Antwerp. 2003. Five criminals and one impenetrable safe in the city’s Diamond District, through which roughly 85 per cent of the world’s diamonds pass. What could possibly go wrong? More than $100 million in loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewellery are stolen in an unprecedented heist so notorious and complex that, not only are police still baffled by the intricacies of how it happened, but much of the loot has never been recovered. 

This world-famous crime is now the subject of a new Netflix documentary, Stolen: Heist of the Century, landing on screens today (8 August 2025), asking the question on everyone’s lips: how on earth did they pull it off? For the first time, the Belgian detectives who eventually cracked the case, along with the criminal who masterminded the entire operation, are gathered together to give a detailed account of what unravelled on the evening of 15 February 2003. 

Roughly two years before the night in question, Leonardo Notarbartolo took out a lease on an office in the Antwerp Diamond Centre, located at 9/11 Schupstraat, in the heart of the city’s Diamond District. Here, he posed as a multi-lingual gem importer from Italy and scheduled meetings with numerous established dealers in the area. Of course, Notarbartolo was aware that renting at the Antwerp Diamond Centre automatically grants occupiers access to a safe deposit box in the vault beneath the building. No one else in the building, however, realised a notorious thief had just gained access to the beating heart of Antwerp’s jewel district. 

Leonardo Notarbartolo

Although he admitted to several robberies in 2000, Notarbartolo claimed in an interview with Wired in 2009 (conducted from prison) that he was hired to carry out the Antwerp heist, but has never  identified his employers (authorities have never found any evidence of a third-party involved). 

Over the course of the first 18 months he spent at the Antwerp Diamond Centre, Notarbartolo subtly tried and tested several techniques to default the vault’s security system. He installed a small camera above the vault door to monitor who was coming and going, at what times, and the code to the vault’s combination, as well as visiting the vault’s corridor in disguise and spraying hair spray on the thermal-motion sensor to temporarily disable it. 

At this point, Notarbartolo realised he needed to widen his circle to pull off such a heist – and for this he made a call to Italy, tapping into the criminal nous of a group of Italian thieves called La Scuola di Torino, translated as ‘The School of Turin’. The true identity of who and how many were involved is still unclear, but upon Notarbartolo’s arrest (more on that later), he revealed the aliases of four other robbers but refused to name them. 

Instead, he referred to ‘Speedy’, the man Belgian police believe to be Pietro Tavano, as an anxious, paranoid man and a childhood friend of Notarbartolo; ‘The Monster’ aka Ferdinando Finotto, a tall, muscular man with renowned lock-picking skills; and ‘The Genius’ – Elio D’Onorio, a specialist in alarm systems known to be linked to a series of robberies. Lastly, ‘The King of Keys’ – described as an older man and one of the best key forgers in the world – whose true identity remains unknown.

Detective Agim De Bruycker

The heist itself went off without a hitch. The group bypassed the vault’s magnetic lock by carefully removing the bottom portion of the screws securing two plates together while the magnetic field was deactivated earlier that week and using adhesive tape to keep them in place. Then, they used a long two-part, three-dimensional key to open the vault door. 

To avoid detection by the infrared sensor in the vault, the group used a make-shift polystyrene shield secured in front of the sensor to block thermal radiation. Once safely and discreetly inside the vault, the thieves used a custom-made device to break open 109 of the 189 safe deposit boxes, cracking the unique key lock and a three-letter combination lock for each one. 

With the gems and diamonds successfully retrieved, the group split, with some returning to Notarbartolo’s apartment in Antwerp and others driving straight to Italy, where the group was meant to reconvene to divvy up the goods. All Notarbartolo and ‘Speedy’ had to do was dump incriminating evidence near the E19 motorway between Antwerp and Brussels and they would be on their way too. 

Detective Patrick Peys

Unfortunately, the particular patch of ground they chose was owned by August Van Camp, a local man with a penchant for litter picking. Among the debris, he found a smattering of emeralds, a supermarket receipt and a half-eaten salami sandwich, and quickly called the police to report fly-tipping (as he apparently did on a regular basis). 

Back in the city centre, the authorities were quickly discovering the extent of the night’s activities and, at the mention of emeralds, showed up to Van Camp’s land to unearth more evidence. Here, they found a document featuring the name Elio D’Onorio (‘The Genius’) and tracked down footage from the supermarket named on the receipt showing Ferdinando Finotto (‘The Monster’) and quickly alerted Italian authorities, who made the arrest. 

Notarbartolo’s arrest, however, came nearly a week later. Notarbartolo had returned to the scene of the crime so it didn’t look like he was the only tenant who didn’t go into the building after the heist – but little did he know he was already wanted by authorities after the building manager pointed him out on CCTV. 

Tavano, D’Onorio, and Finotto each got five years in prison, while Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years in Antwerp in 2005 for orchestrating the heist. He was released in 2009 on parole, with conditions stating he must compensate the victims of the heist, which he never did. He was rearrested at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in 2013 and made to serve the rest of his sentence, eventually being released in 2017. 

Now, Notarbartolo is thought to live in the countryside outside Turin with his wife, running a wood pellet business. As a key interviewee throughout the new Netflix documentary, he seems to have no remorse: “I’ve always wanted to be part of something like this. We felt proud of doing something so strong and powerful.”

Stolen: Heist of the Century is available to stream on Netflix from 8 August 2025. 

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