Flawless

by Scott Selby

  On March 8, 2009, Notarbartolo was released from prison. Four days later, Wired posted its article online, before the magazine hit newsstands. A week later, Notarbartolo got the deal he’d been angling for: Variety reported on March 16 that film producer J. J. Abrams had bought the movie rights to Davis’s article as part of Abrams’s film deal with Paramount Pictures. Part of the deal Davis had arranged with Notarbartolo, according to Hollywood Reporter, was for Davis to obtain Notarbartolo’s “life rights,” which could be sold to a film studio, in exchange for telling his story.

  Davis was named as an executive producer on the future film.

  By the summer of 2009, all of the men convicted in the “heist of the century” had benefitted from early release programs in the countries where they were held and were again free men. D’Onorio was released in January, Notarbartolo in March, and Finotto and Tavano in July. The last two had served their sentences in Italy, thanks to the work of their defense attorneys who successfully argued against their extradition to Belgium.

  Notarbartolo served the most time of them all—just over six years. It was hardly a steep price to pay, considering that none of the diamonds had been recovered and it was assumed the men would return to their homes to enjoy a life of quiet luxury financed by the spoils of the diamond heist.

  That may well have been the case had the Italian police not been so unwilling to let the case rest. On the afternoon of July 14, 2009, the police stopped and searched Notarbartolo’s car in Milan. He was driving a brand new gray BMW 120 D five-door hatchback. It was a flashy car for a man newly released from prison, but, as with all of his other family property, the car was registered in his wife’s name.

  According to press reports, police claimed Notarbartolo was stopped because he was acting “suspicious.” With him were a sixty-three-year-old man whom the police hadn’t identified and that man’s twenty-three-year-old son. All that was known at the time of this writing was that the older man was well known to the investigators in the Mobile Squadron and he was not one of the men convicted in the heist.

  Of more interest to police than Notarbartolo’s traveling companions was what authorities found stuffed between the sports car’s seats: approximately a kilogram of rough and polished diamonds dispersed among twenty-one bags and one envelope. Notarbartolo claimed he bought the diamonds in London and that there were not gem quality diamonds, but cheap industrial diamonds. A few days later, he produced a receipt for their purchase showing that the diamonds had been bought on June 3, 2008 (while he was in prison), for 10,450 from a company called Profile Business Service Limited of London. Italian police believed the receipt was a fake.

  The diamonds were confiscated and, once again, the Italian and Belgian police focused their attention on Leonardo Notarbartolo. Italian police e-mailed photos of the diamonds to the Belgian detectives. From the pictures, De Bruycker could see they were a mixture of rough and polished stones, but without analyzing them in a lab, it was impossible to tell whether they were connected to the heist. He immediately began making arrangements to fly to Italy to retrieve the diamonds for testing in Belgium, which required permission from the Italian courts. The detectives were elated at the prospect that the goods might be part of the loot that they had given up hope of recovering.

  “We are, of course, very excited. Can you imagine?” De Bruycker said a few days after he’d received the news. “Of course, our task is to see if these diamonds originated from the theft in 2003.”

  The excitement soon turned to frustration, however. While it would take only a few hours for experts to compare the confiscated goods to the inventory of stolen stones, Italian bureaucracy soon proved as hard to cut through as the diamonds themselves. The detectives waited months for the Italians to permit them to take possession of the stones. As summer turned to autumn, still the diamonds remained unanalyzed. “It’s too long, but it’s not in our hands, it’s not in our power. We’re waiting for the permission to come,” said Detective Kris De Bot in late September.

  Even if the diamonds proved to be from the heist, Notarbartolo would be unlikely to face new charges unless the detectives could build a separate case against him.

  “Leo cannot be condemned anymore for the same thing,” De Bruycker said. “He was convicted for the theft, so [even if he were] to sell these diamonds, you cannot convict him anymore. Of course, we can confiscate [the diamonds] and maybe—maybe—there are possibilities for a new investigation in Italy on money laundering, but those are things that we have to discuss with the colleagues and the magistrates in Italy.

  “You can’t convict the thief for stealing something and then convict him again for selling it,” De Bruycker said.

  It’s a different story for the two men who were in the car with Notarbartolo when the diamonds were discovered. Since they were not among those convicted of the heist, investigators might bring charges against them if they can show they received, trafficked, or dealt in any way with the stolen diamonds.

  Of course, there was also the possibility that Notarbartolo was telling the truth, that these were low-value industrial diamonds having nothing to do with the Diamond Center heist. Once the diamond detectives have the stones, it will be easy for them to get an expert determination as to whether they are cheap industrials worth around 10,000 (as Notarbartolo claimed) or valuable stones worth a small fortune.

  No matter how this situation played out, no one in the Diamond District expected it to lead to a full recovery of the stolen goods.

  “Maybe it’s the beginning of the recovery of some or all of the diamonds, but people here are very realistic,” said Philip Claes of the AWDC. “They took so many things with them that people realize that it’s almost impossible to recover everything.”

  Indeed, Claes said that rather than being hopeful that the discovery would lead to a positive conclusion, the general mood among the people in the Diamond District was one of anger. “The feeling here is that they got out very early,” Claes said. “They’ve done their time and that’s it. Now they can start spending money if they do it in a cautious way . . . That’s frustrating. When you know what they took with them, they earned their money very fast.

  “Maybe you can ask yourself, ‘Is it all worthwhile?’ when they are released so early,” he said.

  That may be a question the diamond detectives ponder after seeing the thieves they worked so hard to catch released from prison after just a handful of years, but for Notarbartolo, Finotto, Tavano, and D’Onorio, the answer is clear. The risk, the difficulty, and even their capture and incarceration for the largest diamond heist in history seems to have been well worth the price they paid.

  They have the rest of their lives—and a fortune in stolen diamonds—to make up for lost time.

  JOINT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book has been a long time in the making and was reliant on the generous help of numerous people in several countries.

  Our list of thanks must start with our literary agents, Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary Management and Ayesha Pande of Collins Literary Agency. Their hard work and dedication early in the process made this book possible. Everyone at the Union Square Press imprint of Sterling Publishing showed amazing dedication and support for the book at every step of the way. Editor Iris Blasi is deserving of special thanks for championing this book and working tirelessly to make it shine. Without her help, this would have been a lesser work. Thanks as well to production editor Mary Hern, copyeditor Jessie Leaman, designer Gavin Motnyk, and publicist Caroline Mann. Also, we’d like to thank Philip Turner for seeing the value in our project early on.

  For help with understanding various Italian legal issues, we would like to thank Ciro Grandi of the University of Ferrara and Franco Impalà. Special thanks go to Valentina Zuccherino for help with Italian law and translation, but also with our research while in Turin.

  We would like to thank several journalists, but none more so than Simon Surowicz, formerly of ABC’s Primetime Live. Without his initial w
ork on this story, it’s safe to say that later reporters would have had a far more difficult, if not impossible, time locating sources and information. We would also like to thank Michael Freilich of Joods Actueel, filmmaker Todd Moss, Lodovico Poletto of La Stampa, and Jean-Charles Verwaest of Het Nieuwsblad.

  Special thanks go to the members of diamond squad of the Belgian Federal Police of Antwerp and the Squadra Mobile of the Italian State Police in Turin. Also to Peter Kerkhof, Crime Scene Officer, Belgian Federal Police, Antwerp Forensics Lab.

  In Antwerp, we would like to thank Lucien Cornelissens, the director of the Antwerpsche Diamantkring, for a tour of his bourse in February 2006; the staff of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, especially Karin De Mulder for a tour of the Beurs voor Diamanthandel; and Jennie Baeten for a tour of the HRD laboratory. In addition, Philip Claes, Chief Officer of Corporate Affairs for the AWDC, was extremely helpful.

  In Amsterdam, Barry Wels, Annet Crouwel, and Paul Crouwel shared their expertise in lock picking and safe cracking. Pieter De Vlaam, Manager of Testing and Certification of LIPS/Gunnebo, helped immensely with vault issues and LIPS history. Paul De Vos provided invaluable information about the Diamond Center’s vault and was more than hospitable with his time. Thanks for the waffles and the wine, Paul.

  For help with Antwerp and its rich diamond related history, thanks go to Vera Verschooren of Stad Antwerpen/Toerisme Antwerpen; Marteen Gillis and the Antwerp Diamond Museum; and the Stadsarchief of Stad Antwerpen.

  Others who contributed valuable help include Johanna Bergman Lodin for research in Sierra Leone; Michael Maggiano and Jennifer Dawn Rogers for advice from Hollywood; Jo-Ann Garbutt; Antonino Falleti for tours of Turin and for introducing the authors to Punt e Mes and limoncello; Christophe Olsen for showing the authors around his Antwerp apartment, Leonardo Notarbartolo’s former heist headquarters; Fay Vidal; Tyler Moore; Christoffer Jerkeby; Ben Theunis; David P. McGuinn of Safe Deposit Specialists; Dr. Emmanuel Fritsch, professor at the University of Nantes; Denice Oliver of Oliver Insurance Services; Lieve Peeters of Infinity Diamonds; David Horowitz of IDH Diamonds; Retired Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clark of Gemesis Corp.; August Van Camp for telling his tale yet again (thanks for the pumpkins, Gust); Stef Leunens of KBC Group NV; Carl Alberto Bettini, Antonia Bonito, Elisa Galuppi, Angela Pizzolla, and Monica Quarra for translation from Italian; Elke Van Rompuy and Leendert Trouw for translation from Flemish/Dutch; Bettina Wirbladh for translation from Portuguese; August Evans for translation from French.

  Special thanks to Xennie Doolhof for her willingness to accompany the authors throughout Belgium providing translation services, and to researcher Julia Symmes Cobb for organizing and making sense of three years’ worth of documents.

  Thanks to our friends Johan Åkesson and Jakob Sönnerstedt for accommodations in Antwerp, as well as their willingness to teach the authors all about Belgian beer. In Turin, thanks go to Elisa Dal Bosco and the rest of the helpful staff of the Town House 70.

  There are many others who assisted in valuable ways, but who preferred to remain anonymous. We thank them for their contributions.

  Greg Campbell: I would like to thank Leonardo Notarbartolo for the gracious meeting while behind bars in Hasselt prison, and Julie Boost for not calling the police when I tested the CCTV surveillance in the Diamond Center by going to the vault level without permission. I cannot possibly thank my family enough for their love and support. My wife, Rebecca Campbell, and my son, Turner Campbell, kept me sane and grounded through many long weeks. I promise to take you guys next time I go to Italy. Thanks too to my parents for a lifetime of love and support, as well as to my close friends Chris Hondros and Joel Dyer for their advice and their enduring friendship. A special thanks is due the staff at the Bean Cycle in Fort Collins. Finally, I’d like to reiterate my thanks to my agent, Ayesha Pande, for pushing me to new heights and believing in my work. A writer couldn’t ask for a better combination of coach, guru, and therapist, and I’m in her debt.

  Scott Andrew Selby: I’d like to thank my family: my brother Todd; my parents Richard and Rikki; Maria Olga Garcia and her son Christopher; and my cousins Marc (and Vicky) Goldstone, Mitchell Goldstone, and Carl Berman.

  My agent, Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary Agency, worked tirelessly to put together this book deal, and I will be forever grateful to him.

  I’m indebted to the Raoul Wallenberg Center at Lund University, where I wrote my masters thesis on blood diamonds and man-made diamonds. I’d especially like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Mpazi Sinjela.

  I’ve been fortunate enough to have some amazing teachers over the years that I would like thank James Cerillo of Northfield Mount Hermon; Kathleen Moran of UC Berkeley; Stephen Sugarman of Boalt School of Law (UCB); and Daniel Meltzer, Frank Michelman, and Charles Nesson of Harvard Law.

  I’d also like to thank my friends who’ve helped at some point with this project or with other projects of mine. These include Nicolette Amette, Phyllis Asher, Åsa Borgas, Mara Cates, Laura Dawson, Cori Dulmage, Janet Dreyer, Kristina Edman, Valgerður Eggertsdóttir, August Evans, Catherine Culvahouse Fox, Anna Gilbert, Heather Gordon, Grétar Halldór Gunnarsson, Jane Hait, Ashley Harder, Christina Holder, Kerstin Jonusas, Mandy Jonusas, David Kairis, Kate Klonick, Kate Lacey, Katherine Lampert, Rachel McCullough-Sanden, Gabriel Meister, Annie O’Hare, Jessica Pilot, Annabel Raw, William Salzmann, Jeremy Sirota, Alfred “Dave” Steiner, Amber Sterling, Sara Turner, Miako Ushio, Nader Vossoughian, Evan Webb, and Abigail Wick.

  Finally, thanks to the cafés where I’ve worked on this project over the years. In New York City: Blackbird Parlour, Café Gitane, El Beit, McNally Jackson Café, Marlow, Mud, Teany, Think Coffee, and Verb. In Orange County, California: Neighborhood Cup. In Malmö (Sweden): Glassfabriken and Café Simpan.

  APPENDIX

  Leonardo Notarbartolo

  Elio D’Ornio

  Ferdinando Finotto

  Pietro Tavano

  The four members of The School of Turin who were convicted, jailed, and released for pulling off the heist of the century: Leonardo Notarbartolo, the charming inside man who for more than two years played the part of a mild-mannered Italian diamantaire; Ferdinando Finotto, the well-rounded master criminal whose failed 1997 bank robbery provided a template for the 2003 Diamond Center heist; Elio D’Onorio, the alarms specialist who most likely discovered the ingenious solutions to defeating the Diamond Center’s most daunting security measures; and Pietro Tavano, Notarbartolo’s longtime trusted friend who was later blamed for sending them all to prison.

  This tattered invoice from Elio D’Onorio, which gives an estimate on the cost of installing a video surveillance system at Leonardo Notarbartolo’s front company, was pieced together by detectives after it was found with the heist garbage in the Floordambos. It was one of many clues that led to the identification of those who robbed the Diamond Center.

  HISTORIC HEISTS

  Putting together a list of the ten biggest heists turned out to be a much more complicated task than one would expect. The first issue that came up was deciding what constitutes a “heist.”

  We omitted any cases in which a government took money from its own bank, as happened before the fall of Nazi Germany or Iraq. The same rationale applies to corruption by a government leader such as former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda. We also took out art heists, since values for stolen famous works do not reflect the actual market value of the stolen goods. For example, if someone stole the Mona Lisa, it could be valued at an astronomical figure, but no one would buy it for anything near what it’s worth. Its real value would be what it could fetch on the black market, which would be very little, or in reward or in ransom.

  The next issue was the amount stolen. Although news reports used specific figures for the amounts believed to have been taken, numerous problems often exist with such numbers. As we’ve seen with the Antwerp diamond heist, the amounts given are generally estimates and sometimes it’s hard to put an exact
number on the losses, such as with a safe deposit box job. Even when a single business, such as Harry Winston, was hit, the question arises whether the amount cited was the wholesale value or the retail value and how much the thieves could expect to make fencing such goods.

  Another problem pertains to currency exchanges. For instance, the estimate given by police at the time of the Antwerp diamond heist was more than 100 million. A prosecutor later alleged it was closer to 400 million. We used the exchange values at the time of the heist, but that lowers the dollar amount of the Antwerp diamond heist versus the Harry Winston heist as the value of the euro against the dollar went up in the meantime, making the two amounts look much closer in dollars than they do in euros.

  The Graff Diamonds heist happened after this chart had first been drawn up, knocking the Brink’s-Mat heist from the “World’s Ten Biggest Heists.” Brink’s-Mat was the theft of three tons of gold worth $37.5 million at the time. It took place on November 26, 1983, in London.

  World’s Ten Biggest Heists:

  World’s Five Biggest Jewel Heists:

  Sources for amounts of heists:

  1. Diamond Center: Three days after the heist was discovered, authorities released an estimate of at least 100 million. Given that it was a safe deposit robbery, an exact figure for the amount stolen was impossible to obtain. As the investigation proceeded, the estimate went up. During the trial, a prosecutor told the judges that he believed the amount stolen to be closer to 400 million. The exchange rate at the time of the heist, February 15, 2003, was 1 euro to 1.08 dollars. Some American news reports forgot to convert the figure at all, giving an erroneous number of $100 million. The euro has since gone up in value so if it were converted at the same time as, say, the 2008 Harry Winston heist, it would produce a much higher dollar figure. For instance, at the time of this writing, July 4, 2009, 1 euro was worth about 1.40 dollars, which would put the value of this heist at $140 million to $560 million. If this chart were in euros, it would be clearer that the Antwerp diamond heist was much bigger than the runner-up with 100–400 million versus 80 million for Harry Winston.