Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
The heist of the century! Ten years before the recent Brussels diamond theft, daring diamond thieves made off with gems worth almost twice as much. On February 15, 2003, thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in Antwerp, never tripping an alarm, and made off with over $108 million worth...
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The heist of the century! Ten years before the recent Brussels diamond theft, daring diamond thieves made off with gems worth almost twice as much. On February 15, 2003, thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in Antwerp, never tripping an alarm, and made off with over $108 million worth of diamonds and other valuables.Although the crime was perfect, the getaway was not. The police zeroed in on a band of professional thieves fronted by Leonardo Notarbartolo, a dapper Italian who had rented an office in the Diamond Center and clandestinely cased its vault for over two years. The “who” of the crime had been answered, but the “how” remained a mystery.Scott Andrew Selby, a Harvard Law grad and diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, author of Blood Diamonds, embarked on a global chase to uncover the true story behind the stunning heist. Tracking the threads of the crime throughout Europefrom Belgium to Italy, in seedy cafés and sleek diamond officesthe authors sorted through an array of conflicting details, divergent opinions and incongruous theories to put together the puzzle of what actually happened that Valentine’s Day weekend.This real-life Ocean’s Elevena combination of diamond history, journalistic reportage, and riveting true-crime storyprovides a thrilling in-depth study detailing the better-than-fiction heist of the century.
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Format: ebook
ISBN:
9781402779152 (1402779151)
Publish date: February 2nd 2010
Publisher: Union Square Press
Pages no: 310
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Mystery,
Art,
Thriller,
Mystery Thriller,
Crime,
True Crime,
True Story,
Belgium
Fair to middlin'. What I thought was going to be an exciting thriller, advertised as "the largest diamond heist in history", was rather flat both in the story and in the telling. The details of the planning and the heist itself were described as if our "school of Turin" was a crew of plumbers off t...
This book was very fascinating read for the largest diamond heist in history. It begins in 2003 where a group of men robbed one of the most ultra-secure vaults in the diamond district in Antwerp, but was it really? You know from the very beginning of the book that at least one thief was apprehended,...