The $100 Million Belgian Diamond Heist Explained

this video was made possible by dashlane manage your online security for free at - lang comm /r ll so here's a question for you what's the quickest way that you think you could earn one hundred million dollars in if you're an average American employee earning roughly forty five thousand dollars a year it'll take you two thousand two hundred and forty four years before you can make your 100 million or you could be Jeff Bezos and earn that much money about every 11 hours that you exist but if you don't have a huge company behind you to help you make that much money maybe you could earn that much in just one night the same way the leonardo notarbartolo and his gang did you rob one of the most securely fortified places in the world like you're in a movie and make off with over a hundred million dollars in diamonds although to be fair you may end up in jail for a long time if you get caught afterwards i heated so just listen and remember that stealing is bad the location that the crime took place in was right here a small three bollock sized area in downtown Antwerp in Belgium known as the Antwerp diamond district back in 2003 when the crime took place three billion dollars of diamond sales were made in just this tiny area and over eighty percent of all the world's rough diamonds will pass through here it's one of the densest concentrations of wealth anywhere in the world and that wealth is very securely guarded the district has its own dedicated police force provided by the Belgian government there are 63 video cameras providing 24-hour video surveillance and the entire perimeter can be shut off with steel cylinders that will block any vehicles from getting in or from leaving inside of the center of all of this already impressive security is a large building called the diamond center where a large portion of the district's diamond merchants work merchants rent out stores and offices inside of the building and also rent out safe-deposit boxes inside the building's vaults and it's inside of this vault where hundreds of millions of dollars worth of valuables are stashed but getting inside is obviously impossible right because it has ten layers of security that any crazy thief would have to somehow get through first of all the vault is located two stories underground beneath the building there's an external security camera outside of the door that's recording 24 hours a day a combination dial on the door with over 100 million different possible combinations a key lock with a very specific key that you need to insert a three tons solid steel door rated to withstand over 12 hours of continuous drilling but that wouldn't matter anyway because it also has a seismic sensor inside of it that would trigger an alarm the moment that it detected a drills vibration if the door is somehow opened there are two metal plates on the door and the wall that create a magnetic field but if the door gets opened that magnetic field will break which triggers another alarm then there's a steel grate behind that door that requires another key to open once you get past all of this you're inside but now if there's even more problems there's an internal security camera that's also recording 24 hours a day a light sensor little trigger an alarm if it detects any light like people turning on the switches or using flashlights and finally a heat and motion camera that'll trigger another alarm if it detects motion and arrays on the vaults temperature from somebody's body heat being inside of it but none of this deter notarbartolo from allegedly planning what has been called the greatest heist of the 21st century and this is how something impossible to break into was well broken into with supplies that you could basically get at Walmart beginning in 2000 three years before the heist would take place note our Bartolo began renting an office inside of the diamond center to blend in and gain everybody's trust there he posed as an Italian diamond merchant made friends and ran a semi legitimate business there for three years without doing anything too suspicious and since he was a tenant inside of the building he was given a card that gave him 24-hour access to the building and more importantly access to the massive vault below to store his own diamond send photography inside of the building was strictly prohibited but eventually he managed to create a miniature digital camera that he fixed atop of a pen that poked out of the top of his shirt pockets this enabled him to walk straight into the vault and take hundreds of photographs of everything inside and outside without ever getting noticed he would go on to recruit a team of five including himself and using these photographs they were able to perfectly recreate an exact replica of the vault in a warehouse somewhere sites the team would practice and practice and perfect their robbery inside of the replica over and over again until in February 2003 they decided that they were ready to do it for real they chose the night of Saturday the 15th because they knew that a significant portion of the diamond centers workers were Jewish and therefore probably wouldn't stumble into the building in the middle of their robbery on a Saturday there were no security guards present because they trusted the false technological defenses were impregnable the day before on the 14th notre art ello walked into the vault like he usually did to make his deposit but this time he brought a can of women's hair spray with him without being noticed he sprayed the motion and heat sensor with a thin layer that would prove to be an ingenious but simple hack that would stop any heat from reaching it the next night on the night of the 15th Keita's gang used a rented car and drove up across the street at about midnight notarbartolo remained in the car as the getaway driver while the other four darted out and broke into a run-down office next door they went from here into a back garden that bordered the back of the diamond center using a ladder that they had hidden in that garden some time ago they managed to crawl up to a balcony of the diamond center there was an infrared sensor on this balcony but the gang used a homemade polyester shield to protect themselves from detection walked right up to it and placed the shield in front of it to effectively disable it breaking in through a window the gang scurried in and walked down to the basement where the vault stood before them next up they placed a black bag over the security camera and flipped on the lights they also brought another simple but ingenious homemade tool with them to deal with something else a slab of aluminum with double-sided tape on it they stuck these slabs to the metal plates that were creating the magnetic field over the door then unscrew their bolts and remove them they then taped those plates to the wall without ever breaking the field or setting off an alarm using a camera that notarbartolo had hidden outside of the door a while ago they already knew the combination to the dial lock in a massive security oversight they also found out that the super unique key that they used to open the other lock was just hanging in a closet right by the door so they just took that and open that law normally they shut the lights back off and swung open the door pick the lock to the steel grate and got in without a single alarm triggering the hairspray trick seemed to be doing its job but they didn't take any chances they put a styrofoam box over it to isolate it further put black duct tape over the light sensor another black bag over the interior security camera and they even managed to rewrap the wires in the ceiling to not send any alarms out and most impressively they did all of this while in complete darkness because they had memorized the entire vaults layout with all of the security overcome they held themselves in a frenzy - over 100 million dollars worth of diamonds gold jewelry and various currencies with their duffel bags overflowing and loot they ran out at 5:30 a.m. got back into their car and drove off without a single shot or an alarm being fired while the heist itself was squeaky clean their runaway was not they had been wearing plastic gloves during the whole heist and they didn't leave any DNA evidence inside of the vaults however they needed to burn those gloves and on their drive back to Italy Nonna Bartolo pulled off on the side of the road to do it but his friend allegedly according to him got nervous and began throwing stuff carelessly out of the window including a half-eaten salami sandwich this sandwich was later discovered and it provided the DNA evidence that lead to no tartullo to the crime so he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the heist he has never given up the names of any of his fellow robbers even to this day and most of the 100 million dollars that was stolen is still missing out there somewhere that is unless you believe notarbartolo who claims they only managed to steal 20 million dollars and the reported 100 million dollars is all just an elaborate insurance fraud scheme on the part of the diamond center it's not really clear but one thing that is is don't leave behind a half-eaten salami sandwich near the crime scene after you've just stolen millions of dollars another thing that's clear is that criminals will go to outrageous lengths to steal some money some will pretend to be somebody that they're not for years to gain your trust while others will simply fish your password and hack into your private bank or email counts but thankfully - light can help protect you against the latter kind of attacks and more - lean helps you create different super secure nearly unbreakable passwords for every site that you use auto fills them when you go to login and protects them all behind just one super secure password that you need to remember it's so important to be using different passwords for different sites for your own safety but nothing makes it easier than not having to remember them all and that is exactly what - Lane does something this useful is probably pretty expensive except it's not it's totally free when you go to - link comm /r ll or by clicking on the link in the description - lead has some more pretty cool premium features to help protect you online even more like a VPN syncing across multiple devices and dark web monitoring which you can get for 10% off by using the code rll when you upgrade - line has been a great long time supporter of real life floors so please do go ahead and check them out next and thank you for watching and I'll see you next week for another brand new video that [Music]

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 1,980,795

Rating: 4.9379687 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, antwerp diamond heist, diamond heist, belgian diamond heist, antwerp diamond center, crime, documentary, 2003

Id: 45el4Qlaj-E

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Carrabs]

Imagine pulling off one of the most successful heists in history, only to be taken down by a half eaten salami sandwich

[u/ZakieChan]

The book “Flawless” by Scott Andrew Selby is really good, if anyone is interested in a more in depth explanation of how this all went down.

[u/the_wurd_burd]

I hope this dude is just starting out cuz his narration is really tough to listen to.

[u/rileyrulesu]

At some point in my life I stopped hating bank robbers and started rooting for them just because this sort of thing is so cool.

[u/ragingmansausage]

BBC Radio Documentary on this story with interesting background on how they caught the perpetrator. From 16:50 they discuss how they got caught.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p072yjbr