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.
♪ ♪