Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (42 page)

104
  
Elio D’Onorio strode toward the Diamond Center
: The description of D’Onorio’s activities in the Diamond Center on February 10, 2003, is based primarily on the following: The police deduced this from the fact that (1) the CCTV videotape of that day was stolen as well as on the night of the heist, indicating that one of the thieves had been inside that day; (2) they found the work order (with D’Onorio’s business card), leading them to believe it was D’Onorio who snuck in on that day; and (3) the work done to the magnetic alarm was time consuming, leading them to believe that that was the point of recon, to fix the magnetic alarm and place a video camera. Patrick Peys, interviews with author, in his office, Antwerp, September 23 and 26, 2008.

105
  
the stairwell door into the vault foyer:
One person contacted for this book believed that the stairwell door on the vault level had a doorknob only on the foyer side, not on the stairwell side, in order to prevent people from using the stairs to get to the vault. Others couldn’t recall if this was the case; the stairs weren’t regularly used to get to the vault level. The authors could not independently determine whether the door could be opened from the stairwell at that time. If it’s true that there was no doorknob on the stairwell side, it would not have been difficult for Notarbartolo to use tape to secure the latch so that the door could simply be pushed open from the stairwell side. Because the door was beyond the range of the video camera on that level, he would simply have needed to wait until there were no other tenants in the vault before making the modification. In investigators’ minds, there is no question that the thieves used the stairs and not the elevator.

105
  
dutifully recording the dark foyer:
This was another security flaw. The lights were off on the vault floor after hours, so even if someone was watching the monitors or video, unless the thieves turned on the lights before covering over the CCTV cameras he or she would see nothing but darkness.

107
  
used heavy-duty double-sided tape:
The tape was still there along with the shortened bolts when the police examined the magnets after the heist was discovered.

109
  
he went to the vault twice daily:
Since the video was stolen for that Monday police don’t know if Notarbartolo went to the vault that day, but they do have him on video going there twice a day that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On Friday, he went three times. From the Court of Appeal of Antwerp judgment in this case on May 19, 2005.

109
  
he removed an aerosol bottle . . . and sprayed the lens:
Police are split on their theories about this; a minority of them believe Notarbartolo wouldn’t risk the spray being discovered and that the School of Turin waited until the heist was underway to mask the motion detector. Most of the police officers we spoke with believe that the more likely explanation is that he sprayed the lens before the heist.

110
  
the early winter start to Friday prayers:
The Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night, whenever the sun sets on that particular day. In winter, this takes place earlier in the day, meaning that the Diamond District empties out earlier on a Friday in winter than on one during the summer. On Friday, February 14, 2003, sunset was a few minutes before 6:00 p.m., although different groups calculate nightfall slightly differently. Candle-lighting time is generally eighteen minutes before sunset. That Friday, religious Jews lit candles at 5:37 p.m. according to Chabad’s Web site. Various Jewish groups had candle-lighting times that varied from this by a small amount.

112
  
through the tight aisles:
The description of the Brico in Mechelen is based on a visit by authors on October 3, 2008.

113
  
the hand of a dead man was an invaluably lucky talisman
: The thought was that candles held in the hand of a dead man couldn’t be seen. Havelock Ellis,
The Criminal,
3rd ed. (London: Walter Scott, 1901), 184.

113–114
  
a study of two hundred Italian murderers:
Ibid. at 185–187.

114
  
known to snort cocaine:
Turin reporter Lodovico Poletto, who had covered crime for
La Stampa
newspaper since the late 1980s, said that using cocaine was a common practice among the city’s thieves. It gave them the illusion of invincibility. He was quick to add that there is no evidence this was the case with the men who robbed the Diamond Center in 2003. Lodovico Poletto, interview with author, in the
La Stampa
office, Turin, January 16, 2009.

According to Antonino Falleti, Notarbartolo was notoriously antidrug, and it’s hard to imagine that he would tolerate the risk that his accomplices be caught and arrested with drugs after meticulously planning a heist like the one at the Diamond Center. Antonino Falleti, interviews with author, various locations in Turin, September 2008.

114
  
they destroyed the phones:
An example of how disciplined thieves were about their phones can be found in a highway robbery that took place on the motorway between Turin and the Brenner Pass in 2005. About a dozen thieves assaulted two vans transporting cash from Italy to Austria. Investigators identified eleven telephones and corresponding numbers used by the thieves that were only used to call each other. Police put the numbers—both the phone numbers and the cell phones’ unique serial numbers that were transmitted with each call—on an international watch list. For two years, there was nothing. But then one of the phones began making calls in Morocco. Investigators tracked down the phone’s owner, and found a common merchant, not an elusive cell of Italian thieves. The merchant explained that he had bought the phone used in the market from a vendor who sold them by the tens of dozens. The criminal who used it as part of the heist probably donated it to a charity similar to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. As for the others, they may well have been thrown in a lake. Interview with confidential source, a member of Italian law enforcement with knowledge of this case, September 2008.

Chapter Eight: The Heist of the Century

115
  
“Smash-and-grab job . . . than that”:
Ocean’s Eleven
, directed by Steven Soderbergh, screenplay (based on the 1960 story) by Ted Griffin (2001).

115
  
they couldn’t identify:
Based on their later investigation, they came to believe that as many as eight or more people were involved in the overall operation. Patrick Peys, interview with author, in his office, Antwerp, September 23, 2008.

115
  
Pietro Tavano drove the thieves to the Diamond Center:
“The analysis of the phone calls shows Tavano was a phone user during the four crucial times of the theft and that he was in Belgium. It is also proved he left the Charlottalei apartment on February 15, 2003, at 11:47 p.m. to go to the Diamond District. That he undoubtedly provided for the transport to the Diamond Center, considering that his phone call to Notarbartolo was intercepted in Charlottalei on February 16, 2003, at 33 minutes past midnight, he was repeatedly in contact with Notarbartolo.” From the Court of Appeal of Antwerp judgment in this case on May 19, 2005.

116
  
three-quarters of a mile:
The drive from the apartment to the side entrance of the Diamond Center was shorter than the drive back owing to one-way streets. The drive there was a little over a half a mile, but the drive back was a bit under three-quarters of a mile. It was about a three-minute drive either way.

117
  
to meet his brother-in-law for drinks on the plaza: According
to what he later told police, Jacques Plompteux left the Diamond Center through the garage at some point late on Saturday night to sneak off with his brother-in-law to have some beers at the Café Joseph on the plaza around the corner. He came and went through the C Block door for the same reason as the thieves: using his badge would have left a computerized trail, showing the building’s management that he’d left his post.

117
  
At 12:14 a.m.:
The exact times used in this chapter come from police reconstructions of mobile phone traffic/locations as reported in the Court of Appeal of Antwerp judgment in this case on May 19, 2005.

119
  
“In my opinion there is no way that a camera”:
Paul De Vos, interview with author, via telephone, April 26, 2009.

119
  
suggested by insurance investigator Denice Oliver:
Denice Oliver, interview with author, in her office, Antwerp, September, 29, 2008.

120
  
“the auto-scramble function is rarely used”:
Pieter De Vlaam, Manager of Testing and Certification of LIPS/Gunnebo, e-mail to author, January 31, 2009.

120
  
another eureka moment when watching any hidden video:
According to this theory, after Notarbartolo rented a safe deposit box in the Diamond Center and got a feel for the security there, he planted a small video camera out of view of the CCTV cameras. It was aimed at the vault door, not in an attempt to read the actual combination but to record the concierges’ actions when opening and closing the vault door. From this, the School of Turin could have learned that that the concierges did not enter the code to the combination, but kept that portion of the vault door unlocked. Notarbartolo would not have placed the camera there in the hopes of seeing something like this, but just to learn more about their procedures and to see if either concierge used a cheat sheet of any kind. The human element tends to be the weak link with a security setup such as this, and so it is the easiest thing to check first. According to police, one concierge had a cheat sheet, and it would have been easy for the thieves to steal it from him, copy it, and put it back. If the combination was not being used, then all the thieves had to do was plant a camera again before the heist to make sure that nothing had changed. This meant one less lock the School of Turin had to get around and it explains how they got around the combination lock without inside help or drilling, something that lock experts such as Paul De Vos still find to be the greatest mystery at the heart of this entire affair. Paul De Vos, interview with author, in his home, Heist-op-den-Berg (Belgium), October 3, 2008.

123
  
“tampered with”:
Patrick Peys, interview with author, in his office, Antwerp, September 23, 2008.

123
  
“We asked everybody . . . with any detector”:
Ibid.

125
  
As they forced open each new box, the loot began to pile up:
The contents of the various described boxes come from the Court of Appeal of Antwerp judgment in this case on May 19, 2005.

127
  
The thieves stole every carat:
While there were a few big diamond companies in the Diamond Center, most of the tenants were small businesses. Bigger companies preferred the more secure buildings in the area, or tended to keep their goods under their own security measures in their offices.

127
  
brown cognacs to yellow canaries:
The more intense the color, the more value it adds to a stone. For instance, an intense green diamond would be worth much more than a comparable stone with a green hue to it. The stone with the green hue though would still be worth more than a comparable white diamond. While brown and yellow are the two most common colors, and as such are generally worth less than comparable white diamonds, diamonds come in a wide range of colors such as red, orange, green, blue, purple, black, gray, brown, and pink. More than three hundred different colors have been labeled thus far by the industry.

These colors are the result of imperfections in the stone itself—a perfect diamond is by definition colorless. The causes of such colors vary—blue is the result of boron contaminants; yellow, often nitrogen contaminants; red, structural defects; and green, radiation in Earth’s crust.
See, e.g.,
Emmanuel Fritsch, “The Nature of Color in Diamonds,”
The Nature of Diamonds
(edited by George Harlow).

127
  
in their blister packs . . . proved authenticity:
In addition, it would have taken time to remove them all from blister packs. And this information helps establish the value of each diamond, so having it made things easier when the time came to split up the goods.

128
  
the pulling tool wouldn’t have worked at all:
Of course then Notarbartolo’s own box would have been upgraded so he and his fellow thieves would have known about this problem. While their device would no longer have been an option, perhaps they would have come up with some other solution to this barrier and still robbed the place.

129
  
brooch depicting a bird in its nest made of gold and diamonds:
Such a piece would have been risky to sell as is. The safest course of action would be for the thieves, or whoever bought it off them, to remove the jewels and melt down the gold. This would result in a loss of value, as the whole was worth more than the sum of its parts, but it would no longer be recognizable. The tragedy of this is when treasured pieces of art, especially of historical importance, are destroyed in order to make their constituent parts unrecognizable.