The jeweler of Italian origin had a suspicious past on the black market, although this could never be proven. He always assured that his business was completely legal and that the robbery arose when someone approached him while he was having a coffee in a bar on the street. Hoveniersstraat,and made him a proposal that he couldn’t refuse.
Notarbartolo tells investigators that someone, whose identity he never revealed, told him: “Would you accept a payment of 100,000 euros to answer a single question?” When the jeweler accepts, this person asks him a simple question: “Is it possible to rob the World Diamond Center?”
For that amount of money, Notarbartolo agreed to investigate the vault and discover if its security had weak and vulnerable points that would make a million-dollar robbery possible. The first step was to rent a safe in the vault, something that was not difficult for him because they already knew him and he had an office in the same building.
To record everything possible he got a pen with a small hidden camera. For this purpose, under the excuse of storing or removing stones, he photographed the interior of the vault every time he accessed his safe. It managed to detect each of the alarm systems, sensors and surveillance cameras: There were ten security systems.
With all the data under his possession, Notarbartolo contacted three Italian men, with whom he had once worked: the Geniusa specialist in disabling alarms; Monsterexpert in opening locks and electrical systems, and excellent car driver; he King of the Keysa locksmith capable of replicating the keys to the vault without even having the originals; and speedyhis thief friend who acted in cold blood.
A year after the financier asked him the question of the 100,000 euros, Notarbartolo met him in a warehouse on the outskirts of Antwerp, with a detailed model of the World Diamond Center. “It is possible to do it”assured the Italian jeweler.
He Friday February 14 The risky robbery plan begins. Notarbartolo entered the vault for the last time with the excuse of keeping some diamonds, taking the opportunity to spray the heat and motion sensors with a lacquer spray (a type of varnish). This way, the alarm wouldn’t go off when they entered.
He sunday 16 The final of the Diamond Game would be played, a tournament organized by diamond merchants that was a must for fans. The ideal day to take the hit. With the neighborhood streets almost empty, Notarbartolo drove a Peugeot 307 rented to the neighboring construction of the World Diamond Center. The King of the keys, for his part, opened the lock and the Genie went up to the roof. From there, he went to the building where they were going to carry out the robbery. They managed to enter.
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They began to cover the security cameras with black plastic and reached the vault. They turned off the lights, opened the door, and the Monster walked eleven steps in the dark toward the center. Everything had been calculated millimeters.
After deactivating the alarms, it was time to get to work: they opened the safes with hand drills so as not to activate the seismic sensors on the walls. The deadline was 5:30 in the morning, after that moment, the employees would begin to arrive. By then they had opened a hundred safe deposit boxes.
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A fatal mistake
They left the way they had entered, loaded the Peugeot 307 with the loot and went to the Notarbartolo department, where they separated the gold, jewels, coins and diamonds from the papers and documents that they found in the safe deposit boxes. They put these in another bag to burn themalong with invoices and plans of the vault that if the police were to find them, they would link them to the robbery.
The escape was in two cars: The Genie, the King of the Keys and the Monster left for a shelter; while, Notarbartolo and Speedy went towards the Belgian border with France.
After storing the loot in a safe place, the last duo headed to their destination with the bag of documents in the car. Notarbartolo planned to burn the contents once they were in France, but Speedy, afraid that an operation would search them at the border, insisted on setting them on fire in the middle of the field.
They stopped near a farm, but when they were about to light the pile of papers, the owner of the place heard noises and saw them. They escaped leaving the bag. The farmer, without looking at the documents, called the police to report that some men were throwing garbage on his property. The robbery of the tills was already news of international relevance. Therefore, when the police checked them, they raised the alert. A simple mistake that would cost them their freedom.
In the documents they found clues to identify the thieves. Thanks to a half-eaten sandwich and a ticket from a bakery, they checked the business’s security cameras and discovered a man whom they were able to identify as Ferdinando Finotto, alias Monster.
In addition, there was an invoice in the name of Leonardo Notarbartolo for the purchase of a portable camera, and a card Elio D’onorioan electrician, alias the Genius. They analyzed the calls from a phone registered with the jeweler’s name and many calls were detected with Pietro Tavanolater recognized as speedy. A few days after the theft, all its authors, except The King of the Keys, were identified.
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Arrests and sentences
Unaware of the progress the police had made, Notarbartolo returned to his office so as not to arouse suspicion. There, they detained him without a single diamond in his possession. Interpol captured the Genie and Speedy in the Italian cities where they had taken refuge. And until November 2007, the Monster was on the run and was arrested after a long investigation to track him down.
The three received sentences of five years, and Notarbartolo ten years in prison. This is because he was the ideologue of the operation. After six years in prison, he was released for good behavior, but was arrested again and had to serve the rest of his sentence for not compensating the victims. The Italian jeweler insisted he couldn’t do it because he didn’t have the loot.
He claimed that almost all the proceeds of the robbery were in the possession of the financier who had hired him and that many of the boxes that had been violated were empty, that they had only taken a loot of 18 million dollars. According to him, those boxes had been emptied by their own owners shortly before the theft in order to later collect the insurance.
To this day, investigators believe that the financier never existed but that the theft was always a exclusive plan of criminals. Whether this is true or a lie, the loot still doesn’t appear.
Source: Ambito
