Staging A Deadly Heist To Steal Thousands In Insurance | Daring Capers S2 EP7 | Wonder

[Music] when two respected businessmen with ties to english royalty fall victim to gem thieves [Music] it reveals a crime with more facets than anyone imagined [Music] new york city is a place where fortunes have been made and lost sometimes in an instant [Music] on march 2nd 1990 the front desk at new york's posh hallerin house hotel received a frantic call for help [Music] right up here two guests in room 1207 had been tied up and robbed at gunpoint their assailant had fired his gun at them before ransacking the room safe the victims darius guppy and benedict marsh were devastated as the proprietors of a fledgling gem business they'd flown all the way from london to new york to sell their entire inventory they had stored four and a half million dollars worth of rubies sapphires and emeralds in their room safe millions of dollars and now those jewels were gone all the police companies yes they are they're around thank you the victims were shaken but unheard of gentleman who was robbed earlier this policeman will support you out guppy and marsh were taken to the station while the nypd sealed the crime scene [Music] earlier approximately about 10 minutes ago um a pillow that appeared to have been used to muffle the sound of the shot lay next to the bed despite a thorough search of the crime scene new york police came away empty-handed the only fingerprints belonged to the victims [Music] as guppy and marsh each told police they had come to new york as entrepreneurs what was the first thing that happened well the first thing that happened was before leaving london they'd made appointments with several jewelry buyers hoping to sell their stones we talked on the telephone we've traveled a long way [Music] i guess we need to take a look at him [Music] marvelous the buyers were respectful and the meetings were friendly but they weren't interested in the stones after all their preparation the budding entrepreneurs weren't having much luck well that's fine if you want to do that okay but i'm just i'm just not interested right now all right thank you chad guppy told police that after their meetings they returned to their hotel room disappointed but not defeated make sure you order room service marsh put the gems in the room safe while guppy ordered sandwiches from room service [Music] it only took a few minutes for their lunch to arrive after that the pair kicked back to enjoy their meal and regroup [Music] just then they heard another knock at the door and insisted they hand over the key to the safe when marsh failed to respond one of the robbers fired a gun the shot barely missed his head i'm getting up the gunman once again demanded the keys to the same the frightened jewel merchants told the robbers where the key was my jackpot and the criminals help themselves to the safe just as quickly as they had arrived the robbers were gone [Music] the stunned victims struggled to their feet and made their way to the phone to call the front desk in retrospect do you think it was advisable detective raymond burke investigated the case i call this a pushing robbery um and a push and robbery uh is just that you'll get pushed into your residence in this case a hotel room 1990 was a high crime time for new york city we had a lot of street robberies including a lot of street robberies of jewel merchants never a push in into a hotel room or to a residence of a jewel merchant so that was very unusual police theorized that guppy and marsh had been targeted someone must have known they had the gems and followed them back to their hotel the nypd created a sketch of one of the robbers from the victim's description for the time being it was all they had to go on [Music] normally at the end of uh such an ordeal is sitting going through all these photographs you may have 20 30 photographs sitting in front of you left on the side and then we'll start doing a process of elimination and oh it can't be him because he's got brown eyes or it can't be him because he's got a scar and this guy didn't have a scar we had nothing to look at they were there was nobody there for either one of them police began to suspect the thieves were not local with four and a half million dollars in jewels at stake maybe the crooks had followed them all the way from england the nypd asked guppy and marsh to stay in new york for a few more days in case the police got a break [Music] but the initial investigation yielded few clues jeff edwards covered the story in britain for the daily mirror and after a couple of days the police said to gappy and and marsh look we're very sorry for what's happened to you um you come here as a visiting businessman coming to our city it's a terrible thing that's happened um we you know we'll let you know you're free to go days after the robbery darius guppy and benedict marsh returned home they left behind four and a half million dollars in gems and their dream of becoming successful entrepreneurs [Music] in new york the search for the two men who stole four and a half million dollars from benedict marsh and darius guppy continued [Music] nypd detective raymond burke knew it would be a difficult job after they leave you have the great sigh of relief that your complainants have finally left you know the office anyway you can go back to work and and in this case what that's going back over your crime scene photographs that's looking at your evidence and that's uh documenting the interviews that you've already done and that's going out to figure out what other interviews still have to be done police followed up on the only lead they had in brooklyn a man had been shot to death when he was mistaken for a jewel merchant police thought guppy and marsh might have been victims of this same robber if so they were lucky to be alive [Music] i want you to take a look at no one in the area recognized the man guppy and marsh described in the sketch police had very little to work with but burke remained confident the missing gems would lead them to the thieves this was going to break eventually you don't steal four and a half million dollars and nobody hears about it again those gemstones had to be sold um they were going to pop up somewhere or somebody was going to get arrested and he was going to immediately give up his buddy and that's the way most cases break detectives tried to force a break by visiting the gem buyers martian guppy met with prior to the robbery [Music] this composites none recognized the sketch of the suspect but they did remember the victims most jewelers remembered them coming in showing some stones weren't interested nothing that stood out too much except for one jeweler who remembered them because they were british and they didn't deal with many british merchants back in england darius guppy and benedict marsh tried to get their company back on its feet although their entire inventory of gemstones had been stolen they were insured through lloyds of london mr schwartz said it was relatively important normally an insurance company won't pay out an insurance claim immediately they want to see how the investigation progresses uh in case of fraud um in this case lloyd's uh told me they they would pay out immediately um to guppy and marsh because of who they were i asked who they were and they replied well darius guppy is very well known in england socialite and explained his great grandfather was whose grandfather was the explorer who discovered the fish and that marsha's father was an extremely wealthy man in great britain darius's great-grandfather discovered the fish that now bears his family name [Music] darius guppy was from one of england's finest families indeed the society pages were invented for men like guppy [Music] he came from a respected british lineage and had more than a passing acquaintance with lady diana in his days at eaton he'd become good friends with her brother charles spencer [Music] jeff edwards covered the royals for the daily mirror he had been the best man to earl spencer the brother of the princess of wales at his wedding so um he'd come very much into the public limelight because of that event he was one of the top one percent of british society he was a true almost a blue blood he was he was somebody who you would have expected to be a captain of industry a member of parliament possibly a member of the house of lords but instead darius chose to make a name for himself and start a business with his good friend benedict marsh a business that had nearly been destroyed by a new york robbery months later things were starting to look up their insurers had paid their claim in record time and their business was back in the black [Music] guppy and marsh felt optimistic for the first time in months they had no idea of the trouble that lay ahead [Music] one year after darius guppy and his partner were robbed in a new york hotel room the case would take a bizarre turn in march 1991 scotland yard detectives arrested a man named peter risden in an unrelated gem theft [Music] desperate to negotiate a reduced sentence risdon promised [Music] so he said to the detectives um look you know can i cut a deal here if i tell you about something else that i know about that i was involved in something very serious um you know maybe i can get the charges dropped to lesser ones or uh can get some help here so the police say well what is it you want to tell us risdon told police he ran a spy store that specialized in counter surveillance equipment miniature cameras and custom-built cases to conceal documents what are you saying exactly in 1988 two men walked into his store hey boys [Music] guppy and benedict marsh at the time india outlawed the importing of gold the young blue bloods had devised a scheme to smuggle gold into india and they needed false bottom cases to do it see the staff inside give it a good pull like i said this is all documents here you see that right now the idea was to sell it uh where i think on on the black market it could uh achieve quite high sums police were skeptical men like risdon ran in very different circles than the well-bred gem brokers in a hotel room that's right it was a fake one we were going with a gun tied him up still they looked more deeply into guppy's background [Music] when guppy started his gem dealing business he knew almost nothing about gems his father had lost a great deal of money in a bad business deal and guppy was desperate to find a way to make his own fortune [Applause] he attracted investors like marsha's father by using the government's business enterprise plan which gave tax breaks to investors in high-risk businesses and the volatile gem market was very high risk having its certification from the government under the business enterprise scheme they needed to show the company was trading and trading successfully and it wasn't uh at all and as a result of that they had a very large gap in their books to make up the gap martian guppy used the profits from their gold smuggling enterprise to purchase gemstones the extra cash ensured they always showed a profit the gold scheme proved to be a profitable but temporary solution rumors began to circulate india would soon allow gold to be imported legally guppy and marsh panicked police learned that when the smuggling money dried up they needed a new way to keep their company afloat risdon claimed darius guppy and benedict marsh hired him to help stage a gem heist in new york city he claimed he had no idea they would defraud lloyds of london out of millions [Music] scotland yard detectives contacted the nypd to learn that the gemstone robbery remained unsolved the british police came on the scene and suggested to the nypd that it wasn't robbery at all and the whole thing was a fake and they the nypd had in fact been taken as suckers intrigued detective burke brought resident to new york for further questioning so this was a setup from the whole beginning marsh guppy knew about the entire thing how much were you supposed to be cut in it was a flat face risden simply knew too much to be faking his story now scotland yard although having privy to some of the information on the case hadn't actually gone through our case uh our reports or our documents or even our photographs and so prior to anyone giving risen information i sat him down and asked him exactly what happened what he stated happened and to describe things and he went in complete detail down to the color the bed spreads in that room [Music] it seemed he was telling the truth [Music] police now knew the details of the entire scheme not only was the robbery bogus so were half the gems forged paperwork turned costume jewels into million-dollar gemstones based on the fraudulent appraisals and guppy's family reputation lloyd's of london insured them heavily yes he is [Music] after arriving in new york guppy and marsh met with the fifth avenue gem buyers all right i tell you what my partner will leave you our number and where we're staying and you can get the titles if you decide to change your mind well that's fine if you want to do that then they headed to the hotel [Music] risdon arrived around 2pm right on schedule you go wait in the bathroom after a lunch of sandwiches they launched their elaborate plan risdon could have simply tied them up and staged the robbery but guppy insisted that the whole charade be performed from start to finish they staged the room as a play and they acted out the play and it was it was a brilliant thing to do the purpose of this was in the event that the nypd polygraph them put them on a lie detector test that they could recall events actually as they happened and the polygraph would say they were telling the truth so they had risden go through the motions of a robbery knocking on the door saying room service opening the door forcing them on the beds and firing the gun into the bed um they thought this would negate any polygraph tests when the men returned to london they filed an insurance claim for nearly two million pounds jfk yes jfk but the caper wasn't finished get our business done the men had thrown away the fake gems the real ones were still hidden in a safety deposit box in new york the day after they received the insurance check they took the concorde back to manhattan retrieved the gems and returned to london the same day they quickly sold the gems increasing their take from the scam it was the perfect crime at least until risdon confessed in july 1991 guppy and marsh were arrested for fraud in england it was a crime of only a half a dozen key moves he knew that he could get false receipts for gemstones that were of a certain value showing that they were worth a lot more he was also certain that he was such a clever guy that uh by taking the stones first into the into the the gems market in new york he would create if you like an alibi for himself he would create witnesses who would say yes he was here and those stones were here thus we know the stones were in new york and then he also thought he was that the police were foolish they were easy meat that they would swallow any story he gave them on march 25 1993 darius guppy and benedict marsh were sentenced to five years for fraud marsh was released in 1995 after serving only two years guppy also served a fraction of his sentence spending three years in a minimum security prison he was released in 1996. peter risden avoided prosecution by cooperating with the authorities these were two young men who were not professional criminals at all they were ambitious young men who longed for adventure and on the wrong side of the tracks so an awful lot of what they did was very well conceived and carried out so well conceived that out of the estimated five million dollars the men smuggled and defrauded over an 18-month period less than a million has ever been recovered

Channel: Wonder

Views: 81,591

Keywords: British businessmen, Wonder, art thieves, bank robbers, con artists, crime analysis, crime conspiracy, crime spree, criminal minds, cunning criminals, forensic science techniques, gem theft, high-stakes heist, insurance fraud, investigations, law enforcement agencies, notorious criminals, real-life drama, thriller, thrilling escapades, true crime

Id: SKOCUyHbyZc

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020