In a scene that might have been taken out of a John Grisham mystery novel, Leonardo Notarbartolo, the mobster and mastermind behind the $100 million diamond heist-of-the-century from a vault beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center in 2003, has now made a “prison confession” alleging that he was the victim of a sting organized by a Jewish diamond dealer, who allegedly had a number of accomplices. The weird (and rather outrageous and unsubstantiated) history rewrite will appear in an enthralling (10-page, 7,700 words) story by Joshua Davis in the forthcoming issue of Wired magazine, and will be repeated in a movie to be produced by Paramount Pictures, which has acquired the story’s film rights.

The bottom line is a ludicrous attempt to transfer the “real guilt” of the heist from Sicilian mobsters to Antwerp diamond dealers. Pure profanity in my eyes – and probably mostly an effort to renew interest in an old story – and, maybe, to add a promotional twist to the movie.     

The timing of the allegations is clear. Notarbartolo, arrested in February 2003 for the theft of diamonds gold, jewelry and valuables, is being released from prison in Belgium this week. While three of his alleged four accomplices are still serving prison sentences for their involvement in the robbery, Notarbartolo may already be on his way to retrieving the stolen goods, which were never discovered by the authorities. In his “confession,” he alleges the loot he has hidden is only worth a meager $20 million, which may just be to deceive his partners in crime and their families who will certainly be waiting for him outside the prison walls.

Agim De Bruycker, the chief of Antwerp’s Diamond Squad, believes the heist involved more than $100 million. In The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist, Notarbartolo discloses intricate details about how his gang of thieves managed to infiltrate an "impenetrable" vault protected by ten layers of security … The simple mistakes made and a number of coincidences after the robbery that led the police to the gang …. And it includes the new revelation that the massive diamond heist might actually have been a cover-up for a colossal insurance fraud.

Sicilian-born Notarbartolo, who allegedly has family connections to the Italian mafia, considered the vault the safest place to keep valuables in Antwerp and even stored his own treasures there. Three years prior to the diamond heist Notarbartolo rented an office in the Diamond Center, and he claims to have carried out a number of smaller-scale robberies in Antwerp, fencing off his spoils to a few trusted buyers.

According to career criminal and self-confessed liar Notarbartolo, one of these buyers – a Jewish diamond dealer – approached him in Antwerp in the summer of 2001 seeking to hire him to raid the vault.

Training in a Mock-Up of the Vault

The suggestion is given that huge investments were made by the unnamed diamond dealer who supposedly ordered the heist. According to these new confessions, the diamond dealer initially paid $130,000 for Notarbartolo to 'scope" out the vault, assessing its potential for being invaded.

Months after Notarbartolo told the dealer that the heist was impossible, the Sicilian was asked to meet the dealer at an address outside Antwerp. Inside an abandoned warehouse, Notarbartolo was confronted with a massive structure covered with black plastic tarps. Upon stepping inside the structure, Notarbartolo realized he was inside an exact replica of the Diamond Center's vault level. As far as Notarbartolo could tell, the dealer had reconstructed it based on the photographs he had provided. Inside the fake vault, there were three Italians whom the dealer had chosen to form Notarbartolo’s team. Notarbartolo now tries to present himself as only small fry in the bigger scoop of things.

After months of planning, the team carried out the perfect robbery on a Saturday night in February 2003 – the heist wasn’t even discovered until guards checked the vault on Monday morning. Actually, Antwerp’s diamond industry’s "Who’s Who" were attending a wedding of the managing director of the HRD next door. No one noticed.

The thieves had so much loot to carry that they left the floor of the vault strewn with cash and safe contents in their efforts to remove as much as they could haul before the city began to spring to life on the Sunday morning.

The training in the mockup vault had been so intense that no lights were used during the heist itself – also to avoid the heat of light being detected. Therefore, it was only upon examining the valuables at their safe house, well after they had left the scene of the crime, that the thieves’ enthusiasm over the perfect job began to wane. When they opened satchel after satchel that they expected to contain handfuls of diamonds, they found nothing. Most of the bags they retrieved from 109 of some 189 safe-deposit boxes in the vault were empty. Notarbartolo had expected the value of the loot total to exceed $100 million, but says the thieves ‘only’ had about $20 million.

The Mobster was Conned?

Notarbartolo came to the realization that the heist he had spent so much time planning might have actually been part of an elaborate insurance scam. The diamond dealer who initiated the robbery may have tipped off a number of his fellow merchants, who removed their inventory — both legal and illegal - from the vault before the heist. Each of them could then claim that their legitimate gems were stolen and collect the insurance while secretly keeping all their stones. The gems could have easily been transferred from the vault to safes in their offices or homes. The $20 million worth of loot that the thieves had retrieved came from traders who were not involved in the scam, according to the insurance scam theory.

There is a very unpleasant secondary element to all of this. Denice Oliver, the adjuster who investigated the robbery for insurers, says that there were roughly $25 million in claims, all of which was documented by legitimate invoices. Detective De Bruycker, working on the basis that three quarters of the diamond business is carried out under the table, calculated that at least another $75 million in goods was stolen, bringing the total value of the heist to about $100 million.

Why, for Heaven’s sake, are the police assuming that the vaults held $75 million worth of so-called "illegal" (reference to "undeclared") goods? Is there any iota of evidence for that? Or it is just the standard operating assumption of the Belgian police that three out of every four dollars value in a vault must be "illegal" goods?

But let’s leave that issue for another day.

The Scheme that Doesn’t Make Sense

The author of the Wired magazine story apparently is also troubled by the sting or scam accusation. As the writer tells it, “on January 4, 2009, I see Notarbartolo for the last time. Over the past 14 weeks, we have met seven times in the prison visiting room, and yet questions remain. Was $100 million stolen as the police estimate, or just $20 million as Notarbartolo insists? Does it make sense that the heist was part of a larger insurance scam or is Notarbartolo's story a decoy to throw suspicion on others? Perhaps Notarbartolo's cousin, the Mafia don, was behind the whole thing. Whatever the truth, where is the loot now?” he asks.

The writer suggests that "if Notarbartolo's insurance scam theory is correct, it went down like this: The dealers who were in on it removed their goods — both legal and illegal — from the vault before the heist and then filed claims on the legitimate gems. The insurance expert Oliver calls this the ‘double whammy' — these dealers would have gotten the insurance payouts and kept their stock. The $20 million found by the thieves belonged to traders not in on the scam."

If there were no insurance claims, then the story is obviously a hoax – a tremendous lie, as well as a slander and slur on the Antwerp diamond community. The author does consider the possibility that there was no insurance scam, arguing the thought that “the thieves actually found $100 million in the vault and Notarbartolo has spun a story to cloud the true origins of the heist.” That sounds rather plausible.

The actual size of the loss is never actually discussed. At a minimum, there were $25 million worth of insurance claims. Admittedly, not all goods may have been insured. But $100 million? That’s just the kind of amount on which novels are based and from which screenplays are written.

Regardless of which theory is correct, there is agreement that the thieves got away with millions that were never recovered. Notarbartolo refuses to talk about what happened to the goods, adding that it is something best discussed once he is out of prison. That’s now.

The industry is in a recession. He has chosen a bad moment to come out of prison and see whether he can cash in on the loot. Antwerp dealers ought to be on the lookout for an Italian who may not realize that prices have come down. If he did hide $100 million worth of diamonds, he’ll be in for a surprise.

Joking aside, this is a worrisome story. And what is most troubling is why Wired magazine would enable a convicted and self-confessed thief to portray himself as a kind of petty thief who had been conned by some Antwerp diamond dealer. Have a nice weekend.