How real Oceans 11 gang bagged £100m in world's biggest heist with spy cams & fake vault… but were undone by rooky error

The Irish Sun

5 days ago

IT was known as the Belgian 'Fort Knox' and security was second to none - with its seemingly impenetrable vault, state of the art alarms and high spec motion sensors.
Yet the
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The vault was ransacked by a criminal gang that got away with £100million
Credit: Netflix
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They were able to get into the diamond vault with 10 layers of security
Credit: Netflix
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Leonardo Notarbartolo admitted being part of the Antwerp gang
Credit: Netflix
In what could have been the script for a Hollywood movie, the investigation eventually led police to Italy and a gang of elite criminals, known as The School of
As brilliant as the heist was, involving a camera pen and even a replica vault, the sophisticated gang were finally undone through one
In the Netflix documentary, Stolen: Heist of the Century, one of the jewel thieves explains how it was done and the detectives leading the case tell how they eventually managed to track down their culprits..
On Monday, 17 February, 2003, Agim De Bruycker, then Commander of the police Diamond Squad in Antwerp, was greeted at his office by his colleague, Detective Patrick Peys.
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'There has been a burglary,' he said. 'A safe has been broken open.'
It was to prove something of an understatement. When they arrived at the Diamond Center, they were greeted by a
'I saw a steel door a foot thick, standing open,' Patrick recalls. 'Inside, the walls were covered with individual lockers. The majority were cracked and opened. I was standing in front of Ali Baba's cave.'
The floor was scattered with bank notes and small emeralds that the thieves deemed not worth their time. Nearly all of the 189 safe deposit boxes had been raided. The heist immediately hit the news headlines and the pressure was on the police to find out who had done it. But the mystery was also
how
had they done it?
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'The combination on the safe door was changed weekly and that dial would give you 100million possibilities,' says Patrick.
In addition was a clever magnetic alarm system consisting of two metal plates – one attached to the vault door, the other to the door jamb. If someone tried to open the door while the alarm was still activated, it would break the magnetic field and the alarm would set off.
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Inside the vault was a light detector and a motion and
The 13-storey building had 24 cameras working day in, day out. The footage for each day was stored on a videocassette but the ones for February 15 and 16 – the weekend of the heist – were missing.
'I was thinking this had to be an inside job,' says Agim. 'You had the security, two concierges and the building manager. We started investigating them thoroughly and searched their houses but in the end, we had to clear them all. We had no idea who had committed the crime. Then, suddenly, in the afternoon, I got a telephone call.'
Breakthrough
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Antwerp in Belgium has been a major diamond centre since medieval times
Credit: Getty
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Agim De Bruycker and Patrick Peys in Stolen: Heist of the Century (L to R)
Credit: Netflix
A shopkeeper had found a bag of rubbish dumped in The Floordambos Woods, 25 miles south of Antwerp, where he liked to go to feed the rabbits and fish.
Inside was a lot of torn paper with words like Antwerp and Diamonds. Realising it wasn't the usual type of
'That call changed everything,' says Patrick. 'The bags also contained some very small green emerald stones, banknotes, wrenches and flashlights as well as some left over food – pasta, cheese, a half-eaten salami sandwich, wine. This was strange because I don't think they had a picnic in the vault room. The food was probably from a hideout.'
Another critical piece of evidence found in the woods was the casing of the video cassettes kept at the Diamond Center. But the tape had been removed.
A search of the highway between Antwerp and Brussels found that the tape had been dumped en-route. Experts from Sony were able to reinstall it into the casing so that it could be watched. It was a big moment that promised to show the thieves at work.
'We had all the investigators together, along with my superiors, for the screening,' recalls Agim. 'The tape is put into the cassette player, the film starts… and it was a porn movie.'
I've never been so disappointed in a porn movie as I was then!
Patrick Peys
'I've never been so disappointed in a porn movie as I was then!' adds Patrick.
The police started piecing together the torn paper found in the rubbish bag. Some of it formed a document, written in Italian, which was a permit to install a security system at an office in the Diamond Center. The document was issued by the Italian
The company had an office in the building that had been rented for two years but cupboards and desks were empty.
'The building manager didn't know the man who rented that office very well but she could tell us that he was an Italian businessman named Leonardo Notarbartolo. She had no address for him,' says Agim.
When police went through CCTV footage in the building, she was eventually able to point him out.
Like many other dealers who rented space in the building, he regularly went down to the vault to store his jewels. He never spoke to anyone and never attracted attention.
But a check with
Paper scraps from the rubbish bag also revealed an envelope with the name Elio D'Onorio with an address close to Rome. He turned out to be an alarm specialist and a known I
The rubbish also revealed a receipt from a
The shop owner was able to provide the police with a description of the man who bought them and an identikit picture matched that of D'Onorio.
A colleague of Agim and Patrick's showed them a file he had on an attempted burglary that had taken place at the Diamond Center six years earlier by a man pretending to be a diamond dealer who was also from Turin called Ferdinando Finotto.
'The School of Turin'
Marci Martino, head of the Flying Squad in Turin, informed the Antwerp detectives about a group specialising in
'He explained that it was a bunch of people, each specialising in some form of criminal behaviour,' says Patrick. 'So, they picked who they needed according to his or her speciality.'
'It made a lot of sense to us,' says Agim. 'Certainly given the way the thieves had tackled all these security systems.'
With three names now in the bag, Agim and Patrick began working out how they thought the operation had been done. But their version and that of Notarbartolo's differ.
The Antwerp detectives believe that entrance was gained from the garage that led through a connecting door directly into the building on the ground floor. A modified Allen key, found in the rubbish at Floordambos, opened the door when they tested it.
Career criminal
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Notarbartolo received a 10-year prison service
Credit: BELGA PHOTO
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Outside the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) in the diamond district of Antwerp, Belgium
Credit: getty
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In a new Netflix documentary, Notarbartolo explains how it was done
Credit: Netflix
And in an exclusive interview, Leonardo Notarbartolo tells the
Born in Palermo, he got into crime at the age of six when he stole 5,000 lire from a cowherd.
'In the 80s, I opened my first jewellery shop,' he says. 'I started going back and forth to Antwerp to buy gemstones and got an apartment there and an office and safe deposit box at the Diamond Center.'
He admits to being part of the gang who carried out the heist but named a mysterious figure who he claimed was the mastermind of the crime.
If I took photos inside the vault, he would give me 100,000 dollars. I said, 'Okay. I'm in'
Leonardo Notarbartolo
'I am a participant. The mastermind was someone who went by the name of Alessandro, although that probably wasn't his real name. He took me for coffee one day, saying that he knew who I was and that we had met in Italy, and gave me a pen with a tiny little camera inside and said that if I took photos inside the vault, he would give me 100,000 dollars. I said, 'Okay. I'm in.''
In February 2001, two years before the heist, Notarbartolo entered the vault and took pictures of the safe deposits and the alarms systems. He was then asked to join the gang for a share of the spoils worth at least $15m dollars each.
'I had always wanted to be part of something like this. It was too tempting,' he says.
'Alessandro took me to an industrial area where there are warehouses. We go inside and there are three people there who he introduces me to.
There were the four of us main ones - The Monster, The Genius, the Key Master and me. The fifth was My Friend.
Agim De Bruycker
'The first guy was a master when it came to locks and alarms. He is 1.93 metres tall, well-built. That's why I call him
'They pull aside some big plastic sheets and I see this place which looks just like the vault. It's exactly the same, with the sensors correctly positioned.
'The gang was coming in and out of the Diamond Center to make copies of keys and to check security systems at least 30 times and never left a trace.
'When The Genius realised there was a light bulb above the vault door, he had a micro camera inserted in it to record images of the combination lock below. In the boiler room were some fire extinguishers and
The heist
Three days before the heist, Notarbartolo, who had graduated from a spy pen to a video camera inside a small bag, used hairspray to fog up the sensor.
'We didn't enter the way the police think we did. We entered from Pelikaanstraat, where there is a space behind the Diamond Center to park cars. We skirted along the walls of the Diamond Center and went up a stepladder that we took with us, to the first floor. The Genius had bypassed the alarm that was on this balcony.
'On the day of the hit, they wanted me to stay outside to keep a watch for any police. There were the four of us main ones - The Monster, The Genius, the Key Master and me. The fifth was My Friend. He has excellent qualities in our line of work.
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Antwerp is the diamond capital of the world
Credit: Getty
'Inside the building they deactivated the two side cameras and then checked the images from the micro-camera to see the last combination that was entered that night. The
This part of the story tallies with that of the police.
'Some work had been done on the magnetic alarm,' Agim confirms. 'The screws had been removed and shortened so that from the outside everything looks fine but on the inside the screws are not attaching to the door anymore.
"Instead, double-sided tape was used. On the night of the heist, they pulled the plates away from the vault door together. The magnetic field is still intact, the alarm is still on but they are able to open the vault door.'
Each safe deposit box has an individual key and a three-digit dial but this was by-passed by a cleverly manufactured drill that looked a bit like a corkscrew with two metal bars with which the thieves could force each box open.
After a few hours inside, the gang made their get-away in the car driven by Notarbartolo, back to his apartment where they celebrated with some food and wine.
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A forensic officer examines the crime scene
Credit: Netflix
How the heist was carried out
Two years before
Notarbartolo posed as a diamond merchant and rented an office in the Diamond Center, as well as a safety deposit box in the vault.
He used his position to pay regular visits to the vault, taking pictures of the alarm systems and sensors and memorising the building's layout.
Months before
A secret camera was placed in the lighbulb above the vault door, to monitor the combinations used on the lock, which were changed every week.
A receiver was placed in a fire extinguisher in a nearby boiler room to transmit images from the camera.
Notarbartolo claims the gang regularly met at a warehouse where a full size replica vault had been built, to hone their plan.
Days before
Notarbartolo used hairspray on the thermal-motion sensors to disable them.
The screws on the magnetic plates that locked the vault were loosened.
Day of the robbery
The gang gained access from a space behind the centre, using a stepladder to climb to a balcony on the first floor.
Inside, they used a long, two-part, three-dimensional key along with the vault's combination to open the main door.
One plate of the magnetic lock was unscrewed to bypass the alarm system when the vault door was opened.
A polystyrene shield was used to block the infrared ray of the motion sensor.
The ceiling light sensor was covered with duct tape so the gang could turn the lights on inside the vault.
A custom-made, hand-cranked drill was used to open 109 of the 189 safe deposit boxes within the vault.
The gang then emptied the contents of the boxes into duffel bags and left the building through a street exit.
Before leaving, they stole the security footage from the Diamond Center's office.
According to Notarbartolo, it was his job to dispose of things snatched that they did not need. But he says that while he was in the shower someone also threw the remains of their meal into the bags without him realising.
When he and his friend took them to the wood, they were startled by a noise and instead of burning it, as intended, dumped it there and fled.
The following day the gang met up in Brescia, Italy to divvy up the bounty and, such was Notarbartolo's confidence that he was not on the police's radar, he then went back to Antwerp to return the hired car.
The cops were startled when the building manager of the Diamond Center rang them to say that Leonardo Notarbartolo was actually standing in the building right now.
Our main suspect returned to Antwerp and was standing in the building that he had robbed a week before. It was unbelievable
Agim De Bruycker
'Our main suspect returned to Antwerp and was standing in the building that he had robbed a week before. It was unbelievable,' says Agim.
The police rushed there and he was arrested. He reluctantly gave them the address of his apartment and when they drove there, three people were coming out – Notarbartolo's wife and two men, one carrying a rolled up carpet on his shoulder. They were stopped and inside the carpet were small green emeralds.
A 'pure fantasy'
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Special keys to open high-security vaults at the Antwerp Diamond Center are displayed on a table as pieces of evidence at the Antwerp judicial police headquarters
Credit: AP Photo/Yves Logghe
A search of the apartment found a bag with a hole in the side, perfect for concealing a
'We also found a receipt from a local supermarket in Antwerp with different food items like wine, pasta, cheese and salami of the type found back in Floordambos,' says Agim.
'We matched Mr Notarbartolo's DNA with that found on the half-eaten salami sandwich.
'Based on the telephone records from SIM cards and on the DNA profiles, we were able to identify four people that were 100 per cent involved in this crime – Ferdinando Finotto (The Monster), Elio D'Onorio (The Genius) and a third person, Pietro Tavano (My Friend) - an old friend of Mr Notarbartolo and also a member of The School of Turin. The fourth person was Notarbartolo.'
Agim believes much of Notarbartolo's account is pure fantasy.
'Spy pens? Replica vaults? That isn't the story of a
Notarbartolo received a 10-year prison service and served six years, before being released in 2009. His wife was never charged. Three other gang members were jailed for five years.
But the true value of the heist is still a mystery.
'No diamonds or money were recovered,' says Agim. 'We came up with the figure of $100m but I'm sure that the amount is much higher than that.'
Stolen: Heist of the Century is on Netflix from August 8
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Stolen: Heist of the Century is only on Netflix
Credit: netflix