The most valuable pieces disappeared either Sunday night or Monday morning. There were royal pieces on display, as well as jewelry lent to the Museon by other museums and private collectors. The Museon, a science museum in The Hague, Netherlands, was putting on a phenomenal diamond exhibit intended to educate the public about the gems. In December 2002, thieves pulled off one of the most inexplicable diamond heists of all time. The night before the attempt, authorities had replaced the real gems with fakes just to be sure they remained safe no matter the outcome of the raid. The police had been tipped off before the heist and had already nabbed the speedboat that was the alleged getaway vehicle.Įven if the robbers had managed to grab the jewels and escape, they would have been distraught at their haul. They were about to grab the diamonds when police officers, dressed as cleaning crew, rushed in and shut them down. Wearing gas masks, they ran in and smashed the display cases with sledgehammers. The thieves were heavily armed and threw gas canisters into the Dome to cover their entrance. They came prepared with the weapons and tools to do the job right. Stealing these gems would mean unfathomable wealth, so the criminals didn't go cheap on preparations. Included in the intended booty were the world-famous Millennium Star diamond, weighing in at 203.04 carats, and 12 blue diamonds, weighing a total of 118 carats, all owned by diamond conglomerate De Beers. In 2000, thieves attempted to steal $700 million worth of diamonds from London's Millennium Dome. But few attempted heists have the suspense and Hollywood ending of this near-record heist. There's painstaking planning, high drama and the chance that one little thing will go wrong and ruin the entire plot. In general, diamond heists almost always have a cinematic feel to them. Authorities suspect that all of the gold was expertly mixed with other metals to make the bullion untraceable. Some of the men were caught shortly thereafter and sentenced to prison.īut the gold was never recovered. In the days after the robbery, detectives pinpointed the two-faced security guard as their prime target, and he quickly ratted out the identities of the thieves. As an added bonus, they also found a pile of cut and uncut diamonds. Their planned five-minute robbery wound up taking closer to two hours, as they laboriously moved bullion by hand. But although they had the inside scoop, they oddly didn't know about the gold.Īs a result, they didn't have a vehicle big enough to steal all of the precious metal, but they did the best they could under the circumstances. With the guard's detailed knowledge of the warehouse layout and security procedures, the team of six thieves managed to raid the warehouse quickly and detain the other guards. The robbers had inside help, thanks to the fact that one of the warehouse security guards was related to one of the criminals. So what were they to do when they broke into the Brinks-MAT warehouse at Heathrow Airport to find three tons of gold bullion instead? In 1983, thieves plotted and schemed to steal millions in cash. The diamonds in this heist are something of a footnote, but the sheer perseverance of the thieves on this one makes it worthy of our list.
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