Robbers used hairspray to carry out “Largest Diamond Heist in History”!
By ANITuesday, February 16, 2010
MELBOURNE - The mystery behind the world’s largest diamond robbery, where thieves hauled gems, cash and other valuables worth around 390 million dollars from a diamond centre in Antwerp, Belgium, may have finally been solved.
A new book reconstructing the raid, “Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History”, says a gang of thieves disabled a vault motion detector at Antwerp Diamond Center by obscuring its lens with hair spray and wrapping a microwave sensor with a polystyrene panel.
“The thieves were incredibly ingenious but also took advantage of human error. The vault door required both a combination code and key - the key was left in a storeroom just a few feet away,” the Daily Telegraph quoted one of the book’s authors, Greg Campbell, as saying.
The thieves then used a giant corkscrew like tool to open 109 of the 189 deposit boxes. One box held 140 diamonds; another held 120 large rough diamonds. One diamond dealer lost 1million dollars in cash.
The four gang members were jailed for the 2003 theft from the diamond center, which was though to be the safest vault in the world at time, but the diamonds have still not been found. (ANI)
