Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren No Wake up. Hey, I was not sleeping my
Speaker 2: eyes or just kidding.
Speaker 3: Me, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: I know you, yeah, you do.
Speaker 3: You know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I do? Clyde, Oh okay, you know, like I bring
Speaker 2: this up often karate masters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you did, ye right?
Speaker 2: So I found this headline quote humans are no match.
Speaker 2: End quote says japan karate master who fended off two
Speaker 2: bears advises caution. Oh right, so I thought this was awesome. Right.
Speaker 2: There's this story of this dude's Matsato Fukuda. He's fifty
Speaker 2: years old, Japanese cat. He lives up in Hokkaido, like
Speaker 2: the top of Japan. Right, So he's out he said
Speaker 2: he's wanted to go out to these falls, the Yyoko
Speaker 2: Falls apparently spectacular, I don't know, okay, And he's going
Speaker 2: out there. He wanted to see the winter snow mills. Right.
Speaker 2: So we were in April and he's out there. The
Speaker 2: road narrows. He gets out. He's walking and he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: is the waterfall ahead? And he hears some rustling. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, ow it comes these bears. He's like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: like black bears. He's like, yeah, it was like it's on, right.
Speaker 2: He sees them, they see him, and these ones they're
Speaker 2: like five feet six feet tall bears, right, big enough
Speaker 2: that they can mess him up and most likely, you know,
Speaker 2: probably kill him. So what does he do? He remembers, Oh,
Speaker 2: if you turn your back, they'll chase you. So he
Speaker 2: watches the bears and he keeps eyes on them, and
Speaker 2: he backs up and then doesn't matter. The bear circle
Speaker 2: behind him. So now it's on. So what does the
Speaker 2: karate master do? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: He should make noise and make himself look bigger.
Speaker 2: He does karate.
Speaker 3: Oh man, he says, if I'm going to be attacked,
Speaker 3: there's no choice but to fight.
Speaker 2: So he goes and I don't know how I love
Speaker 2: this line. He also used a pair of scissors that
Speaker 2: happened to have he happened to have on him to
Speaker 2: strike the animal's body. I guess, I don't know. So
Speaker 2: apparently the scissors ended up cutting his hand right because
Speaker 2: they glanced off the bear. The bears moving, not standing still,
Speaker 2: it's not working out. So then he has to go
Speaker 2: just and count on his karate. So now it's just
Speaker 2: him two bears in his karate. So he does it right.
Speaker 2: He punches one bear and then he says, quote, my
Speaker 2: attack wasn't effective at all, but it seemed to make
Speaker 2: the bears flinch for a moment. Like he punches one
Speaker 2: bear and he does a flying kick on another bear.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the bears retreat and then fakuda, my man.
Speaker 2: He goes and gets close to his car because he
Speaker 2: still hasn't left his car. He hasn't made it to
Speaker 2: the falls yet. So he gets to his car. Then
Speaker 2: he slams the door and the bears run off. Now
Speaker 2: the thing is it's funny, is he's not a karate master.
Speaker 2: That was just stuf that the press threw in. What yes,
Speaker 2: he's like he mentioned occasionally that he had done karate
Speaker 2: and he was in junior high school. He's like, I
Speaker 2: did karate. That's how much karate. He has exactly as
Speaker 2: much karate as I do. But everyone was like, oh yes,
Speaker 2: so tell me karate fighter guy, and they all turned
Speaker 2: him to a karate master and all the international stories,
Speaker 2: and he resented it. He was like, you know, basically,
Speaker 2: he's like, yo, that's not fair to the bears. I'm
Speaker 2: not a karate fighter. And he didn't want other karate
Speaker 2: fighters to come and be like, hey man, you, why
Speaker 2: are you fighting bears? We have rules against that belt.
Speaker 2: So how ridiculous? Is that?
Speaker 3: Very ridiculous? Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Ever?
Speaker 3: Thinking that safety deposit boxes are actually safe?
Speaker 4: Huh?
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You damn right, zaren.
Speaker 3: Do you know what the biggest heist in modern history was?
Speaker 2: Is it in Brazil?
Speaker 3: I'll go ahead and tell you as a little treat
Speaker 3: it was in two thousand and three. It was in Iraq,
Speaker 3: that's the one. Yes, it was pulled off by Khusey Hussein.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, son of brother of Udai total goon.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I love that as a pejorative for
Speaker 3: like brother of fail sons. So the US invaded Iraq
Speaker 3: March nineteenth, two thousand and three. On March eighteenth, Kusey
Speaker 3: showed up at the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad.
Speaker 3: He had with him a handwritten note from his dad,
Speaker 3: Saddam Hussein. The note demanded one billion dollars with a
Speaker 3: b in US dollars be handed over to him outside
Speaker 3: did had three trucks and a bunch of Iraqi officials.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money.
Speaker 3: That's a lot. It's considered to be the largest heist
Speaker 3: in modern history, one billion dollars. There's some who say
Speaker 3: that since Saddam Hussein was an absolute dictator.
Speaker 2: I'm still in power at the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had every right to take the cash. And
Speaker 3: there is speculation that the money might have been his
Speaker 3: own personal funds that he amassed while ruling Iraq with
Speaker 3: an iron fist.
Speaker 2: Sure, we'll call them his thought from other people.
Speaker 3: So the US government, they figured he was trying to
Speaker 3: like move the cash over the border to keep it
Speaker 3: out of the hands of the invading Americans. US Army
Speaker 3: special forces near the border with Syria, they saw trucks
Speaker 3: just like the three outside the bank crossing that border
Speaker 3: soon after. Others thought Hussain was using the money to
Speaker 3: like stir up resistance to the American troops and you
Speaker 3: go around paying castle. That's what a lot of Iraqi's thought, Yeah.
Speaker 2: To fight the Northern Front people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there was enough cash to pay to get
Speaker 3: his family and like government muckety MUCKs out of the
Speaker 3: country ahead of the invaders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's always there's enough get them to London or where.
Speaker 3: After the heist, coalition forces tracked down about six hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty million dollars of the bank's camp. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: where was it, Sarah? Where was it was in Udai's palace?
Speaker 3: One of them, Udai, Kusse and Saddam all met violent ends.
Speaker 2: You know, it's war.
Speaker 3: But three hundred and fifty million dollars of the cash
Speaker 3: was never recovered. So Iraq in those days was like
Speaker 3: a black hole for US.
Speaker 2: Cast Wait, I've seen three kings.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and four, the US flew almost twelve
Speaker 3: billion dollars in shrink wrapped one hundred dollars bills into
Speaker 3: Iraq and lost it. Yeah. About that's about two hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty million notes, which is like three hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty three tons of money.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen them on the palace? Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Whears of cash.
Speaker 3: They would fly from New York to Bagdad in these
Speaker 3: c one thirties, and the flights were happening like twice
Speaker 3: a month. The biggest load was two point four billion
Speaker 3: dollars on June twenty second, two thousand and four. So
Speaker 3: the thing is the cash. It was distributed, no real
Speaker 3: control over who was receiving it, how it was spent.
Speaker 3: Where did all this cash come from? Great questions, Aaron.
Speaker 2: Where did is all this cash come from? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: It came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the
Speaker 3: UN Oil for Food program and seized Iraqi assets. So
Speaker 3: a government memorandum that was prepared for the House Committee
Speaker 3: on Over and Government Reform said, quote, one contractor received
Speaker 3: a two million dollar payment in a duffel bag stuffed
Speaker 3: with shrink wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the
Speaker 3: key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack,
Speaker 3: and then quote they also found that seven hundred seventy
Speaker 3: four thousand, three hundred dollars in cash had been stolen
Speaker 3: from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the
Speaker 3: back of a pickup truck and the cash was stored
Speaker 3: in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was
Speaker 3: given six point seventy five million in cash and was
Speaker 3: ordered to spend it in one week before the intraim
Speaker 3: Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.
Speaker 2: It's like brewsters millions of rock.
Speaker 3: Six point seven million got a week to burn it.
Speaker 3: There are these minutes from a May two thousand and
Speaker 3: four US led Coalition Provisional Authority.
Speaker 2: CPA meeting the Green Zone people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they reveal quote a single disbursement of five
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars in security fundled labeled merely T meaning
Speaker 3: to be determined. Many of the funds appeared to have
Speaker 3: been lost to corruption and waste. Thousands of quote ghost
Speaker 3: employees were receiving paychecks from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control.
Speaker 3: Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and
Speaker 3: insurgents fighting the US. So the CPA, they're supposed to
Speaker 3: like select an independent, certified public accounting firm to oversee
Speaker 3: these payouts, and that is not what happened. No, they
Speaker 3: hired a quote obscure consulting firm called north Star Consultants Incorporated.
Speaker 3: The firm was so small that it reportedly operates out
Speaker 3: of a private home in San Diego.
Speaker 2: Oh in San Diego and San Diego.
Speaker 3: So it looks like American officials didn't care what happened
Speaker 3: to the cash because it wasn't US tax payer money. Yes,
Speaker 3: and they were basically burning Iraqi assets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like black box money.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in those same minutes, retired Admiral David Oliver
Speaker 3: was asked, like, what happened to the eight point eight
Speaker 3: billion that you were in charge of? And he said, quote,
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I can't tell you whether or
Speaker 3: not the money went to the right things or didn't,
Speaker 3: nor do I actually think it's important. Wow, they said
Speaker 3: to him, quote, but the fact is billions of dollars
Speaker 3: have disappeared without a trace. Here's how he answered, of
Speaker 3: their money. Billions of dollars of their money. Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, what difference does it make?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: That crazy?
Speaker 2: So they really were just like because it's their money
Speaker 2: and this is therefore it's like casino money and still money.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So that that Central Bank of Iraq job is
Speaker 3: pretty much considered the biggest heist on record, even if
Speaker 3: it does kind of the military right thread thread the
Speaker 3: notion that Saddam's thing threading the notion of legality.
Speaker 2: I'm going with the other one.
Speaker 3: I'm going, what's the second biggest tyston.
Speaker 2: The one you just said is also that one they're together. No,
Speaker 2: it's in Brazil, right in Brazil.
Speaker 3: That would be the Bonco Central burglary in Brazil. That
Speaker 3: one was for about seventy million dollars. It went down
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five after a criminal gang started
Speaker 3: up a landscaping business that just so happened to be
Speaker 3: right by the Brazilian Central Bank.
Speaker 2: I think this kind of inspired the fast and the furious.
Speaker 2: Oh did it seriously? They have a big heightst well
Speaker 2: so over police station.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Over three months, the heist crew tunneled through more
Speaker 3: than two hundred and fifty five feet of dirt and concrete.
Speaker 3: And then remember they had that landscaping company, so like
Speaker 3: no one suspicious of excavators or like truckloads of soil.
Speaker 2: Being driven off the property.
Speaker 3: So they got into the bank. They disabled the security systems.
Speaker 3: They busted through three and a half feet of steel
Speaker 3: reinforced concrete to get into the bank vault. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: So now you know it's the central bank.
Speaker 2: So they had a powerful lance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're in control of the money supply at
Speaker 3: this bank. All of the money in the.
Speaker 2: Normal lance and a powerful jet exactly get it.
Speaker 3: Right, So all the money in the vault was supposed
Speaker 3: to be checked and then tagged for either recirculation or
Speaker 3: to be destroyed.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, okay, And so the.
Speaker 3: Bills they're not in sequence, and that means they can't
Speaker 3: be traced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a grocery store money, perfect.
Speaker 3: Place to go. So the cops they did a pretty
Speaker 3: good job of tracking down most of the crew, like
Speaker 3: in the grand scheme of things. And the reason I'm
Speaker 3: not making this into an entire episode is because of
Speaker 3: the absolute bloodshed and violence that radiates out from the heist.
Speaker 2: And I was trying to avoid that.
Speaker 3: But you know, a tonneal job is always ridiculous. And
Speaker 3: it is noted as the second largest heist in history.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait to go. You know what, the top two
Speaker 2: have problems with blood, with a.
Speaker 3: Lot of blood. I know you like numbered lists.
Speaker 2: I love them.
Speaker 3: So what's the third?
Speaker 2: One of my third favorite things?
Speaker 3: That's the third largest bank?
Speaker 2: Ice, the third largest bank? Hest is it in? It's
Speaker 2: not the same brings? Is it? The train rod? It's
Speaker 2: not London, not New York, London.
Speaker 3: It was a heist London. It was are you going
Speaker 3: to tell it?
Speaker 5: It was?
Speaker 3: It was in London and it was pulled off by
Speaker 3: an Italian.
Speaker 2: Oh, is not the one I'm thinking of.
Speaker 3: No, So I'm talking about the Knightsbridge security deposit robbery
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: So I've done my share of British heists, and by
Speaker 3: that I mean I've told you about them, not that
Speaker 3: I've pulled the heist myself.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: So, in the Knightsbridge security deposit robbery, the crew made
Speaker 3: off with sixty five million dollars. That's a lot of deposits.
Speaker 2: Sixty five million, insane amount. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the robbery took place July twelfth, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 3: and as the name suggests, it went down in the
Speaker 3: affluent district of Knightsbridge, London.
Speaker 2: I've been there.
Speaker 3: There was there was, as there always is in a heist,
Speaker 3: a mastermind.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: This time it was an Italian criminal named Valerio Vizzi.
Speaker 2: Valario Vizi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, Valerio. He had already been involved in a
Speaker 3: bunch of bank robberies in Italy. He was born in
Speaker 3: the town of Sulmona in the province of Lakila in
Speaker 3: the Abruzzo region of Italy. Very nice, so beautiful. You
Speaker 3: know who else is from Solima.
Speaker 2: Regis Philbin.
Speaker 3: Yes, how did you get that one?
Speaker 2: I think he's pretty sure he's.
Speaker 3: Irish Pope Innocent the seventh.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm so close though.
Speaker 3: And you know who else? Roman? Covid Avid Roman, author
Speaker 3: of Metamorphosis. Yes, of course it was he who wrote quote,
Speaker 3: we are ever striving after what is forbidden and coveting
Speaker 3: what has denied us.
Speaker 2: Yes, true, appropriate. Oh, it's very that's it's timeless advice.
Speaker 3: So sulmona beautiful town according to Google street View. Can
Speaker 3: you guess if I want to go there?
Speaker 2: Did you Google street view this one? Did you take
Speaker 2: a drive and turn around?
Speaker 3: Of course? And of course I want to go there,
Speaker 3: even outside of the old town. The it's lovely. It's
Speaker 3: sort of a nestled.
Speaker 2: Among mountains in the he recommended.
Speaker 3: You know, the town was leveled by an earthquake in
Speaker 3: seventeen and it took a lot of hits in World
Speaker 3: War two.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but they've lost a lot of old churches.
Speaker 3: Ten years after the end of that war.
Speaker 2: A boy was born, a boy val Hey, a man.
Speaker 3: He started criming young, okay, and he came from a
Speaker 3: respectable family. His dad was a lawyer, Like no lawyer jokes. Please,
Speaker 3: your family is crawling.
Speaker 2: We've got tons.
Speaker 3: So as a young man in the nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 3: can we talk for a moment about how amazing Italian
Speaker 3: style was in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Even throughund the sixties. And come on, they got a run,
Speaker 2: just a three.
Speaker 3: Decade run in fifties too, so we'll four decade run.
Speaker 2: Really tough time. The warriors were tough, but other than that,
Speaker 2: just a solid run.
Speaker 3: I've been getting into the genre of Itallo disco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I keep talking about this. How you digging it?
Speaker 3: I'd say it was out of left field for me,
Speaker 3: but I do love desperate styles of music. There's a
Speaker 3: good Italo disco essentials set on Apple Music. It's a
Speaker 3: good house cleaning music, or like walking at a track
Speaker 3: or conducting drug deals out of a ferrari.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, as young guy Vale, he became involved in
Speaker 3: a series of armed robberies all across Italy, and at seventeen,
Speaker 3: he and an Italian right wing terror group blew up
Speaker 3: an electricity substation.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so there's that. Okay, there's that. He was
Speaker 2: like me, trying to like slide the politics Yeah.
Speaker 3: He was known for his intelligence. That guy was super smart,
Speaker 3: and he was a planner, which you know I love, Yes,
Speaker 3: and he totally ruthless, which I don't really love. So
Speaker 3: he built this reputation for himself in Italy as a
Speaker 3: skilled thief, and that meant that the law would come
Speaker 3: a calling.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're like, how do you do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Tell us more. The cops are like closing in
Speaker 3: on him. He's feeling the pressure. So he leaves Italy.
Speaker 3: And at this point he'd been involved in like fifty
Speaker 3: bank robberies. Was racking him up. So he leaves Italy.
Speaker 3: Zaren Where did he go?
Speaker 2: New Italy?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I was hoping you knew you.
Speaker 3: He went to London. This is nineteen eighty five, so
Speaker 3: new place, new Valerio. Yes, not on your life, son.
Speaker 3: In fact, he stepped it up a little. Yes, let's
Speaker 3: take a break when we come back, We're going to
Speaker 3: meet up with Valerio in London, all right. So we
Speaker 3: met Valerio Vizzi bank Robert Italiano. He looks about how
Speaker 3: you'd imagine, by the way, not the tallest fella.
Speaker 2: Yes, does have kind of flowncy hair.
Speaker 3: He has a head of like thick, lustrous black hair,
Speaker 3: a bit of a widow's piece.
Speaker 2: Oh perfect, Harry chest I don't care about that, but whatever,
Speaker 2: where's a gold chant? Good for the look?
Speaker 3: Yeah, his eyebrows refused to be parted and they reach
Speaker 3: over to kiss at the top of his Oh nice,
Speaker 3: like Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, it's a never ending smoocher.
Speaker 3: He could easily be an extra on The Sopranos, which
Speaker 3: I watched and I loved because I watch and love television.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't ever watch it.
Speaker 3: You've never seen it.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to take it from you, right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now let's direct our attention to the Knightsbridge
Speaker 3: Safe Deposit Center.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 3: It's located directly across the street from Harrod's department store
Speaker 3: on Brompton Road.
Speaker 2: I've literally been the I got put up there, stayed
Speaker 2: inherits No, No, they're in that neighborhood. Was right where
Speaker 2: I kept walking, that's right.
Speaker 3: Okay. So the deposit center, it was in a basement
Speaker 3: across a building across the street. It catered to these
Speaker 3: wealthy clients who used its vaults to store cash, jewelry,
Speaker 3: and other valuables. Some of the clients were known to
Speaker 3: be less than on the up and up. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: So if this sounds familiar, let's not forget the Lloyd's
Speaker 3: bank robbery in nineteen seventy Baker Street job.
Speaker 2: The Sexy Beast one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was about two and a half miles from
Speaker 3: this location. And in that heist, the crew made away
Speaker 3: with somewhere between one and a half to three million pounds.
Speaker 3: And then there was Hatton Garden twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Which one said the Princess Margaret photos.
Speaker 3: That's uh Street, Baker Street, Yeah, Hatton Gardens. They got
Speaker 3: almost fourteen million in valuables from the safe deposit boxes.
Speaker 3: And that's like three and a half miles from that's
Speaker 3: the old hard night Bridge spot. Yeah, so decades and
Speaker 3: miles apart in all of them, but within the same
Speaker 3: class of crime, looting safe deposit boxes on the sly
Speaker 3: heists as we call them.
Speaker 2: So what about Vale, Yes, how's he going to make
Speaker 2: it new?
Speaker 3: He knew exactly what it took to pull it off.
Speaker 3: He was familiar. Yeah, he was familiar with these kind
Speaker 3: of targets. He devised a meticulous plan to get access.
Speaker 3: So first he had to like scope the place out,
Speaker 3: but he did it in style. He rented two flats,
Speaker 3: one in Saint John's Wood and the other in Hampstead. Okay,
Speaker 3: and then his car.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need two apartments a ferrari.
Speaker 3: Of course, he drove a white Ferrari Mondialo and I
Speaker 3: made a joke about drug deals out of a ferrari before. Well,
Speaker 3: as you can probably guess. This guy who, by the way,
Speaker 3: people called the Italian Stallion.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got my friend's nickname, yes, but.
Speaker 3: They also called him Gigi. That was like his main nickname.
Speaker 2: Wow, I've got an ant. This guy's like running parallel
Speaker 2: with exactly.
Speaker 3: He did a lot of coke.
Speaker 2: This guy out of a Ferrari with my aunt's name.
Speaker 3: So he romanced a lot of women.
Speaker 2: This guy with.
Speaker 3: Your Yeah, I mean like he hit the Drappini.
Speaker 2: He was like they were ladies.
Speaker 3: A total playboy. So the Italian under he comes up
Speaker 3: with a plan. He he does all this crazy surveillance
Speaker 3: of the deposit center. He studied the comings and goings
Speaker 3: of the staff, like all the security protocols, the layout
Speaker 3: of the facility, and then he and his team they
Speaker 3: bought an array of tools and weapons necessary for the job,
Speaker 3: including handguns, drills, cutting equipment, perhaps a thermal lance, powerful jack.
Speaker 2: Maybe here and there are they going to shoot the boxing?
Speaker 3: They had all this attention to details. So on July twelfth,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, he and an accomplice, a dude named
Speaker 3: Pati de Confuerto.
Speaker 2: Oh, so you're only working with his countryman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well and then you'll see but mostly yeah, attack
Speaker 3: probably early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he enters the facility, he's pretending to rent a
Speaker 3: safe deposit box, and they're impeccably dressed. They're in these
Speaker 3: just sharp suits for yeah, and they fit right in
Speaker 3: designer suits. Parvez Latif is the owner of the place,
Speaker 3: and he shows the two of them in. Will Digny,
Speaker 3: he's in control of the like the security center on
Speaker 3: the day of the robbery, so the bank, yeah he
Speaker 3: works for. So he's like, you know, sitting here at
Speaker 3: the control.
Speaker 2: All the computers in the sens in front of him.
Speaker 3: So Latif he brings these two dudes in with their
Speaker 3: briefcases and their suits and he's describing to them the
Speaker 3: security arrangements. And so then Latif asked Digny to move
Speaker 3: away from the desk where like all the alarm buttons
Speaker 3: were so that he could show the men the TV monitors,
Speaker 3: because they wanted to inspect the level of security and
Speaker 3: make sure it was up to their standards and their.
Speaker 2: Knees no blind spots in the cameras.
Speaker 3: So all of a sudden, though, Digny's got a gun
Speaker 3: pressed in his face. And so while they todd guns,
Speaker 3: they had no intention of ever using them, like Gigi
Speaker 3: didn't want bloodshed. Yes, so Gigi and Conferto they send
Speaker 3: Latif back out to the front to lock the doors
Speaker 3: so that they don't get any interruptions, but not before
Speaker 3: letting in a few more members of the heist crew. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then they even put a closed sign on.
Speaker 2: The door, handmade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so this like bought them ours. And as
Speaker 3: you can guess, Latif was in on the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, I did not have that.
Speaker 3: In it seems like he was looking for an insurance scam.
Speaker 3: And he was also Gigi's coke buddy.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, yeah, you totally by me. I did not
Speaker 2: see the coke connection.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so Latif he had opened the safe deposit
Speaker 3: center with a silent partner. He actually he bought it
Speaker 3: from another guy, but in sixteen months. Yes, it had
Speaker 3: an operating loss of four hundred and seventy thousand pounds,
Speaker 3: oh my god. And his overdraft was running just over
Speaker 3: like fifty grand. So he was happy to disable the
Speaker 3: alarms and the gang had plenty of time to work,
Speaker 3: so he allowed himself to be chained up, you know,
Speaker 3: in the lobby, while the gang smashed open security boxes
Speaker 3: in the basement. So we've got Valerio Vici, Patadi Conferto,
Speaker 3: David Poole. He was an unemployed caterer. Okay, Peter o'donnegh,
Speaker 3: you an unemployed mechanics.
Speaker 2: That catered the break in. Yeah, we're going to need
Speaker 2: a cater We're going to drive fruit plate.
Speaker 3: They're Italians, israel Pinkus, who was an Israeli antique stealer,
Speaker 3: and then another guy known only as Eric, and then
Speaker 3: and then there was Eric. So some of them were
Speaker 3: inside somewhere outside.
Speaker 2: K name Eric.
Speaker 3: Eric, he's like the super Italian. So all of them,
Speaker 3: they're working hard to pop them boxes. They worked at
Speaker 3: it for hours. They were prying the boxes open with
Speaker 3: as you said, crowbars of them, and so Digney he
Speaker 3: could hear the banging on the boxes and the boxes
Speaker 3: popping open, and then he would hear voices shouting bingo,
Speaker 3: like look what I've got.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say that, but you know, you know how
Speaker 2: it goes.
Speaker 3: So the hall would have been much bigger if one
Speaker 3: of the crew members outside had been able to operate
Speaker 3: his walkie talkie radio. Oh yeah, he kept pressing the
Speaker 3: wrong button. And then they had to bail, even though
Speaker 3: there were still hundreds of unopened boxes, having all this
Speaker 3: cash and jewels. Uh, Gigi was so pissed about this
Speaker 3: that he threatened to quote find the man by deducting
Speaker 3: thirty thousand pounds from his cut. That's fair, right, So
Speaker 3: even so, the gang hauled out four suitcases and eight
Speaker 3: large green bags four feet high full of stuff.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 3: One of the bags was full of just money, just cash.
Speaker 3: So while in the vault, Gigi made a mistake. He
Speaker 3: cut his hand. See some of the tools failed and
Speaker 3: he started but he just started smashing boxes with his fish,
Speaker 3: with his fists, and he left behind bloody fingers.
Speaker 2: I thought he was doing it.
Speaker 3: You get tired he punching stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh that's not good.
Speaker 3: He left behind bloody fingerprints, which is a total amateur fingerprints.
Speaker 2: They didn't even do it your DNA testing with bloody.
Speaker 3: Finger bloody fingers. So that's what he left behind. But
Speaker 3: what did he take?
Speaker 2: What did he take? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: They busted open one hundred and forty six boxes. This
Speaker 3: place list have been huge. They pulled out what was
Speaker 3: dubbed a quote colossal haul of cash, So millions in
Speaker 3: cash and in all different currencies too, not just in
Speaker 3: British pounds, millions in diamonds, all this exquisite jewelry, gold, bricks,
Speaker 3: gold jewelry.
Speaker 2: Imagine some blackmailed uh.
Speaker 3: Oh information, expensive paintings and statues.
Speaker 2: Oh right, and statues.
Speaker 3: Wow, two kilos of cocaine. Someone was keeping two kilos
Speaker 3: of cocaine in here, so his own gigi's own attorney
Speaker 3: would later say of it, quote, it was a large
Speaker 3: amount of loot by any standards. Enough jewelry to satisfy
Speaker 3: a coach load of Elizabeth Taylor's, enough cash to fill
Speaker 3: a bathtub, and diamonds all over the floor. And weren't
Speaker 3: the victims of this robbery a rum bunch with millions
Speaker 3: and pounds of jewelry kept in locked box just for
Speaker 3: the odd night out? Who worthy people? Twenty of them
Speaker 3: would not come forward three totally refused to make statements,
Speaker 3: and seventeen owners were never found. Among their number were
Speaker 3: quite a few shady people. So he's like, victim blame.
Speaker 2: I'm just about to say this, like the one time
Speaker 2: we're like vick them blaming. I'm like, well, the man
Speaker 2: has a blank, Like, can we just hear him out?
Speaker 3: Well, we saw this with all the other safety deposit
Speaker 3: box heists that we've talked about. There's always a significant
Speaker 3: number of box holders who don't want to come forward.
Speaker 2: Most of them, it seems like near half.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things I love about them.
Speaker 2: And I love the discretion.
Speaker 3: I love crimer on crimer crime.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's good stuff.
Speaker 3: So after the heist.
Speaker 2: And you don't want to call the police when you've
Speaker 2: been wronged, yeah, exactly, like.
Speaker 3: A little just good, I'll take us to own business.
Speaker 3: After the heist, the crew go to their safe house,
Speaker 3: which they called the Flop Flop Yeah in Hampstead, and
Speaker 3: there's this old Italian man answers the door okay, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people and the crew thought it was
Speaker 3: Gigi's father, the attorney, but like it was never full
Speaker 3: and he was never identified. He just like took off
Speaker 3: later back to Italy.
Speaker 2: Really the guy who ran the flop. Nobody ever learned
Speaker 2: what Lundy was.
Speaker 3: So that they carry all the looten completely. So they carry
Speaker 3: all the loot up. They filled the bathtub with money,
Speaker 3: like right up to the top, and they just rolled
Speaker 3: around and punctiously.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get dirty.
Speaker 3: Wanted everything split up and like divided into its different
Speaker 3: types of stuff. He wanted it organized, watches together, all
Speaker 3: the rings, the firs, the necklaces. There was one briefcase
Speaker 3: that was filled just with diamonds.
Speaker 2: A briefcase, a briefcase of diamonds, loose diamonds.
Speaker 3: There's so many diamonds, yeah, loose diamonds that like weeks later,
Speaker 3: one of the crew members is at the flop and
Speaker 3: he finds diamonds like still scattered on the floor, parts
Speaker 3: of the rug, the thick red carpet diamond exactly. So
Speaker 3: in the weeks following the robbery, the crew they traveled
Speaker 3: all over the world in all these attempts to like
Speaker 3: hide the hall and make deals on the diamonds, the gold,
Speaker 3: the jewelry.
Speaker 2: Oh, all their different fences. They're going like internationally for fence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Israel Pinkas. He flew to Tel Aviv and
Speaker 3: he opened a bunch of different bank accounts and he
Speaker 3: deposited sums in each of them at like fifty grand,
Speaker 3: thirty grand. Peter O'donahue he flew to the US and
Speaker 3: basically did the same thing. David Pool went to France.
Speaker 3: On their returns, those two both opened safety deposit boxes
Speaker 3: in London. O'donahue put O'donnahue put eighty four thousand.
Speaker 2: Anyone knows that's not safe.
Speaker 3: It's right. Pool put almost thirty grand in his. The
Speaker 3: missed up there is that the cash that they put
Speaker 3: in there was still in bank wrappers that would be
Speaker 3: able to trace to the busted box. Yeah, so they
Speaker 3: didn't even bother to take the wrapping off.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: Gg flew to Switzerland and deposited two hundred thousand pounds
Speaker 3: in a bank, and then he bought half a million
Speaker 3: Swiss francs.
Speaker 2: Did the Swiss ask any questions when you show up
Speaker 2: with money? They might just take it. We'll take it.
Speaker 2: You want some chocolate, go go.
Speaker 3: Off, you go. He goes back to Britain, opens the
Speaker 3: safe deposit box in Park Lane. He deposited the barretta
Speaker 3: pistol used in the raid. No false passport, no, and
Speaker 3: the half million Swiss francs and then like fifty two
Speaker 3: thousand pounds in cats.
Speaker 2: And like a signed picture of him with his address
Speaker 2: on back and then the.
Speaker 3: Bloody thumb, the double up, and he drove around in
Speaker 3: his ferrari and he stayed in the luxury hotel, and
Speaker 3: then he flew to Antwerp to negotiate the sale of
Speaker 3: five diamonds for one million dollars or one million pounds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so he sold five diamonds on that hand. And the
Speaker 3: diamonds they had been sold for seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: two thousand on the black market to a Belgian dealer
Speaker 3: who was supposed to be acting like for an international group.
Speaker 3: So they're just like you said, international fences. The diamonds
Speaker 3: belonged to Donatella Flick, who was a London based wife
Speaker 3: of a member of a West German industrial family. So
Speaker 3: they there are huge diamonds. After the deal, Gigi goes
Speaker 3: to Luxembourg. It was five hundred and sixty eight thousand
Speaker 3: pounds in a bank account.
Speaker 7: There another great place for crime, another great and then
Speaker 7: Luxembourg there was a big purchase that he made.
Speaker 3: So he loved his white Ferrari Mondial, but he wanted
Speaker 3: to go one better now. He used his ill gotten
Speaker 3: gains to buy himself a black on black Ferrari Testarosa.
Speaker 2: He loved.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he loved it.
Speaker 2: I love his car like he.
Speaker 3: But still there's the bloody fingerprint.
Speaker 2: There is that over the star, always there.
Speaker 3: The whole whole thing was just so bold. Broad Daylight
Speaker 3: took their time, lifted what would be estimated to be
Speaker 3: about seventy two point seventy five million pounds so much.
Speaker 3: That was about ninety seven million dollars at the time,
Speaker 3: which is the equivalent of two hundred and sixty eight
Speaker 3: million dollars today. I'll take it right, So in just
Speaker 3: a couple of hours, imagine. So obviously the banking industry
Speaker 3: was just shook. They were they didn't know what to
Speaker 3: do in the company.
Speaker 2: Were they jealous?
Speaker 3: Oh? The cops they turned it up to eleven to
Speaker 3: catch these guys. Okay, do you know who they called in.
Speaker 2: The flying squad?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's right, Scotland Yard's flying on DCI pickle.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And as we've don.
Speaker 3: The flying Squad, they take on the big stuff they
Speaker 3: do armed robbery, organize crime, anything high profile. They're their
Speaker 3: major case for yes to put him, and they aren't
Speaker 3: tied to a specific precinct. They go where they want,
Speaker 3: they do what they want.
Speaker 2: You can't stop them cowboys.
Speaker 3: There were complications, of course, so there were all those
Speaker 3: people who wouldn't come forward to claim their losses, right,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the stuff, especially like the large
Speaker 3: sums of foreign currency that could be moved out of
Speaker 3: the country really quickly and then just like cashed in
Speaker 3: and no one would notice you exchange it, no big deal.
Speaker 3: So the Flying Squad they used good old fashioned shoe
Speaker 3: leather police work, but they also pulled some CSI stuff
Speaker 3: and such.
Speaker 2: You love that stuff I do with cops.
Speaker 3: So they worked the criminal underground for tips. And I'm
Speaker 3: guessing like a lot of guys got slammed into dimly
Speaker 3: lit pub walls by bill eager to be trench coated detectives.
Speaker 2: But what about the guys going to like shoe stands
Speaker 2: and then going, here's five dollars, send me a little information,
Speaker 2: here's ten dollars. They're just making like, you know, fifty
Speaker 2: bucks on.
Speaker 3: Shoeshine guy kind of looks back and forth and then
Speaker 3: like you didn't hear it from me exactly. Well, like
Speaker 3: the Flying Squad figured that like low lifes like this
Speaker 3: crew wouldn't be able to help themselves when they had
Speaker 3: all this cash.
Speaker 2: They're going to spend it.
Speaker 3: They're going to spend it. It's very good fellas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're buying the not wrong, they're not wrong.
Speaker 3: So the cops they watched high end car dealerships, they
Speaker 3: kept their eyes on like real estate and posh neighborhoods
Speaker 3: for new buyers who just like didn't belong. And then
Speaker 3: there's the fingerprint hovering over us. With DNA technology and
Speaker 3: fingerprint data from inner poll and the Italian police. The
Speaker 3: cops identified Valeria.
Speaker 2: Gigi the Italians because I'm sure the Italian authorities have
Speaker 2: plenty of his fingerprints exactly.
Speaker 3: So Gigi he had fled or he was getting ready
Speaker 3: to flee to South America.
Speaker 2: That's the move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he knew the heat would be on. He
Speaker 3: wanted to take his cash.
Speaker 2: Lilo for Europeans that seemed to be the maybe.
Speaker 3: Plenty of coke, Yeah, something was nastcars, plenty of coke.
Speaker 3: Someone was bugging them, was the black Ferrari Testarosa.
Speaker 2: Oh, he couldn't get that to Argentina.
Speaker 3: I loved that car. He wanted that car. It was
Speaker 3: his baby, his bembin. So he's like trying to get
Speaker 3: the ship information. He wants to ship it to South
Speaker 3: America so they can be together forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's in London to kind of get the Ferrari
Speaker 3: settled and shipped out. But police had been monitoring the vehicle.
Speaker 3: They figured that he would want to come back for
Speaker 3: this prize possession. Let's stop there. What's her ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, you gotta have friends stopping for ads. I'm
Speaker 3: stopping friends. There's so much more to come back in
Speaker 3: a flash.
Speaker 2: Where were we, Saron, Italy? No, London, London?
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, London. So the cops, yes, they're watching.
Speaker 2: Gigi watching his car, My car, Our car, Our car.
Speaker 3: The Bambino, the black Ferrari, Testa Rosa. In the hopes
Speaker 3: that he would come back from wherever he was to
Speaker 3: get his baby. They also tailed all of his known associates,
Speaker 3: and they all had something in common. They all contacted
Speaker 3: the same pager number on a regular basis, and they
Speaker 3: all came and went from a hotel in the Bayswater
Speaker 3: area of London and the cops. They were also able
Speaker 3: to identify Israel Pinkus's Mercedes and then they figured out
Speaker 3: it had been towed after being parked illegally right outside
Speaker 3: this hotel. So the cops go to the hotel and
Speaker 3: they spot something something right outside. The black Ferrari testis zaren.
Speaker 3: Close your eyes, I want you to picture it. You
Speaker 3: are a member of the Flying Squad. Specifically, you are
Speaker 3: Detective Inspector Dick Leech. You heard that the man heading
Speaker 3: up the investigation into the heist. You are a copper's copper,
Speaker 3: no nonsense, brilliant and you always get your man. You
Speaker 3: and your team have been tailing the heist crew for
Speaker 3: a while now, slowly building a case and working to
Speaker 3: bust the mastermind. Valerio Vizzi. You are sitting outside of
Speaker 3: a hotel in Bayswater in an unmarked vehicle. Traffic glides
Speaker 3: by occasional hornhwks. You've sent one of the new guys
Speaker 3: into the hotel with a photo of Gigi, whom you
Speaker 3: now know as Gigi. The young detective trots back out
Speaker 3: to the car and gets in the passenger seat. Yup,
Speaker 3: He tells you hotel staff recognized him. He's got a
Speaker 3: room there. You nod and pick up your radio and
Speaker 3: forming the rest of the squad with a squawk that
Speaker 3: this is indeed the place. You're just about to suggest
Speaker 3: the young underling go run and get you guys some tea.
Speaker 3: When you see a man exit the hotel, it's Gig
Speaker 3: and he's headed for the Ferrari. The supercar roars to life.
Speaker 3: Your detective whistles at the sound of the engine, but
Speaker 3: you just roll your eyes. Gigi rolls down the window
Speaker 3: and you can hear the euro Disco bumping from the
Speaker 3: car's sound system. He pauses a moment and you turn
Speaker 3: the ignition over on your Rover eight hundred. That baby
Speaker 3: perd as Gg rolls his baby out into traffic. You
Speaker 3: radio the team that you are on the move. Operation
Speaker 3: Crest is coming to a climax. You pull into the
Speaker 3: road and you tail the Ferrari at a safe distance.
Speaker 3: As you follow the sleek black car, you can tell
Speaker 3: that he feels he's being followed, and you're right. You
Speaker 3: hit the straight away and he guns it. Patrol cars
Speaker 3: swoop in and try to give chase. Siren's glaring. You
Speaker 3: know this city like the back of your hand. You
Speaker 3: see the Ferrari make a left, and you know it's
Speaker 3: time to make your move. He's headed to a t
Speaker 3: intersection and the only option is a one way street
Speaker 3: coming back your way. You hang a quick left onto
Speaker 3: a side street. Your pulse is racing, but you're in control.
Speaker 3: You are the Flying Squad for crying out loud, damn right,
Speaker 3: You've timed it just right. You hear the Ferrari decelerate
Speaker 3: in the narrow lane, thinking he'd outrun and Outsmarten all
Speaker 3: those cop cars with the blues and twos whaling. But
Speaker 3: he's wrong. You pop the Rover eight hundered out into
Speaker 3: the lane and ram into the Ferrari as it glides
Speaker 3: slowly by. You and the other detective jump out and
Speaker 3: descend on Gigi. Another police car pulls up and the
Speaker 3: officers join you in attempting to pull Gigi from the car.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to budge, so an officer runs back
Speaker 3: to his car, pulls a crowbar from the boot and
Speaker 3: smashes the windshield. Oh, Gigi gives up and you are
Speaker 3: the hero of the day.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like the unnecessary windshield bashing totally. The Ferrari.
Speaker 3: They get searched. The police find bank deposit slips for
Speaker 3: that Luxembourg bank jewelry worth hundreds of thousand dollars, and
Speaker 3: then they also find thirty seven thousand pounds in cash
Speaker 3: just hanging.
Speaker 2: About and the car maybe a little bag of cocaine
Speaker 2: on the dashboard, just a little toot.
Speaker 3: The car gets impounded by the Flying Squad. It only
Speaker 3: had three thousand miles on it. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 3: brand new, and there were only like a hundred of
Speaker 3: these made, so it's it's peak. There are rumors that
Speaker 3: the Flying Squad was using the car to pull off
Speaker 3: quote Miamivice style raids. According to the Evening Standard newspaper,
Speaker 3: we got a new whip, y'all d Leach. He denies it,
Speaker 3: but the car had a smashed up windshield. And then
Speaker 3: Dick Leach had this to say about it, quote I
Speaker 3: don't like the car myself. It's like a space car,
Speaker 3: space car.
Speaker 2: I got a spaceship, a space car, space car, non
Speaker 2: picturing cars.
Speaker 3: That drive in space, like yeah, zooming and.
Speaker 2: Some kind of vultron stuff. I don't know totally.
Speaker 3: I found a message board called piston Heads, and someone
Speaker 3: there asked about the car and whatever happened to it,
Speaker 3: and they even had a picture. Oh really, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: it'll be on Instagram. Someone on the board linked to
Speaker 3: an Instagram post that explained how after the arrest the
Speaker 3: car was sold at an auction in nineteen ninety so
Speaker 3: off it went back.
Speaker 2: It was sold for like how much under market?
Speaker 3: It was huge, it was I can't remember. It was
Speaker 3: not undermarket. It was over a lot because it was
Speaker 3: like even rare. They fixed it up.
Speaker 2: And it was part of crimes exactly. It had a story.
Speaker 3: A lot of stuff came up in this investigation. The
Speaker 3: trail even led to hatt and Garden.
Speaker 2: What, yeah, did he connect to one of our hard men.
Speaker 3: No, the Flying Squad found out that there was this
Speaker 3: small metal company at hatt and Guarden. Remember there was
Speaker 3: the safety deposit boxes in the basement, but then all
Speaker 3: the jewelers. So someone took twenty six kilos of scrap
Speaker 3: gold that had been melted down from the heist to
Speaker 3: Hatton Garden try and sell. The trial was a total zoo,
Speaker 3: absolute zoo, mainly because of all the crazy information that.
Speaker 2: Came out closed the courtroom.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well no, it was revealed that Gigi had
Speaker 3: two girlfriends. Yeah, but that was that's sort of expect
Speaker 3: maybe he was characterized as this total playboy, but it
Speaker 3: came out that these were actually a fair partners and
Speaker 3: they had they had actual boyfriends themselves, and who were
Speaker 3: their other boyfriends. One of the women was dating Parves Latif,
Speaker 3: the owner of the deposit center, and the other one's
Speaker 3: boyfriend was fellow Highst crew member Peter o'donahue.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so they were like polyamorous completely, and it's like,
Speaker 7: so you find out all every every day there was
Speaker 7: a new newspaper report of some crazy scandal from the court.
Speaker 3: The ladies. Those ladies they got indicted too, Like I'm
Speaker 3: bad everybody got indicted in this state. It's like it
Speaker 3: seems like everyone in the underworld had a hand. And
Speaker 3: I mean they were finding all sorts of stuff, like
Speaker 3: they were tying it to like American drug dealers, and
Speaker 3: they were tying it to you know, one of the
Speaker 3: guys would like pay his ex wife for like childcare
Speaker 3: with the money. And she was like an advertising person
Speaker 3: at Sachi and Sachi really yeah, and she was like
Speaker 3: I didn't know where the one I figured it was
Speaker 3: stolen money, but like, hey, I got to pay for Chuck,
Speaker 3: so the government determined to bust everybody. Gigi's lawyer took
Speaker 3: a really interesting defense. Quote, but was this the crime
Speaker 3: of the century, a meticulously planned and executed robbery planned
Speaker 3: by a criminal mastermind? Look at mister Vicci. He leaves
Speaker 3: his fingerprints and bloodstains all over the doors, flashes around
Speaker 3: in a ferrari after the event with two million pounds
Speaker 3: in the boot. Hardly a master criminal.
Speaker 4: Is he?
Speaker 3: Then he goes on to talk about how like the
Speaker 3: men recruited for the job were bumbling incompetence is what
Speaker 3: he called cou't they couldn't buy the right uniforms, they
Speaker 3: couldn't operate the walkie talkies, and that they turned the
Speaker 3: whole thing into a farce. He said, quote, was it,
Speaker 3: therefore a robbery at all? Or was it, as my
Speaker 3: client says, a conspiracy arranged by mister Latif to defraud
Speaker 3: insurance companies, made to look like an armed robbery.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone's framed.
Speaker 2: You know, supposed to defend you zealously. This is what
Speaker 2: it looks like. That's crazy. He found an angle. I
Speaker 2: did not see that coming.
Speaker 3: These dudes are more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at these guys, my honor, my client is
Speaker 2: an idiot. I had to tie his shoes, all right.
Speaker 3: GG was ultimately found guilty. He got sentenced to twenty
Speaker 3: two years in prison, and then he confessed to a
Speaker 3: bunch of other London jobs. Oh yeah, and he was
Speaker 3: given an additional seventeen years behind bars. Bro bad choice,
Speaker 3: but they could run Concurrently, they asked him, why did
Speaker 3: you confess?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's me, I asked that question.
Speaker 3: He told the detectives quote, I think life is a game.
Speaker 3: When you realize you've lost, I think it's silly to
Speaker 3: give aggravation to the winners.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 3: He's like, look, I know you got to close some stuff.
Speaker 3: Let me help you. That's wild, right, So he gets
Speaker 3: shipped off to Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and people are people were pretty miffed at
Speaker 3: how he was living it up there. The newspaper reports.
Speaker 2: Are just goes out of care o garden.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, no, he's a category A prisoner and that
Speaker 3: he has, you know, more access to stuff. So his
Speaker 3: girlfriend was bringing and this is just some blonde, I mean,
Speaker 3: had rotating a woman. She was bringing him cash and
Speaker 3: goods during her visits and like cash. That's pretty obviously
Speaker 3: from the heights. Papers are like breathlessly telling, just like
Speaker 3: a busted up safe deposit box with blood on the
Speaker 3: side exactly. So like the papers are talking about how oh,
Speaker 3: his life is so much better inside than most of
Speaker 3: us on the outside. Like his breakfast was like eggs,
Speaker 3: bacon and rolls, and it was brought from one of
Speaker 3: the island's best hotels. And lunch he got like his parents, No,
Speaker 3: that's part of what is cash. So he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: so he can get all the stuff, but he's not
Speaker 3: paying for it.
Speaker 2: The vault is paying exactly.
Speaker 3: So he for lunch they give him, like, what's your
Speaker 3: favorite pasta, Let me make it for you. They ordered
Speaker 3: in his dinner from like top restaurants.
Speaker 2: Pay for it, egg omelet for you exactly.
Speaker 3: He had his own toilet and wash basin in his cell.
Speaker 3: He took two showers a day.
Speaker 2: I like that, respect make one of them a bath.
Speaker 3: He wore silk boxer shorts from Harrod's also respect designer
Speaker 3: label track suits and Gucci loafers, and like he needed
Speaker 3: to keep busy, right, Like he's just lounging around, so
Speaker 3: he would like fiddle around on a computer. He watched
Speaker 3: satellite TV, and apparently he got like he would let
Speaker 3: other prisoners watch TV with him, and then they were
Speaker 3: asking like, can we get a D scrambler so we
Speaker 3: can watch porn? And that's when the warden was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I ve no. He would like he had a stereo.
Speaker 3: He'd listen to his stereo. He he had a deck
Speaker 3: chair in his own little garden on the prison dround.
Speaker 3: We had a garden. And then he also exchanged letters
Speaker 3: with d I Leach.
Speaker 2: But I've seen The Gentleman by Guy Ritchie. I know
Speaker 2: how this plays out.
Speaker 3: So he's right, he's writing to Di Leach and they
Speaker 3: write back and forth, and they you were calling him
Speaker 3: either Garfield or the Wolf. They had like nicknames for
Speaker 3: each other, and Gigi called Leech Fred I don't even
Speaker 3: bread and Garfield, Fred and Garfield or Fred and the Wolf.
Speaker 3: And so they're just riding back and forth all the time. Okay,
Speaker 3: this was obviously great. Sure Gg wanted more. He wanted
Speaker 3: to go home, of course, I mean he's Italian, he's well, yeah,
Speaker 3: so he put in for a transfer to an Italian prison.
Speaker 3: UK government they were like happy to deport him and
Speaker 3: have Italy pay for this incarceration. Okay, yeah, so off
Speaker 3: he went. November eleventh, nineteen ninety two, Gigi's flown to
Speaker 3: Italy and they like parade him out on the tarmac
Speaker 3: at Heathrow and there's presses all there. Had a T
Speaker 3: shirt like some of the reports said he was wearing it,
Speaker 3: but I saw the pictures and he's not. But apparently
Speaker 3: in his luggage he had a T shirt that said
Speaker 3: I love Night's Bridge, so like a tourist shirt. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this is in November of ninety two. Earlier that
Speaker 3: year he published a book Boom. It's called Knightsbridge, The
Speaker 3: Robbery of the Century, and so in it he like
Speaker 3: spills the beans about a lot of things, mainly like
Speaker 3: exactly how he planned and then carried out the whole
Speaker 3: heightst And then he also told about this affair that
Speaker 3: he had with Lady Bien Vanita Buck. Lady Bien Vanita Buck.
Speaker 3: It was the young Spanish wife of the elderly MP
Speaker 3: Sir Antony.
Speaker 2: Buck, lady and Lord Buck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Bien Vanita she was like a common sight
Speaker 3: on his arm and like the wild days in West London,
Speaker 3: she went out to visit him in jail on the
Speaker 3: Isle of Wight, and then she came home and she
Speaker 3: convinced her husband, Sir Anthony Buck, to talk to the
Speaker 3: Home Office about getting Gigi sent back to Italy like
Speaker 3: he wanted, and he did. He pulled strings, he helped
Speaker 3: make it happen for his wife's venita. I guess they
Speaker 3: divorced around that time too, So in Italy, his time
Speaker 3: in jail was even better than that. He was sent
Speaker 3: to what's called a quote open jail in the popular
Speaker 3: seaside resort town of Piscata, close to his.
Speaker 2: Hometown side resort town. Yeah, but it's like right on
Speaker 2: the water, but the freshest seafood.
Speaker 3: So because an open jail they have, the Italians have
Speaker 3: this policy of like semi liberty. So he left in
Speaker 3: the morning from jail and he could do whatever he
Speaker 3: wanted during the day and then he had to check
Speaker 3: back in at night.
Speaker 2: You just have to sleep there.
Speaker 3: You just have to sleep there.
Speaker 2: So they just want you to sleep in jail. That's
Speaker 2: the punishment, the punishment. You can't sleep at home, are
Speaker 2: you kidding?
Speaker 3: He had like an apartment just outside of town.
Speaker 2: So basically like the thing that children don't want to do,
Speaker 2: or they're like I don't want to go to the
Speaker 2: sleepover and they have to go, and they call their mom.
Speaker 2: The mom and their dad is a drive across town
Speaker 2: and pick them up. That's the Italian's.
Speaker 3: Worst part, Italians worst punishment.
Speaker 2: They're like, okay, you're gonna have to sleep only.
Speaker 3: So far as he could drive out, but it was
Speaker 3: something like sixty miles.
Speaker 2: Sure, exactly. Those people don't Some people don't even go
Speaker 2: fifty months past house their whole life.
Speaker 3: He had like a fancy sports car that he drove
Speaker 3: around a kid child, Yeah, completely like wearing designer clothes.
Speaker 3: And then he'd just checked back into the prison at eleven.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, Italian crime is where it's at.
Speaker 3: He would also occasionally get these like five days total
Speaker 3: release what yeah, and they like furloughed. Yeah. So he
Speaker 3: would like stay at a hotel, pala around with his
Speaker 3: family and his friends. He wore Gucci clothes like Ferragamo
Speaker 3: loafers and a Rolex.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not like pro prison, but this is
Speaker 2: wild toly wild.
Speaker 3: He paid for things with a gold card. He was
Speaker 3: just living it up and he always he always had
Speaker 3: these new girlfriends every few days he's just living it up,
Speaker 3: even though he had declared bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: Is the next level above this, like the medium security prison.
Speaker 2: It's like you don't get seconds at a meal. Is
Speaker 2: that what that one is? You can't sleep at home,
Speaker 2: you don't get second you don't And then the next
Speaker 2: one's like a low securities You don't get to wear
Speaker 2: the outfit you want.
Speaker 3: I think so, I think so so. Remember I said
Speaker 3: he spilled a lot of beans in the book, but
Speaker 3: he didn't give up the location of the missing loot
Speaker 3: because only ten million pounds was recovered out of sixty
Speaker 3: five million.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so some thought he'd buried it in London at Hampstead.
Speaker 3: He sure, but he denied it. It's out there, though
Speaker 3: he would never tell. So he gets paroled in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, and like a lot of people feel like
Speaker 3: he had mafia connections and that's like what influenced him
Speaker 3: to get out. In two thousand, his run came to
Speaker 3: a violent end. He got into a shootout with the cops.
Speaker 3: Oh didn't survive it, oh one percent. But he took
Speaker 3: the information. So he took the information about the location
Speaker 3: of the rest of the loot to his grave. Well,
Speaker 3: no one ever found it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he took it there someone else may know, right,
Speaker 2: I guess did you have anybody he trusted?
Speaker 3: I make sure he had to have someone who's going
Speaker 3: in fetchings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm guessing. The girl's money, so somebody.
Speaker 3: Okay, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: That easy bank robbing thropple is just wild? I mean, like,
Speaker 2: I don't mean to like pick on the Italians and
Speaker 2: it goes and this one I have to say, like
Speaker 2: I make fun of a lot of groups that usually
Speaker 2: I have their like genetic to like, like, oh I can
Speaker 2: make fun of Germans. I got German family, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't have any Italian family that I'm aware of.
Speaker 2: So I'm saying this as an outsider. The whole approach
Speaker 2: to crime of like you know, like, oh I knew
Speaker 2: need a flashy car. I mean, of course, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna need to look good. And then he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't like this prison. Can you send me to
Speaker 2: Italy and it works out better? I mean, no offense
Speaker 2: to Italy, but I can see why you have associations
Speaker 2: with crime historically if this is your approach, I mean,
Speaker 2: how fun and there's no punishments.
Speaker 3: Well, and he was like mister charming. Even the judge
Speaker 3: was charmed. The judge said in trial, you're just such
Speaker 3: a charming guy. And then when his book came out,
Speaker 3: the judge asked him for a sign.
Speaker 2: That's how you know you did it? Judge like, hey,
Speaker 2: can I get an autograph? Yeah? Exactly in the book I.
Speaker 3: Got one, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: Mean what yours, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous? Taken away?
Speaker 3: Just a flashy character. And I kind of was avoiding
Speaker 3: this because of the violence at the end.
Speaker 2: But stop on the brakes and.
Speaker 3: I got to the good part. So that's my takeaway.
Speaker 3: You know what, My actual takeaway is what I need
Speaker 3: to talk back.
Speaker 2: I know, just the man. Producer Dave hot Off the press,
Speaker 2: ripped from today's headlines, jump in the queue. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I went.
Speaker 3: Hails a best.
Speaker 6: This is Meg from Path shutting her Masters of Education
Speaker 6: and it sucks, but I love you, Philip Morris. That
Speaker 6: is not a movie. It is a film, and I
Speaker 6: really think you should watch it. It's awesome. Oh my love.
Speaker 6: I love to Saron.
Speaker 2: Bye, cheers.
Speaker 3: I will take that. I will take that advice.
Speaker 2: I like the distinction by the way, because I do
Speaker 2: that too. That some are films, other flicks.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: Or if you really want to get into it, something
Speaker 2: back in the and there's a group of them. The pictures,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, used to make pictures. Yeah, the talkies.
Speaker 3: Meg, thank you for that. And I know you said
Speaker 3: you're working on your degree in education. I hope everything's
Speaker 3: going well with that. That's it for today. You can
Speaker 3: find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also
Speaker 3: in the movies.
Speaker 4: No we're not.
Speaker 2: We're in the picture.
Speaker 3: We're on social media. You could you know how to
Speaker 3: find that. You can email us ridiculous Crime at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com or first and foremost, leave a talk back
Speaker 3: on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited
Speaker 3: by founder of the Flying Squad Dave Kusten, starring Annals
Speaker 3: Rutger as Judith. Research is by Marisa Mimi Brown and
Speaker 3: Andrea Dre Dre song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is
Speaker 3: by Thomas t t Lee and Travis Treetree. Dutton host
Speaker 3: wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred Hotel Accommodations are
Speaker 3: provided by the Omni Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben Beab Bollen and
Speaker 3: Noel Nini.
Speaker 5: Browndus Crime Say It One More Times, Crime
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