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Monday, 29 July 2013
It was just like a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock crime caper "To Catch a Thief." The same hotel. The sparkly jewels. The robbery.
Only this was real life.
A robber, his face
covered by a hat and a scarf threatened to shoot attendees at a
exhibition in Canne's Carlton Hotel, setting of the 1955 movie, on
Sunday. Within minutes he had escaped with $136 million worth of jewels: security guards at the show were unarmed, while the man had a semi-automatic pistol.
The robbery is the third
high-profile jewelery heist in Cannes in Southern France in only three
months. During the Cannes film festival in May, a necklace worth $2.6
million (2 million euros) was stolen from a hotel party shortly after
more than $1 million worth of jewels were stolen from a safe in a hotel
room.
The high-profile thefts follow a brazen heist in neighboring Belgium in February. A gang of eight men managed to snatch $50 million worth of diamonds from a plane on Brussels Airport -- within only eight minutes.
"It comes as a big
surprise that something like this is possible," said Jan Van der
Cruysse, a spokesman for Brussels Airport. "But of course, this is
rather connected to banditism and organized crime rather than aviation
security."
Yet such incidents have a history.
From 1960s gangster
film-style armed robberies to elaborate stunts involving drag queens and
fake beards, thieves from around the world have tried almost anything
to get hold of diamonds. Here are some of the biggest heists they pulled
off:
On Valentine's Day weekend in February 2003, $100 million worth of precious stones were snatched from the Antwerp Diamond Center.
The thieves, headed by
Leonardo Notarbartolo, reportedly managed to penetrate some of the most
advanced security measures, including hi-tech combination locks, motion
and heat sensors -- and 18-inch steel doors.
The gangsters even
changed the tapes of the security cameras in the building to avoid being
identified. They did, however, make one mistake: they left behind a
half-eaten sandwich with DNA samples on it. They were arrested after
months-long police operation involving detectives in several countries.
The jewels were never recovered.
The sensational robbery inspired a book "Flawless -- Inside the Largest Diamond heist in the History."
In March 2007,
a man using the name Carlos Hector Flomenbaum adopted an unorthodox
approach to robbery. Swapping weapons for chocolates and charm,
Flomenbaum became a frequent customer at ABN Amro bank in Antwerp.
Befriending the bank staff, who believed he was a successful diamond
trader, he gained their trust and acquired a key to the bank's vault.
Once he had the key, he
simply let himself in and walked out of the front door with 120,000
carats of diamonds, worth $28 million.
In mid-May 2008,
four armed robbers -- two disguised as women -- walked into a jewelry
store in Paris. Once inside, they pulled out their weapons, forced the
customers and employees into a corner, and grabbed jewels out of display
cases and safes.
Swiping an estimated 80
million euros ($102 million) worth of jewels, the "drag queen robbery"
became one of the biggest heists in history.
On New Year's Eve 2008,
two armed men casually walked into a shop called Dialite Imports, one
of New York's diamond district shops. Dressed in traditional
Orthodox-jewish clothing accessorized with fake beards, they quickly
gained access to the store's safe, spray-painting two security cameras
in the process. They disappeared with $4 million in diamonds and other jewels.
The heist later turned
out to be an elaborate inside job set up by the store's co-owners, who
were $1 million in debt, six months behind on their rent and acquired a
new insurance policy shortly before the robbery.
In 2009,
two sharp-suited men walked into Graff Jewellers on central London's
New Bond Street. In the middle of the afternoon, with people walking on
the streets outside, they threatened employees with handguns and managed
to steal 43 items, with a value of about £40 million ($65 million).
In 1994 three men armed with a machine gun stormed into the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France.
They stole jewels valued at £30 million ($43 million) from a jewelry
shop in the hotel. Reportedly, the rounds they had been firing were
blanks -- which did not prevent them from gaining the world's biggest
gems robbery record in Guinness Book of Records.
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