banging on the door with a sledgehammer

or starts drilling on the door, it sets off the alarm.

There is a combination lock on this vault.

There are four different numbers

that have to be entered, and each of those

goes between 0 and 99.

To put it into context, there's approximately

100 million different combinations.

And if those numbers aren't entered in perfectly,

the key can't actually go in because the numbers

actually create a channel that the key goes through.

This would have been a very long key

because this is a very thick door,

and they say that this was an unpickable lock.

On top of the door, there's magnetic sensors.

If they were to pop, the alarm would sound.

So even if anyone was to get through the locks

on the vault itself, if they tried to open the door,

the alarms are still gonna sound.

Once you open the massive steel door,

you've got light sensors.

You've got motion and heat sensors.

Even if you are able to overcome the CCTV cameras,

motion detectors, seismic monitors,

light detectors,

and you were to get inside the vault,

you're then presented with the safe deposit boxes,

which are each individually locked

with a very secure lock.

You've gotta ask yourself who would be crazy enough

to even think of attempting this.

[energetic music]

Leonardo Notarbartolo. He was born in Sicily

but raised in Turin.

His superpower is his charm,

and he's able to disarm you and make you feel

like you've been friends forever.

And then the second he walks out of the room,

you forget who you were talking to.

Notarbartolo has said that he was born to be a thief.

By the age of 19, he was already stealing

high-end sports cars.

[engine revving]

In the '70s, he moves from fast cars to diamonds.

He chooses diamonds specifically

because they're easy to carry, they're valuable,

and they're really difficult to trace.

And it turns out he has this ability

to design jewelry, really great jewelry.

♪ ♪

He sets up a few jewelry stores of his own

to provide himself some legitimacy

and create a lot of professional connections,

both legitimate and in the underworld.

And so at some point, one of Leonardo's jewelry stores

gets hit.

He loses a ton of jewelry and some of his designs.

I think he thought he would find a way

to recoup his losses.

This might have been the motivation

for the Antwerp Diamond Heist.

But robbing Antwerp's Diamond Center

is about more than just dollars and diamonds.

This is a legacy maker.

This is what will make him

the best thief in the world.

Of course, Notarbartolo can't simply

walk in and case the joint, so he turns to an old saying:

if you can't beat them, join 'em.

Leonardo actually goes to the Diamond Center itself,

posing as a diamond trader.

It's so bold.

When Leonardo walks into the building,

the crime essentially has begun.

♪ ♪

Notarbartolo creates a front company

called Damoros Preziosi.

He smooth-talks the woman

who is the manager of the building.

He seems likable enough.

She rents him an office for 700 bucks a month,

and the plan is in motion.

Nobody checked his criminal record,

which sounds a little bit strange in a diamond building,

but yet they allowed him to rent the office.

Because he was an official renter,

he was also entitled to rent a security box.

Free access in a building is priceless.

Any of the tenants that have boxes in the building

are able to take the elevator down to the vault floor.

Then the only thing standing between them and their boxes

is a wave to a camera.

The guards recognize you as a tenant,

they buzz you through the day gate,

and then you have access to your box...

and access to everybody else's box.

Seeing the security system in person is one thing.

Finding their flaws and figuring out

how to exploit them is another thing entirely.

He takes the outrageous step

of using a video camera to record

through a tiny hole in a bag that he carries on his person,

and he's using it to record all sorts of information

about the security of the Diamond Center,

including the vault itself.

There's an armed guard waiting

right outside the vault.

And he's got to be wondering

what's taking so long.

Leonardo is surely aware that whilst he

is trying to record,

that he is being watched himself.

If he's caught, he would be going straight to prison.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Italian jewel thief Leonardo Notarbartolo

has been casing the Antwerp Diamond Center

for the last eight months.

But now secretly recording the security features

inside the vault is attracting unwanted attention

from a guard.

That's a security feature he doesn't need to experience.

He's drawn the attention of the guards,

but he's leaning heavily on his greatest weapon,

which is his charm.

And this is gonna get him out of it.

With a clear picture of the vault's interior,

he returns to Turin to build a team.

Fortunately for Leonardo, his hometown

is known for its beautiful architecture

and its world-class thieves.

In the late '90s, the School of Turin was a name

that was given by the media

for a group of individuals who all worked together

to pull off crimes.

They're not an organized gang

in any certain way,

but they are loosely connected to each other

because of the skills that they have.

As Notarbartolo begins to build the team

that will help him commit his most ambitious crime yet,

he reaches out first to a man they call...

[dramatic musical sting]

The Monster.

Ferdinando Finotto, AKA The Monster.

He's named The Monster because he's monstrously good

at everything he does:

driving, electrician, or even providing some muscle.

Leonardo convinces The Monster that this is

not just an ordinary bank job.

"No, no, no, no," he says.

A job like this would provide financial security

for the rest of their lives if they could pull it off.

Notarbartolo has found his muscle,

but he knows that beating the complex security system

of this vault will require brains as well,

his own version of 007's Q.

♪ ♪

Elio D'Onorio, AKA The Genius.

He provides all the solutions

to the most complex security systems.

He even has his own security systems business,

so he can essentially hide in plain sight.

The Genius is going to be the point person

for anything that's technologically challenging

during this heist.

He can disable any alarm,

no matter how sophisticated it is.

So in the beginning, Leonardo travels from Turin

to Antwerp about once a month.

Notarbartolo is determined to keep a low profile

on his visits to the Diamond Center,

but his eyes and ears are always open

for any opportunity or weakness.

♪ ♪

He notices he is able to get into the safe

early in the morning, when it opens at 7:00,

so he can actually watch the guard open the safe

and whatever the procedure might be.

He also made it his business to be there

when they were closing the vault,

so he was allegedly the last customer.

And he noticed how the guard closed the door

and what he did.

He's also getting a glimpse of this key.

To make a working copy of the key,

you have to have the accurate spacing of cuts,

and each of those cuts has to be cut

to a very specific depth.

Forging this unique foot-long key

will be a challenge for the team's new locksmith,

known only as the King of Keys.

We know very little about him,

but what we do know for sure is that he is

an expert at making keys.

[dramatic music]

The plan is set for Valentine's Day weekend,

when the district is distracted

after its busiest time of the year.

The team has to sneak into the Diamond Center

after hours,

get past multiple alarms,

and defeat a massive vault door

that requires both a key and a combination.

After all that, there are still more sensors

just to get to the safe deposit boxes.

It won't be easy.

To succeed, they need more than skill and luck.

They need blueprints.

Leonardo reaches out

to the Diamond Center's manager

and says that he's looking at expanding his business,

and if he could get a floor plan,

you know, that would really be helpful.

And astonishingly,

they not only give him floor plans,

they give him the schematics for the vault.

By obtaining the blueprints,

the thieves are able to start looking at points of entry.

And they determine that one

of the parking garages in block C

is actually accessible from the main street

without having to go in through police checkpoints.

It's the perfect way around SADA's no-car policy.

12 weeks before the heist, Notarbartolo decides

they'll need a getaway driver, someone he trusts.

The last member of this crew that Leonardo brings on

is Pietro Tavano, AKA Speedy.

Not only is Pietro a lifelong friend of Leonardo,

but he also has

a pretty long rap sheet of his own.

With his crack team of thieves now assembled,

Notarbartolo continues to charm his way

into more and more restricted areas

of the Diamond Center.

He gets friendly with the guards

and learns their routines.

There is a monitoring feed, and that it goes on VHS tape.

But very often, nobody's watching these feeds.

He notices that the vault isn't

physically being observed by security staff at night.

This was a huge revelation for him.

Notarbartolo knows his heist must be a one-night job--

get in the building, get in the vault,

and get out with the diamonds, all in five hours.

The key is figuring out how to defeat

all ten layers of security without wasting precious time.

Five days before the heist,

Notarbartolo has a genius idea.

There is simply too much security

to try and overcome in a single night,

so some of this has to be done beforehand.

And that's where The Genius comes in.

♪ ♪

The Genius enters the building.

♪ ♪

He uses Notarbartolo's key card to scan himself in,

and he actually scans himself out

but doesn't leave the building.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

Now it's after hours.

The Genius can really get to work.

First, he covers the security cameras

outside the vault door.

Next, he goes and installs a security camera of his own

over the combination dial of the vault door

so that they can see what that combination is.

The king of thieves thinks he can also use this footage

to replicate the vault key.

Next, The Genius shows off the kind of skill

that earned him his nickname.

The magnetic sensor contains two components.

These two magnets touch each other

and create a magnetic field.

And if they're pulled apart, that magnetic field breaks,

and that instantly sends a distress signal

and locks everything down.

And so The Genius fabricated a specialized aluminum plate

with a couple of lips on it that actually hold

these two sensors next to each other.

This simple device allows The Genius

to unscrew the bolts

and remove the plates without interrupting

the magnetic field between them.

Next, he attaches double-sided tape

to the sensors themselves and cuts the bolts,

and this allows him to just stick the censors

back exactly where they were, giving the illusion

that they're still bolted into place.

But his work isn't done yet.

There's one more critical task the team's clever gadget guy

must accomplish.

There is a parking garage which needs to be used

for the group to come straight in

and down towards the vault.

But that garage

has an electronic buzzer

that needs to open the gate itself.

There are 12 possible toggle switches

that make for 1,000 different combinations.

The Genius has to find the correct frequency

to open that door.

The Genius, being The Genius, does it.

[intriguing jazz music]

Will The Genius's night

at the Diamond Center pay off?

The team won't know until the end of the heist.

Then, they'll either be rich or behind bars.

In the meantime, the last piece of preparation

falls to the guy who started it all, Leonardo Notarbartolo.

Leonardo still has a massive job to do,

and it involves the heat and motion sensor

that's inside the vault.

If that's activated, then clearly,

the alarm will be raised, and they will be caught.

So he needs to try and dole down its sensitivity

so that it can't actually detect

the humans are in there.

And he uses something that most of us

have probably got in our homes: a simple can of hairspray.

Notarbartolo has to be extremely careful doing this

because he's on camera, and if anybody sees

and notices this erratic behavior, it's all over.

It's the day before the heist,

and international jewel thief Leonardo Notarbartolo

takes on the riskiest part of his plan,

trying to disable a sensor inside the vault

during business hours.

He simply walks inside the vault

and gives the impression of stretching

because maybe he's a little bit tired

after a hard day in the office.

Whilst he stretches, he actually sprays the sensor.

♪ ♪

He does, you know, attract the attention of guards,

and now he's gotta pretend, you know,

that he was just fixing his hair.

He could talk his way out of almost any situation,

and that's undoubtedly what got him as far as it did.

[slow jazz music]

The night before the heist,

the gang all gather in Leonardo's apartment.

The Monster goes to a local Italian deli

and brings back some food,

including some pasta and some tomatoes and some salami.

And they're all going over the plans of everything,

how they're going to run through it,

and they're very amped up.

After more than two years of preparation,

two years of planning, two years of meetings,

two years of risking everything,

it all boils down to what happens

within the next 24 hours.

♪ ♪

Speedy drives the crew to the garage entrance

just outside the SADA.

All their exhaustive prep work

is about to be put to the test.

The heist begins now.

[dramatic music]

They make their way in through the garage

with the frequency that The Genius has obtained.

They're able to go right through the garage

and into the building.

By ordering locks that are used in the building,

these guys are able to take them apart,

and they're able to manufacture a universal key

that gives them access to a bunch of the doors.

Thanks to the blueprints they obtained,

they take the stairs

to the vault room

that allows them to bypass the cameras

and the elevator logs.

So far so good, but once they get to the vault foyer,

the real work begins.

They have just five hours to clean out the vault

and get clear of the building.

Although The Genius has done all this preparation,

we still don't know at this point

if it's gonna work.

The Genius takes the magnetic sensor

that's taped to the door and moves it to the wall.

If the two magnets stay together,

if you move them together, it does not trigger an alarm.

Now that's taken care of, and they can start working

on accessing the vault door.

It falls on The Monster to beat the first lock.

He must precisely enter the four double-digit numbers

to open the channel for the vault key.

There's 100 million possible combinations.

As for getting the combination

for the vault door,

the camera that The Genius put in place

five nights prior was able to actually see

the numbers being dialed in by the security guard.

This is the moment of truth for the King of Keys.

Were they able to use hidden camera footage

to make a counterfeit key?

Sadly, it seems his reign has come to an end.

His key fails, and the lock is not pickable.

But after more than two years of planning,

Notarbartolo is aware of one detail

that may save the heist from complete disaster.

♪ ♪

During his late-night reconnaissance missions,

Notarbartolo thinks that the guards

actually just keep the key to the vault

in a utility closet.

They're able to break into it easily with a crowbar,

and now they've got that key.

It's not a good practice

to leave this like this in a storeroom

five feet away from a vault door.

That's insane.

♪ ♪

Now that they've got the combination

and they've got the key,

they have to do one last thing

before they open the vault door,

and that's turn off the lights

so that they don't trip the light sensor

inside the vault.

We think it's likely that they even used

night vision goggles because they had to see

what was happening inside.

Because if they even put a flashlight on,

they'll set the light sensor off.

Finally, the door is open, but not so fast.

First, they must very carefully pry open

the day gate and slowly swing it open.

Then the tallest member of the crew,

at a snail's pace,

must tape over the light sensor

on the vault's ceiling.

Disabling the heat and motion sensor comes next.

The hairspray will diminish the sensitivity

of the heat sensor, but it won't do it indefinitely.

In fact, the gang estimate it would only give them

around three minutes before their body heat

would be enough to activate the sensor.

So they only had three minutes,

but they had to move very slowly.

And at this time, tensions are through the roof

because this is one of the most critical parts

of the entire heist.

So they use a telescoping rod with the Styrofoam plate,

but they have to be extremely delicate

in how they do it.

They have to do some very deep breathing,

because if that sensor is not completely covered,

it's going to trigger an alarm.

If they move too fast, it's gonna trigger an alarm.

If they sweat, it's gonna trigger an alarm.

[dramatic music]

After two years of reconnaissance ♪ ♪

and meticulous planning, the School of Turin has bested

one of the toughest vault doors on Earth.

But it's not time to celebrate yet.

Now the crucial next step.

To defeat the safe's sophisticated heat

and motion sensor depends on, well,

everyday kitchen supplies.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

They take a, like, a Swiffer mop,

and they stick a Styrofoam cube,

and they literally place it over the sensor.

Despite all the technology,

all the money that was spent on the security,

it was stuff you could buy from a supermarket

that enabled the robbers to get in.

♪ ♪

But now they have another challenge

on their hands.

There are 189 individual boxes.

Each of those have a lock and a combination.

Leonardo was able to figure out,

"Okay, how does this safe deposit mechanism work?"

He figured out that the doors had a weakness,

a plastic back plate.

So the gang put together a device

so that they could force these doors open.

They used a device called a nose puller

that fits right over the face plate

of the safe deposit box.

And then they screw it in, and with the tension,

they essentially are able to pop it off

like you're pulling out a cork in a wine bottle.

It would have been crack, crack, crack

with the locked case snapping.

And they're finding cash, currency, jewelry

from individual owners.

But also, there are boxes there that belong

to private corporations.

These are the loose diamonds.

I mean, just an untold wealth of diamonds.

They're grabbing what they can,

stuffing it into bags.

The weight of the diamonds alone

are estimated to be around the same weight

as a microwave oven.

They opened 109 of the safe deposit boxes.

The heist was so enormous

that the robbers actually discarded

a bunch of jewelry on the floor

because they couldn't take everything.

After they pulled off the heist of the century,

they need to get rid of the evidence.

And as they make their way back up to the ground floor,

one of the men picks the lock for the security office

and actually just takes the tapes out of the VCRs.

They find every single security tape

for the last week and remove them

and take the tapes with them.

With daylight fast approaching,

the team slips silently through the garage,

loaded down with hundreds of millions in loot.

And the Diamond Quarter is none the wiser.

When the gang finally get back to Leonardo's apartment,

they would surely be feeling

a mixture of joy, of jubilation,

of fear, of apprehension, all these emotions surely

running through their minds.

They haven't slept in nearly two days,

but they've got hundreds of millions of dollars

in gold, diamonds, jewelry, and cash.

They start a process that's known as the slaughter,

where they start dividing up some of the loot

and trying to figure out, "Okay, what evidence do

we have to get rid of?"

It's the perfect crime, but they're smart enough

to know one day, the police will come into this apartment

and check it out.

So they were very meticulous about taking

all their garbage with them.

They're also trying

to very quickly clean the apartment

as thoroughly as possible,

because they're not safe in Belgium.

They know that Italy does not have

an extradition treaty with Belgium.

So if you commit a crime in Belgium

and you are residing in Italy, you can't be brought back

to Belgium to be tried for it.

The job is not done yet.

They need to put as much distance

between them and Antwerp as humanly possible.

[upbeat jazz music]

The gang exits the apartment, thrilled

to be leaving Antwerp's nearly empty diamond vault

in their rearview mirror.

Notarbartolo and Tavano load the car

with their share of the loot plus the evidence

they need to dump.

They drive south, gunning for the safety

of the Italian border.

But Speedy, well, he can't quite shake

the feeling that there's something else

in the rearview mirror.

They have in their car all of the evidence,

which has to be just harrowing to drive, like,

with that in your back seat.

And Tavano starts to crack under the pressure.

Speedy just wants to get rid of everything.

He doesn't care where he does it.

He just wants to get rid of it right now.

They're gonna pull off the side of the road

into a wooded area, and Leonardo

is going to find the best place

to burn this evidence.

He finds a little shed next to a pond

and was like, "We can do it here."

♪ ♪

But when he gets back to his car,

he's horrified, because Speedy is just

dumping trash out of the bag.

That is the point where Leonardo realizes

this is, in fact, far from over.

[dramatic music]

Just 30 minutes south of Antwerp,

driving a car full of evidence,

Leonardo Notarbartolo's old friend loses his cool.

After pulling off a perfectly executed heist,

Speedy could be throwing it all away.

When Leonardo comes back and he sees Speedy

just throwing trash everywhere,

it just becomes too much.

There's the tapes pulled out of the surveillance cassettes

hanging from the trees.

There's documents all over the ground.

The only thing that Leonardo can do

is just help spread it out even more.

And by the time anyone would stumble across it,

it'll have been deteriorated anyway.

They just keep driving.

The two man make it back to Turin in one piece,

though their friendship is probably broken.

For the moment, though, Notarbartolo isn't worried

about his relationships.

He is ecstatic.

They got away with it.

Meanwhile, 650 miles away, the Diamond Center

is discovering the impenetrable vault

has been cracked wide open.

The following Monday after the heist,

one of the concierges-- he walks into the vault,

and he sees bags and diamonds and jewels on the floor.

The security at the Diamond Center

describe it as looking like a bomb has gone off.

The building security immediately calls

the SADA's specialized unit, the Diamond Police.

These guys are the best of the best when it comes

to crimes of this nature.

Their entire job is just catching diamond thieves.

Once they arrive on the scene, they immediately think

it's an inside job.

Every layer of defense in this vault

has been compromised.

And then they go to look at the tapes,

and the tapes are gone.

The investigators estimate that about $100 million,

on the low end, was stolen.

Due to the nature of safety deposit boxes

and the fact that a lot of times,

people keep things in there that they don't want

other people to know about, the real value

is probably much higher.

In today's dollars, it could be

over half a billion dollars.

Around the same time, just outside the city of Brussels,

a retiree named August Van Camp is taking

a stroll through a pristine patch of forest.

He loves to go out in nature and do his nature walks

in the morning, but people have been throwing

garbage out there daily.

And he's calling the police,

saying people are throwing garbage again,

and they're like, "Okay, Mr. Van Camp.

We'll get it cleaned up."

So on this day, he sees garbage again,

and he's like, "These damn kids."

But as he starts to look closer,

he sees papers that say Antwerp Diamond Center.

And his wife had told him that there was a robbery

in the Diamond Center in Antwerp,

and the rest, as they say, is history.

♪ ♪

As the police start going through the trash

that is discovered on the side of the road,

they're amazed at what they find.

The investigators find security footage

from the Diamond Center.

They take these tapes, and they send them to Sony,

but the tapes are so destroyed, there's no usable evidence.

The investigators also find in this debris

little emeralds that are called pointers.

Pointers are the smaller accent gems

around the main stone in a piece of jewelry.

It's easy to let a few slip through your fingers.

There's a business card for The Genius himself

and a fake work order that he created

for Notarbartolo's office.

They also find a half-eaten salami sandwich.

The fake work order for Notarbartolo's company

causes the Diamond Police to take

a hard look at its owner.

In all the years that he was there,

he never did any business.

There is no record of him transacting any business

in the Diamond Center.

And of all the safe deposit boxes

that were opened in the safe, his was not.

The Diamond Police are convinced he has something

to do with the crime, but all they have

is circumstantial evidence.

And back in Turin, he's untouchable

by the Belgian authorities.

In 2003, there is no extradition treaty

between Italy and Belgium,

so they are essentially scot free.

But then, less than a week later,

a very confident Leonardo Notarbartolo

decides it's safe to return to Antwerp

to tie up a few loose ends.

Five days later, he comes back to the Diamond Center,

thinking he's in the clear.

Nobody knows it's him.

He needs to vacate his Antwerp apartment,

and thinking it's the best cover

to keep his routine,

he makes one more trip to the Diamond Center.

Notarbartolo arrives back at the Diamond Center

because he wants to use his badge

to create an electronic record that he was there.

He goes up to his office, and after hanging out

for a little bit, he starts to try to leave

so that he could badge out.

But he's identified by the building manager,

and the manager basically has to stall for time

until the Diamond Police can arrive.

He's leaning heavily on his greatest weapon,

which is his charm.

And he's just trying to play it cool

because at this point,

he doesn't know that they know.

So when Notarbartolo sees the police,

his heart must have just sunk to the floor.

He realizes that he was the one being played.

After a perfectly executed heist

and a near-perfect getaway,

Leonardo Notarbartolo returns

to the scene of the crime, where he's confronted

by the Diamond Police.

He's gotta be feeling the, you know,

the rope tightening around him.

They start asking him questions.

They're asking him where his apartment was,

because he had rented his office in cash

and never listed an address.

Notarbartolo tries to stall because his wife and friend

are still cleaning out the apartment,

so he's trying to buy them time.

He draws it out as long as he can,

but eventually has to say where his apartment is.

While police grill their prime suspect,

another detachment races to his apartment.

They actually see his wife and his friend

pulling a carpet down the stairs of the apartment.

They immediately seize it.

Investigators search the flat and find

three really important clues.

They find the receipt for the salami sandwich

that they found along the roadway.

They find a SIM card for one of the burner phones

the crew used during the heist.

And while these are burner phones,

they didn't have names, they did have phone numbers

and geolocations and exact time stamps

for all of the calls placed during the heist.

And then they find emerald pointers

embedded in the carpet,

which they then match

to the emerald pointers

they found along the highway.

That same day, with Notarbartolo

in custody in Antwerp, Italian investigators raid his home

in Turin, under the pretense that there

may be illegal weapons on the premises.

In a safe, they find 17 diamonds

that are in blister packs.

They also find a diamond in an envelope

with a serial number that is an exact match

to a diamond that was reported stolen in the diamond heist.

And that has Notarbartolo dead to rights.

Unfortunately, their warrant only covered weapons,

and so they weren't able to seize any of that.

And that was the last time that law enforcement would see

any of the loot ever again.

With the evidence from Antwerp and Turin,

Notarbartolo is arrested.

An ironclad case is built against him,

but he refuses to rat out his accomplices.

Even so, investigators are able to follow the clues.

The Genius is linked to the crime

because his business card was found amongst the trash.

The Monster--he's actually linked to the crime

through the receipt for the salami sandwich.

Using that receipt with a time stamp,

they're able to go through and see

the security camera footage.

And there's the unmistakable silhouette

of The Monster purchasing a meat platter.

Speedy's linked to the crime because his details

are all over the mobile phone SIM card.

In addition, all of the men involved in the crime

left behind DNA evidence either in the vault,

in the trash that was recovered,

or in Notarbartolo's apartment.

The King of Keys has never been identified.

But DNA analysis from the crime scene

indicate that there is another person

that has not been brought to justice.

All four men are tried and found guilty,

but their sentences, by American standards,

are a slap on the wrist.

In Belgium, a nonviolent theft,

which this was,

the maximum sentence is five years.

Now, that's five years whether you've stolen a loaf of bread

or millions and millions of dollars' worth of diamonds.

Three of those people served less than six months.

Leonardo was released after four years,

but then violated his parole and was then put back in jail

for an extra two years.

By 2009, everyone involved in this heist

is released from prison on good behavior.

The reason that we are all captivated

by the Antwerp Diamond Heist is,

they actually got away with it.

Several people served some prison sentence,

but nobody has recovered the hundreds of millions

of dollars of diamonds.

And to this day, we are unlikely to ever really know

where they went.

♪ ♪

Now, I'm not sure what you think,

but I suspect there are a lot of people out there

who would think six months in prison

would be worth it to get away with the heist of the century.

Pssh.

We may never know where nearly half a billion dollars of gems

went, but thanks to a smooth operator,

a bona fide genius,

a king, and a monster,

the Antwerp World Diamond Center robbery

definitely ranks as one of history's greatest heists.

♪ ♪

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