Might as well face it; smooth criminals are fascinating. Of course, we’re not talking your garden-variety petty thief here, but true masterminds. You know there’s a reason Hollywood blockbusters such as “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Italian Job” are box-office hits.: people love the mystery, the suave burglars, crazy schemes, and, you must admit, the idea of all that money.
Real-life heists are probably not carried off by anyone as good-looking as George Clooney, but there have been some plots that rival anything Hollywood could imagine. From diamonds to gold to priceless works of art, if it’s out there, valuable, and heavily guarded, chances are someone will at least try to steal it.
The Biggest Art Heist Ever
When Isabella Stewart Gardner, a Boston heiress, died in 1924, she left behind a small but extravagant art collection in a little museum she’d had built, and an eclectic will. The terms stipulated the museum could be opened to the public, but nothing could be added to the collection and none of the art could be repositioned. The latter rule proved to have no impact on the two men disguised as police officers who broke into the museum in March 1990, tied up the guards, shut down the alarm system, and disappeared with Vermeer’s “The Concert” and Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” five Degas drawings, a Manet, and several less valuable works. All told, the thieves got away with art valued at nearly half a billion dollars, none of which have ever turned up. The FBI is still investigating the case and the museum continues to offer a $5 million, no-questions-asked reward.
In a nod to Gardner’s will, empty frames hang throughout the museum where the stolen items were once displayed.
The Mystery of the Missing Diamonds
Eighty percent of the world’s uncut diamonds move through Antwerp, Belgium, many of them are stored in the underground vaults of the Antwerp Diamond Center. This all-too-tempting stash was the site of the greatest diamond heist of all time, in February 2003. Of 160 safety deposit boxes, 123 were cleaned out to the tune of over $100 million worth of cut and uncut stones. The thieves made off with so many diamonds that the next morning, guards found loose stones scattered around the vault where they’d fallen or been dropped.
The police got a break when they found a bag discarded near the building; it was empty of diamonds but contained a half-eaten sandwich. DNA retrieved from the sandwich led to a man who had rented an office in the Diamond Center in 2000 and spent the next few years posing as a diamond broker; he’d been in the vault several times and assisted an Italian gang of thieves in getting copies of vault keys and bypassing the security system. While he and several members of the gang are now serving jail time, the diamonds have never been recovered.
Great Britain’s Largest Heist
Late one night in February 2006, in Wiltshire, England thieves smashed a downstairs window at the 17th-century manor of British property magnate and antiques collector Harry Hyams. They proceeded to methodically ransack the building, escaping in 4x4s with more than 300 antiques and works of art valued at 80 million pounds (about $140 million). Among the items stolen were a 17th century clock valued at nearly $300,000, a pair of 18th-century porcelain busts, several rare 18th-century baromters, and hundreds of other pieces of silver, works of art, porcelain, and antiques. The thieves, a family gang, were eventually caught and convicted of several massive raids on manors around the south of England. About 140 items were recovered in a bunker under a storm drain in Stratford-on-Avon, some badly damaged; at least 200 items are still missing.
Biggest Haul of American Currency
One morning in July 2007, employees arrived to open the Dar Es Salaam private bank in Baghdad, Iraq, to find the doors unlocked, the vault wide open, and every bit of cash in the place missing. More than a quarter of a billion dollars, all in U.S. currency, was gone; officials believe two, or possibly three, guards at the bank were responsible in what was clearly an inside job. There are several mysteries surrounding this massive theft: why the bank had so much American currency on hand, how the thieves transported that much money and avoided detection at the many security checkpoints around the city, and finally, where the money is. The perpetrators have never been caught and none of the cash has ever been recovered.
