Citation Needed - Antwerp Diamond Heist [True Crime Special]

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

The Antwerp diamond heist, dubbed the "heist of the century",[1] was by far the largest diamond heist and one of the largest robberies in history. Thieves stole loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewelry valued at more than $100 million.[2][3] It took place in Antwerp, Belgium, during the weekend of 15–16 February 2003. Though arrests were made and time was served, most of the diamonds stolen remain unrecovered. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

It's really interesting. It's about a skyscraper city and as you get closer to the base, the technology gets more primitive. Oh, like Alabama. Well, not that primitive. Gentlemen, welcome to the heist high-out. Eli, what are you doing? I've asked you to come here to help me steal five diamonds, worth a total of $1,682. If you choose to accept, you will. I do not.

No, I don't either. Okay, come on, guys. I'm the master safe cracker we need to get this job done. All I need is a getaway driver and someone to kill everyone at the jewelry store. Absolutely not. You want to kill multiple people for 1,600 bucks. $1,682.

Not the point. That's not what he's talking about. Also, you're not a safe cracker anyway. That shows how much you know. I actually, I'll have you know, I opened the most secure lock door in our complex. In the studio? I think there's only one door that closes in. It's a Curio cabinet, man. Yeah, and it's got one of those like hook and latch type blocks.

Sure does. Took me three and a half minutes, but I was successful. It took you more than three minutes to open the fucking cabinet. It had a child lock that you had to squeeze. It's tricky. I don't want to get into it. Anyway, could a normal save cracker do this? Rip their pants while doing a summer assault?

Probably. I would depend on the tightness of the pants. Yeah, significant stresses and all that. I suspect that toddler with the right outer wear could do it. I can't move. I think I threw my back out. I threw my back out back.

All right, well think on what you done. We'll see you later. So back to the story. Anyway, this guy comes from the upper level, but you don't find that out right away. You have to get back into the story. Guys, guys, are we done for the heist? Guys?

This is fine. This is cool. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we are experts because this is the internet internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and while I would probably be one of the most useless people you could take on a heist, I'm not the most useless, let me introduce you to those people. First up, the guy who can't come because he can't find a sitter for his 3 trillion kids and the guy who's 15th alarm on his phone didn't wake him up in time for the 3pm start time time in his. And the guy who's 15th alarm on his phone didn't wake him up in time for the 3PM start time

Tom and Heath. God damn kids, it's not the only time they stop me from coming. Fuckin' And who does things at 3PM? Whatever, that's what it is. Fuck you. That's Heath's C.S. to have her fall.

So that's on you. Also joining us tonight, a master locksmith, but only when it comes to his hair. And the guy who makes you stop the getaway car four times during a high speed chase because he asked the fiddle, no one, Eli. But putting the swab and reswab our dogs. It's making me the sense it works.

It works, it works. Actually, they don't let cops into Starbucks bathrooms anymore, Cecil, so it's the perfect place to hide. I'm here to do that. I'm here to do that. No, not him. Hey folks, so it's the perfect place to hide. I'm curious about it. I'm not allowed to. Hey folks, your donations make the show possible, so thank you so much. And if you'd like to learn how to donate,

be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that, of the way, tell us Heath, what person-place thing concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? We're gonna be talking about the Antwerp Diamond Heist of 2003. I can tell you're excited. He's, what do you know about diamonds? Don't they come from Antwerp?

I guess that's, is that the end? The end. All right. Snatch nailed it. And that's where our story begins, Antwerp. Picture the scene. February 15th, 2003, Antwerp Belgium. American tennis phenom, Venus Williams is ranked number two in the world, outplaying everyone,

except her impossibly talented younger sister Serena. Venus is coming off a grueling, three-set loss to Serena in the finals of the Australian Open. But now, Venus is in the semifinals of a tournament called the Diamond Games, in the Diamond capital of the world. And she's on her way to winning the whole thing for the second straight year and giving her a chance at winning a solid gold tennis racket in Crusted in Diamonds worth $1.3 million.

But on the other side of town, the real Diamond Caper is unfolding. In fact, it's going to be the biggest Diamond Caper is unfolding. In fact, it's gonna be the biggest Diamond Caper in the history of the world. It's now known as the Heist of the Century worth over $100 million in a single day. Yeah, it was two guys at the Diamond Hockey Games boosting a solid gold Zamboni. It was so good.

That'd be awesome. He, can I just say thank you for finally contextualizing our podcast alongside the careers of the Williams sisters so that our listeners can follow along. Welcome. It's how wired did it. I read a lot of an article from Wired. They talk about it. Man, all I know is if you went a fucking solid, gold, and diamond encrusted life-sized tennis

racket, and if you don't wear that bitch around your neck like a Flav'a Flav'a clock, you have missed an offer. He's been in an alley. He ate. Okay. So let's rewind a little bit. Serena? The Inus Williams were born in a small town in California.

No, Calibre. Stupid Serena was born in Michigan. It all started back in 1952. Leonardo, notabartolo, is born in Turin, Italy, and he's a close cousin of some prominent members of the Sicilian mafia. By the time he's six years old, he's already robbing the milkman for thousands of lira. That's real. Well, milk was very expensive in Italy, like white gold, so silly and tea. What? Lyra was like,

it was a billion of them to adopt. Yeah, Lyra were. Well, he made it sound like a lot. Whatever it was called was not that big. Thank you, Tom. Yes. Anyway, he's six, he's stealing from the milkman. That quickly turns into hot wiring cars,

cracking safes, and hijacking armored cars. And by the time he grows up and leaves home, it's not even about the money anymore. It's all about the thrill of the heist. And now he's building a team like Ocean's Eleven. He really, really is. He knows lock picking experts, electrical engineers who can disable alarms. He's got a tunnel guy. He's got a climbing the side of skyscrapers guy,

and he's running elaborate operations. The crew eventually becomes known as the school of turran. Oh, if they disappear at the end, leaving nothing but a shroud, I am. Yeah. No. No. All right, so I feel like if your group of robbers

becomes known as something you have already fucked us. Now, fast forward to the year 2000. Notar Bartolo is 48 years old and stealing stuff in Italy is way too easy. So he decides to step it up to the big leagues, diamonds. So he moves to Antwerp and rents an office in the Diamond Center. It's one of the largest buildings in the Diamond District, right in the middle of the

most concentrated pocket of physical wealth in the world. And he immediately establishes himself as a super-classy gem dealer in Antwerp, little did everyone know, in the fancy world of diamonds, that the greatest jewel thief in the world had already started his long con. But he also did plenty of short cons to along the way. His go-to move was to buy a few stones from a dealer at their location, watch the exact security process while he was there, and then steal the entire stash a few weeks later. Here's how the long con gets going.

Bringing together the team montage. Oh, yeah. There we go. Correct. There was one of those. It's about to happen. But one of the local dealers approaches Notabartolo and he offers him 100,000 euros to answer one single question.

Is it possible to rob the Antwerp Diamond Center? This is one of the most secure buildings in the history of the world, so the answer was, no, I'll take that cash now. But he had to prove it first. So he rigged up a tiny camera in the tip of a pen and walked all around the Diamond Center taking pictures. He was a tenant there, so he knew all the guards and it was normal for him to be there, so nobody thought it was weird. This includes him taking the elevator two floors underground into the anti-chamber of their big vault, and just looking at stuff with his pen for no reason. Wait, how well do you know a guy to just let that guy like, oh him? The guy walking around

with a pen going, click, click, click, and the secret vault for Bidden mystery. Ah, that's just old stealing Jimmy. He's here all the time, nothing to worry about. Yeah, it was old stealing Leo, but yeah, that's what was happening. So the vault itself has a three ton steel door and a giant series of security devices. That starts with a wheel numbered 0 to 99

and a four digit code. So that's 100 million possible combinations. Four. And did you say four? Because it's four digit code. Because it's four digit code. Wow. Anyway, 100 million possible combinations.

If you had a really sweet cordless drill, you weren't cutting through the door. It was built to withstand about 12 hours of drilling with like a huge thing, but that doesn't even matter, because it also had a seismic alarm that would go off the second-it-sense to any vibration. There was also an alarm based on a magnetic field

that would go off if you moved the door at all. Okay, that one's my favorite because it's like a 6,000 pound door and they were like, all right, but what if someone picks it up? We're gonna need a alarm for that. It's just, it's like, move it. You also need a separate code to disarm the magnets. And most importantly, you need a comically oversized key. It was about a foot long and impossible to copy. You need the magical technology of an atrussian metal sculptor. And that's the thing. You're not copying. You have to be the one that loves fun facts here.

That's just not a fact. That's ridiculous. I mean, I've got the PhD Bino talk with a leading ex-person to Even Eltonque was one of the leading experts in the Tuscan history and I But you know my dad's a sculptor thing so Oh, oh, he gets pictures of all that he's better than every a trustkin sculptor ever with all the Guarantee so he got pictures all that stuff in order to always got his panties got the pictures of everything and then he went inside the vault itself Apparently they just leave the door open during the day. They really do. Well, sure, the things fucking heavy. They can't be opening and closing at all day just because some random building tenant wants to come in and non-shallotly take their pen for a walk. So he just pressed a button and a guard recognized him as a regular tenant on the camera and the guard

buzzed him through their shockingly laid back daytime turn style thing. So from inside the vault, he got pictures of the motion sensor, the heat sensor, and the light sensor, and the mechanics of the steel and copper safe deposit boxes that line the walls in there. There's like 189 of them, a whole bunch of diamonds. Each box had its own combination and its own key on top of all the security I mentioned. So he opens up his own box that he has in the vault,

and he pantomimes some lulu lulu diamond stuff, and he walks back out. Then he sends all the pictures to the unnamed mastermind guy, tells him it's impossible to rob the place and collects his hundred grand. Yeah, to pay more than that to get told no, you'd have to get a college education. Oh, that it had been that inexpensive Noah. Is inexpensive as less than or as more than a hundred thousand. So you just said your thing backwards. So side note, it's very possible that the unnamed mastermind is actually notar

Bartolo's cousin, Benadetto Kapizi, who is about to become the new leader of the Sicilian mafia at the time. But according to notar Bartolow, the unnamed mastermind was just some Jewish guy. Yeah, Jewish guys are to diamond robbery as some black guys are to killing your kid. I get it. Oh, that's correct. So after about five months, John, that no, can you tell? After about five months, the mastermind guy calls them up and sets up a meeting at a

literal abandoned warehouse outside the town. And inside the warehouse, there's an exact replica of the entire vault level of the Diamond Center. I can only fuck what? Like that didn't cause anyone, like in the building trades, to wonder if there was a problem, like, hey Phil, some guy wants us to build a replica vault in an abandoned warehouse, but, I don't know,

probably legit, you know. So the warehouse inside a town, it is not. Okay, yeah, so he built that. There's also inside this warehouse warehouse a team of three Italian guys This is like my favorite part of the story. Each one of them has a ridiculous nickname The first is called the genius and he's an alarm expert second guy is called the monster Because apparently he was quote the monster because apparently he was, quote,

monstrously good at places and stuff. That's, that makes sense. That just makes sense. A lot picker, electrician, mechanic, expert driver, and also a giant human being with enormous physical strength. Oh my God, it's where to God in this story. He just picks up that fucking door. I am starting a fan call. I'm gonna have to learn for that. Who the fuck?

He will pick up the ceiling at one point. We'll get there. And the third guy was the king of keys. He was a super old man, possibly a trusskin who was the best key forger in the world. So he worked in whole depot every other day. So they got this amazing team. All they needed was a clear video of an official guard at the Diamond Center opening the vault. Okay, I feel like those nicknames resulted in an awkward conversation or two.

Hey boss, can I talk to you for a second of course Nicky come on in all right So seem like the meeting with Notre-Betolo went good huh? Yeah, yeah, I think he's gonna get us out just the intel. We're gonna need to pull this off. Yeah, yeah It's just a little thing, huh? What's that? Yeah, when you went around introduced everyone, you know? I Nico got to be king of the keys. Whoop, I pee-ish. Right, right, you called a Julio, he was the genius.

Like a magic dead guy. Right, right, no, no, he's great, but uh, did you call me the monster? Cause you know, I'm so big. What? No, I called you the monster because you're so monstrously good at robbing. Um, yeah! I tried to say it all the time. I mean, you know, now that you mentioned it, I guess you're on the tall side, but I wasn't thinking about that at all.

Hey, boss, have you seen Banana Hands? Uh, nope, nevermind. It was Banana Hands! Oh, that is my dog. Hey boss, have you seen banana hands? Uh, oh never mind. Who's banana hands? Oh, that is my dog. Wait a second, you didn't tell me you had a dog. No dog. Yep, should do. Good open an a hands, that is its name. Think I might be banana hands.

So now it's September of 2002 and the plan is rolling. At 7am, as part of the normal routine at the Diamond Center, a guard walks up to the vault and starts going through the opening process. You know, it's got to be open all day. And the whole thing is being secretly recorded. Northern Bartolo somehow snuck a tiny camera into a light fixture right above the vault door, looking right down at the guard. Yeah we're not sure how but like based on what we've seen so

far he probably just said what's that over there? He stuck a fucking sharpie with a camera and at this time really. And the camera sent the image to a receiver that he hid inside a fire extinguisher in the next room that recorded the signal. So they had a full video of the combination being dialed and a video of the physical shape of the giant impossible to copy key. The only thing left to do was, of course, disable like 19 extra layers of security, get inside the building at night when nobody was there because nobody robs stuff at night so they keep it empty at night and escape undetected from pretty much

the most heavily monitored building in the world. Right. And I think we can all agree that trying that without a giant cartoon key would have been crazy. I mean, you need a big key. Yeah, actually pinning that, you might not. So that brings us to Valentine's Day of 2003, the day before the heist.

Notabartolo gets buzzed into the vault as usual, as part of his normal day. But today, he's got a can of hairspray in his pocket. So he starts doing normal vault stuff for a minute or two while the security team of fucking cartoon rhinos watching the camera feed ignore what's happening. Then he steps away from his box for a second and sprays a thin coat of mist from the hairspray onto the heat and motion sensor. Apparently the diamond center combined those two things into one device to keep the budget under control at Again, yeah diamond center and the film of hairspray was able to prevent the sensors from detecting motion or body heat like they're supposed to

They had no idea how long that would last but that was the plan. Wait, wait, wait How would they know that it would work, but not how long it would work? Like do the security dividing properties of fucking aquinette not translate perfectly out of the abandoned warehouse lab environment? What? I don't they they guess they were like well, we'll do it fast. It's fine a lot of mine it needed to be at least enough time for a Giant Italian man named the monster to stand right next to the sensor

early the next morning and install a bypass. Great, well these guys break into a $3 billion safe with a bent paperclip, a half-eaten jawbreaker and a can of goose grease, so we're gonna take a quick break. Mm-hmm. Ah. Alright Smith, if we're gonna pull off this heist, we're gonna need the best in the business and that's why I've called together our crack crew. Are you ready to meet him? Assure him.

This is nice, McGintley. You better be glad he's on our side. Hey everybody. And speeds to roast the best driver in the whole world howdy and of course this is bitch tits There is no safe in the world that this guy can't quit up. Hey wait. What would you say? All right? Gentlemen, here's the plan the vault is 20 by 20 Sorry, just real quick really quick. Yes, bitch tits. Yes. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. When did we settle on bitch tits as my nickname? Sir, I just, it's a nickname, man.

We have a cape in a plan here. Right, yes, I know, the cape, it's just that I'm a safe cracker. So, I don't know, maybe call me like the mastermind or the safe cracker, that's fine. You can just say, I don't know, call me safe cracker. We're gonna call you the fucking safe cracker. Yeah, that's fucking stupid. Your nickname is knives.

Knives is your thing. Your nickname's knives. That's cause it kills people with knives. I killed people with knives. I'm not a man who's the nice. He's the nice. I just wanna know why I'm bittin' this. That doesn't make sense.

Fine, fine, you don't have to. You remember that time when we did the job in Macau and you wore your t-shirt in the pool? The water was cold. But. Man, the water was cold for everybody Absolutely, I want a different nickname it just not bitch tits or I quit the heist fine fine okay You remember that time when we all had really spicy Indian bitch Did you just bitch tits is good. We're gonna stick with that you were were saying about like a vault, you were doing like the dimensions of a vault.

He pooped his pants a lot, you know, like a whole lot. Bitch hits is fine. A lot of them poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop.

Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop.

Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. So when we left off, we had a genius computer hacker and a keymaster all we need to is albino twins and we'd have the worst matrix to the world. What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next?

What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? What happened next? I was in the second one. The third one was better, because then it was all over. No, it's not. It's coming back.

There's another one. It's not in my mind, it's not. They need to get Will Smith. They just need to go back and correct that. Ooh, reboot. Love it. Yeah. All right, well, let's get back to the story.

So now it is go time, just after midnight on February 15th, the monster, the genius, the king of keys, and Notabartolo's idiot friend Speedy. They break into an office building that shares a private garden in the backyard of the Diamond Center. This garden area has no cameras because go fuck yourself, so they walk across the garden and they climb up a ladder, they stash there the day before, and onto a balcony of the diamond center. Now, there's a heat sensor out here too,

but the genius built a polyester shield to block his body heat, and he slowly walked the shield right up to the sensor and put it down right there in front of it. So the whole crew was able to go right past it and break into the building through a window. Spanks! They'll never know what hit him. Right, yeah, just wear polyester, I don't understand how that works. What the fuck is this?

With this ladder and a fucking balcony and a window? A window? We're building the most secure space the world is ever known and it's definitely going to need natural lighting A large human's worth at least Strip clubs are more secure. There's no windows They definitely are that is correct. So when they got inside the diamond center all the lights were out You know to save on the electric bill at their diamond center so the bad guys covered all the cameras with plastic bags and then turned on the

lights just record the police never figured out how they got inside that's despite a giant polyester shield in front of a heat sensor next to an open window. But I don't know how to tell you. I hope they listen to this episode. The shield is the size of an enormous person at minimum. Yeah. So this is all from Notabartolo giving an interview way later. That's how we know that. So they get down to the vault door and this is when the genius really earns his name.

He takes out a big piece of aluminum and he tapes it across the two metal plates that make up the magnetic field alarm. One plate is on the vault door and the other plate is on the wall right next to it. But with the aluminum thing, now they're connected and held perfectly parallel. And then he just unscrews the magnetic plates

from the door in the wall and pivots them away from the vault and choose. Jesus Christ. What? Guy walks into the vault and he picks the security guard up and he lays them on his side and he completely immobile onto the floor. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. Hey, will you wear these spanks just for a second? Oh, my God. We're good second? Oh, we're good. My legs, they're going! So, they've got the Magnetic Alarm Taken Carav, and they have the combination, and now they just need to hope the impossible Etruscan key forging was perfect. Except, that never even mattered. They noticed from their secret videos that the guard at the building would always walk into the utility room right before opening the vault in the morning.

No! So they just checked that room and literally found the original giant key just hanging there. So let me just flip down this sun visor. What was he gonna do? Carry it with him? Come on. So let me just flip down the sun visor. I can't see it. I'm so excited. What was he gonna do? Carry it with him? Come on, that's what he's gonna do. He's gonna do that.

Fuck it. At least they should have put a regular sized key to that. He wears it like a flame of flame clock on a second watch. The guy would attend his racket on the null as a second. So yeah, giant key just hanging right there. And from there, they turned all the lights back off to make sure the sensor inside the vault wouldn't trigger. They dialed up the combo that they knew.

They used the original perfect key that was fucking hanging right there. And they walked right into the vault. Okay, okay, you make it sound dumb, but the key was hidden in a very realistic looking plastic rock Yeah, so this is where the exact replica the vault came into play the monster walked exactly 11 steps into the dark vault, just like he had practiced, reached up to the ceiling and pushed up a panel to reveal the wiring of the security system. Apparently it was just like, you know, like one of those like,

quirk board things in a school where the lights are, he just like pushed it up. This security wire's hidden by a cheap drop ceiling and a drop ceiling, literally, yes, that's correct or it was like you were thinking before this guy is the monster remember And he just like pushed a ceiling up in the air which sounds cooler. So maybe it was that Either way, he pushes the thing up all the sensors were connected as a single unit all four sensors They were using and that that unit had one inbound wire and one outbound wire connected to the building alarm. So it would shoot an electric pulse through the thing and if the pulse didn't

come back, the whole building alarm would go off. If any of the sensors were tripped, it would break that circuit and it would set off the alarm. So he stripped the inbound wire and the outbound wire and clipped a new bridge wire between them. That kept the circuit together regardless of what happened with the sensors. Just, just, just. And he did all that fast enough that his enormous giant sweaty Italian body didn't get picked up by the heat sensor through that hair spray from like 12 hours ago. I'm sorry, and they needed an extra replica of the vault for this plan. I feel like you're good with a ladder and some wires that the matching upholstery that they

said probably wasn't necessary. No. It's a nice touch though. I like that. I like the replica. So the security system was completely disabled and they went to work opening the deposit boxes. They did this with a hand cranked drill. Oh, that's just showing off at that point. That's all that hand cranked drill. Yeah, and by 5.30 a.m., they'd cracked into 109 boxes. So they stuffed all their loot into duffle bags,

carried it all back the way they came through the neighboring office building, and into the getaway car, where Notre-Bartolo was waiting. And they drove away with about $100 million worth of diamonds. Wow. And Italian guys, you're going into 109 vault boxes with a hand crank drill at 530,

that vault smelled like a foot, man. That's what I need for this car. Whew. Yeah, so the team splits up at this point to leave town, and they're going to meet back up in Italy and check out their loot. But first, it's Notobartolo and Speedy's job to collect up all the incriminating evidence

of the stuff they've been planning and burn all that stuff. Apparently, they kept physical paper receipts from like Diamond thief best buy and they had to return their gadgets at some point. That's not going to go through again. I don't know. So they put all that stuff in a garbage bag with the plan to burn it once they're far enough out of town to feel safe.

But speedy is freaking out about three minutes into their 10 hour drive. And speedy insists they pull over right now and throw away the garbage Now keep in mind they're also carrying a hundred million dollars worth of diamonds in that same car But speedy is fixated on the fucking receipts. Is it sad that the second I started reading this part? I was like oh I'm the speedy. I'm the speedy What the fuck why would they leave this for after the fucking heist? Like, thank you.

If you're heisting on Tuesday, Monday is a great day for burning all your hears what we're doing Tuesday stuff. Or even just the split second, you realize that's stopping. What if they needed to return something on Monday evening? They're being safe. So they pull off the highway because Speedy's freaking out. They drive down a dirt road leading into the woods and they park.

And notabartolo tells Speedy, just wait in the car. I'm going to scout it out and find a good spot to burn the evidence. He finds a spot and he walks back to the car. But when he gets there, Speedy is just having a meltdown. He's a spot and he walks back to the car, but when he gets there, Speedy is just having a meltdown. He's completely fucked up the entire plan. That plan, to be clear, was sit in the car and wait and do nothing. But instead, Notre-Bartolo gets to watch his idiot friend trying very unsuccessfully to dump out the bag and spread the stuff all around the woods like he

could rub the mess into the carpet and not get in trouble with dead. Speedy's running around in a panic, he's trying to throw wads of loose paper into slightly different parts to the forest. Somehow he had spools of VHS tape pulled out of the casing, flying everywhere. Some of that stuck to branches, like a Christmas tree with tinsel. Some of it wrapped around his neck, and he managed to spill a bunch of the diamonds

onto the ground, too, while he was like, taking the garbage back out of the car. Yeah, yeah, Eli, you're the speedier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eli somehow got the entire steering wheel of the car, stuck in his ass at the speed. Yeah. Eli somehow got the entire steering wheel. The car stuck in his ass. Okay, I get the nickname though speedy. Speed not like fast, but more like does a lot of speed. That way too much speed. 100% math. Yes. So note about Tolo. Stairs at his idiot fucking friend hurling handfuls of garbage and diamonds all over the place Choking himself with big update

He's like, what the fuck are you doing you had one job do nothing and speedy says I Thought I heard someone come in so Notabartolo is like yeah cool any chance it was coming from exactly the direction I was walking from? Yeah, cool. Just get back in the car. So they just bolted at this point, leaving behind a very badly spread out pile of diamond heist receipts and literal diamonds.

Oh my God. Because back in my day when Dad said, we're not stopping, you did not fucking stop. What? Yeah. my day when dad said we're not stopping you did not fucking stop. So the whole team finally makes it to Italy for the rendezvous but meanwhile back in Belgium 59-year-old Weasel enthusiast I don't know why that was part I know that now there's a 59-year-old guy in Belgium He's a weasel enthusiast. His name is Augustine Camp. I'm called Good Camp.

That's rude. Oh, good. So they call it hop. This guy's big damn. He owns a strip of woods next to the highway. I guess the weasel's walking around his weird shitty property looking for garbage. Apparently local kids, and as we now know,

tragically stupid criminals were constantly dumping stuff there. He'd call the cops way too often about this, and they'd tell them to fuck himself, but not today. As usual, he's on the phone with the cops, and he starts reading off the details from the paper garbage he found, including an envelope from the Antwerp Diamond Center. All of a sudden, when he mentioned that, he got some attention. The cop on the other end is well aware that the biggest diamond heist in history just happened there. So pretty soon, a giant squad of literal dedicated

diamond police show-ups to collect all that evidence. There's really a squad for that. They have like a diamond police thing in Antwerp, yeah. Yeah, Antwerp, yeah. What the, sorry, I know that I am the worst person on this show, but if I am ever walking through my property, and I find that any part of it is covered in diamonds, unless there is a dead body right there.

I'm not calling anyone. I didn't find shit. Oh, I'm not sure we should be more disturbing. Tom, the fact that I was offended when you suggested you were worse than me, or the fact that I wasn't the only one on the call to do the same thing. Also, I don't see other dead body factors into what you do. If you slightly alive, you kind of have to call, but dead, what those diamonds? So, along with the warranty paperwork for diamond thief cameras and diamond thief wiring from the

diamond stealing imporium that they went to with notabartolo's name on them. They also found names and phone numbers for some obvious accomplices and they found a sandwich with a very specific type of slummy. And eventually, a few days later, they also find a receipt with a timestamp from a deli in the diamond district for a very specific type of salami. And the deli had security camera footage of the monster buying that exact salami two days before the heist. So they kind of put it all together.

Diamond, please go to the deli. Hey, buddy, we're looking for a certain kind of meat. Genoa salami? Genoa? Genoa? Genoa? Genoa. go to the dalle hey buddy we're looking for a certain kind of meat genoa salami so the cops must have a pretty good idea who did it at this point but now they had to find them and that's not easy unless of course the head diamond thief drives right back to Antwerp to return his rental car and pretend nothing happened. Not realizing the whole thing was blown up already by the garbage, Notre-Bartolo walks right back to the scene of the crime to be a normal tenant who definitely didn't leave town right after the giant heist.

But the cops are obviously waiting for him and he gets immediately detained for questioning. Try to turn around and walk out whistling way too hard. He's like, POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! Sir, you didn't whistle. You just poop. But, but, but how could he not know that it all but he was there. He was there when a guy was throwing the evidence around and shit didn't count on the weasel enthusiast that's classic the number of them it so here's the timeline when he drove back into Antwerp he dropped his wife off at their apartment and he asked her to completely empty the place out what just

put everything in their car and drive back to Italy. Oh my God, why? This part of the plant also did not have to wait. No, it's not, that's correct. Seriously, this is like figuring out, I don't know, how did distributive vaccine only after you made the vaccine? That's dumb, these guys are dumb.

No idea why none of the cleanup was just obviously a plan for it. Why? Fuck, there was years obviously a plan for it. Why? For it. Fuck! There was years of planning this whole thing. Anyway, they call this guy Logistic. Are you called in sick?

Well, regardless of how stupid this is, the cleanup that still had to be done included a bunch more diamonds from his like normal stash and possibly some other evidence that maybe he missed on that first cleanup. While the wife was doing that, he went to the Diamond Center to act completely normal and whistle, and that's where he ran to the cops. And when they started asking them a bunch of questions, his strategy became stalling as best he could to give his wife more time. So first, he pretended to be really bad at French and drew up your position like that. I'm sorry, I cannot possibly answer your questions without my translator Eli doing his French guy character.

I'm demons, you say? So that went on for way too long. Eventually, I'm assuming they got a cop who yelled in Italian and said, do just bring us to your apartment. That's where we're going right now. So note of our tollo very slowly agreed to that. And very slowly walked out to the police car. And then, man, swoon. And then very badly navigated them around the area. According to the police,

he pretended he couldn't figure out the directions to his own apartment from inside a car because he always walked. He always walked around there. Perfect. Directions are different in cars, but they finally get to the apartment and his wife, at that point, is literally walking out the front door, holding a giant box of incriminated and a rolled up carpet full of diamonds. If he had stalled about five more minutes, she would have been gone, along with most of the evidence to connect him directly. Well, except a signed robbery receipts

under the diamonds. Circumstantial. But instead, they caught him just in time. They were ahead of that five minutes. They arrest him. He's easily convicted. And he sent to prison for 10 years. And using that box of extra evidence, including a bunch of burner phone SIM cards, the police tracked down the other accomplices and put him in jail too.

Except for one, the king of Keys was never apprehended. Oh, he's in a truria. He's got one of those Epstein sentences. He's able to go out during the day and steal diamonds and come back to jail. Right. I got murdered by Hillary Clinton. So again, no, this guy's still alive too. Yeah, that's good. King of Keys, this guy's still alive too. Yeah,

King of keys never got caught still alive. And that's because like, look, if you caught him, you throw him in a person, he's the king of fucking key. He's just looking in the room next to his cell. And he's like, Oh, the key. Cool. Great. I didn't spend my apprenticeship at Ace Hardware for nothing guys. That's right, though. He never got caught and most of the diamonds never got recovered. And that brings us to the big unanswered question. Who was the mastermind who hired this Ocean's 11 crew and how much money did that guy get

away with stealing? Notabartolo claims it was the Jews again, but there's a speculation that he's just covering for the real mastermind his cousin in the Sicilian mafia. Whoever it was, that guy made some huge money and never got caught. Right, and notabartolo got to serve his prison sentence without someone adding a bunch of holes to his body. So everyone won, if you think about it, everyone won. Everyone did kind of win, except if you lost your diamonds. And the total might be way bigger than it seems. According to Notre-Bartolo, the heist was supposed to land him about 100 million dollars in diamonds.

But when they examined their loot after the getaway, he says they only had about 20 million dollars worth. Okay, all right. Which of the fucking guys was the diamond appraiser? I mean, was it the guy spinning around in the woods like a fucking evidence sprinkler? What? No, obviously, that could have been a lie from Notabartolo to make his crime sound smaller after getting caught.

But here's the other theory that's definitely true because it's more interesting and has a much more complex explanation. The citation. So needed story. The mastermind was working a double dip. He hired the team to steal $100 million in diamonds and he set up a deal to get a cut of that.

Then he tipped off a bunch of diamond dealers who used that vault and told them to remove their stash at the last minute. So all of those people, possibly including the mastermind himself, got to keep their diamonds and file insurance claims after the heist. Or no, no, no, no stash, $100 million of diamonds somewhere in Italy and 10 years in jail was 100% absolutely worth it. Yeah, absolutely worth it. Yep, yeah.

Definitely worth it. Absolutely, us. Yeah. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? Keyser Soze was the mastermind. Are you ready for the quiz? I'm ready.

All right, okay. Other than stealing diamonds, what else is there to do in Belgium? A, collect golden spurs. Well done. B, hop on hop off interior bank vault tours. Oh, see, have trouble making up your mind or D. Thank you. Outflank to French.

Ah. All right, I'm definitely going with the hop on hop off tour of the pegpool. How lax is the security there? I know they had layers of it, but like so many dumb fucking things they were doing on top. Wow. That is correct. Windows that you could just open from the outs, whatever. Alright, he's not heath. Obviously if this crew were diamond-high skies, we would need some pretty sweet nicknames. So what would our heist nicknames be? Hey, for Tom, pockets.

Thanks. For Cecil, Floby, for Noah, Fudy, for Eli, Stool, or for you, Heath, Ringtone. Okay. Why am I Ringtone? The Google pass and how... Could you don't question the phone? For real heath ringtone. What? Why am I ringtone?

The Google pass and how? Because you don't question the part. The part. Yeah, you get, that is not how questions work. I don't, I don't, I don't, this segment is not. It's all right. And slash a. How can you tell if you're the speedy of your heist crew?

A, mom said you get to pick your own nickname. Pete. Everyone in the crew keeps telling you that your job is just as important as everyone else's. Maybe more. Pfft. You're seeing, that's so rough. You're the only member of the heist crew related to the guy planning the heist.

Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. By the way, Speedy's entire jump during the heist was just have a cell phone and like kind of run upstairs a couple stories from the vault level and call Notre-Bartola and be like, okay, we're still stealing diamonds,

we'll be back, and then run back down. And then run back up and be like, okay, we're still stealing them, we're coming a little bit. Speedy wasn't even the fucking driver? No, he wasn't even the driver. Notre-Bartola was the driver. Yeah, yeah So to answer your question, he like D all the above all that is incorrect. It is just B and C

Wow Your mom didn't tell you got to pick your own nickname no Winner She didn't. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable.

That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable.

That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's patreon.com.slayestitationpod. Or leave us a five star view, every weekend.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect to us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. I Right we're in knives are the guards taking out. Yeah, they I took the fucking guards out. Yeah Speedster you're ready with the car ready than a debut don't on a moonlit Sunday night. All right bitch tits have you cracked the safe? Bitch tits bitch tits Bitch tits! Bitch tits! Yes, yup, yes, I- I cracked the safe.

Well done, bitch tits! You're the best, bitch tits! I knew you could fucking do it, bitch tits! Thank you! Fucking bitch tits is the man, that's- I was here for bitch tits! Fucking titties! Can we go over to chat myself?

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