Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are stripping
away the veneer of a story that I think a lot
of people think they know. The headline version.
Exactly. They know the headline. But we're going
to dig into the details. We're going to London,
specifically to a very quiet, very specialized
street in the Jewelry District over the Easter
weekend of 2015. A place called Hatton Garden.
And I want you to really picture the scene here
because... The atmosphere is just so important
to this whole story. It's a bank holiday. The
streets are empty. Totally deserted. All the
businesses are shuttered. It's silent. But underneath
the pavement, inside a reinforced concrete vault,
there's a group of men working with industrial
machinery to pull off what would eventually be
called... The largest burglary in English legal
history. It's incredible. And it feels so cinematic.
Oh, completely. When the news first broke, the
immediate reaction from, well, from everyone,
the public, the press, was descriptive. It had
all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster,
right? It's perfect. The impenetrable vault,
the massive hall of gold and diamonds, the timing
over a long weekend. But as we dig into the reports,
you know, the police files, the court transcripts,
what we find is that the reality is it's much
grittier. It's much dirtier. And frankly, it's
just much more interesting than any movie version.
Absolutely. And the headline everyone remembers,
the big twist was that, aha. The moment when
the police revealed that this wasn't some team
of, you know, acrobatic, cyber savvy young thieves
rappelling from the ceiling. Yeah. It was a group
of elderly men. Oh. Men who were, and this is
the best part, eligible for a bus pass. The diamond
geezers, as the press immediately dubbed them,
and that nickname, it did a lot of heavy lifting.
It really did. It created this image of sort
of lovable rogues, a dad's army gone bad. It
made them seem harmless, almost cute. Right.
But part of our mission today in this deep dive
is to really dismantle that myth. These weren't
just bored grandfathers looking for a weekend
hobby. They were career criminals, serious, hardened
men. who had been involved in some of the most
notorious crimes of the 20th century. This wasn't
a whim for them. This was the culmination of
a lifetime of organized crime. We are absolutely
going to get into the profiles of these men,
and trust me, they are not characters you'd want
to run into in a dark alley, regardless of their
age. But we're also going to look at the mechanics.
The how. The how. We've got the technical specs
of the drill they used, this beast called the
Hilti B350. We're going to look at the police
investigation and the massive, I mean, the critical
failure that allowed this heist to continue when
it really should have been stopped cold on night
one. And we have to talk about the money. Of
course. Because even today, years later, the
vast majority of that loot, and we're talking
millions upon millions of pounds worth of gold,
jewelry, cash, it's still missing. It's just
vanished. It's this lingering mystery that just
hangs over the entire case. So let's start in
the beginning. The setup. To understand why this
heist happened, you first have to understand
the location. Hatton Garden. For those who maybe
haven't walked through London, can you paint
a picture of this place? Sure. Haddon Garden
isn't just a street name. It's a mitnum. It stands
for the entire UK diamond and jewelry trade.
It's been the epicenter of that industry for
centuries, really, since medieval times. So this
is old London. Very. And if you walk down the
street today, you see shop window after shop
window just filled with engagement rings, watches,
glittering jewels. But behind those retail fronts,
there's this massive... unseen network of workshops
and polishers and traders. And crucially for
this story. And crucially, safe deposit facilities.
And the target was one of these. Hatton Garden
Safe Deposit LTD, located at 8890 Hatton Garden.
Now, this was an underground facility. And I
think we should probably clarify what a safe
deposit box actually is, because in our age of
digital banking, it feels like a bit of an anachronism.
It really does. It feels like something from
an old spy movie, but it serves a very specific
purpose. And that purpose is anonymity. When
you put money in a bank, there's a digital trail.
The bank knows, the government knows, a safe
deposit box is essentially a physical void. You
rent the box, you put your items inside, you
take the key. The company renting you the box
generally has no idea what's in there. Which
makes it perfect for legitimate valuables. You
know, family heirlooms, stamp collections, digs
to a property, that sort of thing. Exactly. But...
And this is a major factor in the psychology
of this whole heist. It's also the perfect place
for gray or even black assets. What do you mean
by that? Well, if you're hiding cash from the
tax authorities or maybe hiding jewelry from
an ex -spouse during a really bitter divorce
or if you're a criminal hiding the proceeds of
other crimes. You use a safe deposit box. You
use a safe deposit box. And the thieves, they
absolutely knew this. They were banking on it.
There's this idea, isn't there, that robbing
a safe deposit vault is almost the perfect crime
because half the victims won't even report what
was stolen from them. It's the robber's fallacy.
They assume that because some of the loot might
be illicit, the police investigation will be
hampered, that people won't come forward. Oh,
is that true here? To an extent. There were certainly
rumors and later some confirmations that other
criminals lost a lot of money in this raid. But
the reality is that many of the victims were
small business owners. Jewelers. Independent
jewelers, yeah. People who stored their entire
stock in the vault over the long weekend because
their own shop safes just weren't strong enough.
This wasn't just pocket money for them, it was
their livelihood. So that's the target. A subterranean
vault, deep under London, filled with untold
millions. But the environment in the city that
week was, well, it was chaotic. We have to talk
about the Kingsway Fire. This is one of those
details that just makes you question the nature
of coincidence. It's almost too perfect. So what
happened? On April 1st, 2015, that's April Fool's
Day, and just two days before the heist began,
a massive underground electrical fire breaks
out in a place called Kingsway. Now, Kingsway
is a major artery in central London. It's just
a short walk from Hatton Garden. And when you
say fire, I think people might picture a trash
can burning or something small. This was infrastructure
collapse. This was subterranean chaos. An electrical
fault deep in the tunnels under the road caused
gas mains to rupture, and you had flames literally
shooting out of manhole covers in the street.
Like geysers of fire. Exactly. The smoke was
toxic. It was thick. Thousands of people had
to be evacuated from their offices. The West
End theaters had to cancel performances because
the power grid was so unstable, it shut down
a huge section of the city. And of course, when
the heist was discovered a few days later, the
immediate public theory was... The burglars started
the fire. It had to be. them. It's the perfect
diversion. It makes perfect tactical sense, doesn't
it? I mean, if you want to rob a vault, you want
the police distracted. You want the fire brigade
tied up. You want alarms to be drowned out by
sirens. You want data and phone lines to be fried.
It creates this perfect screen of confusion.
But the official investigation didn't support
that theory, did it? No. The London Fire Brigade
did a full forensic analysis, and they ruled
it an electrical fault. There was absolutely
no sign of arson. It was just London's aging
Victorian infrastructure finally giving up the
ghost at the worst possible time. Or the best
possible time, depending on your perspective.
Well, exactly. And here's the key point. Whether
they started it or not is almost irrelevant.
The fire acted as a massive force multiplier
for the gang. It was an incredible stroke of
luck. The luckiest break imaginable. It meant
that all the emergency services were stretched
to the breaking point. It meant the police were
focused on crowd control and traffic management
over in Kingsway. It meant that if some random
alarm went off a few blocks away in a quiet street...
It's not top priority. The fatigue factor for
the response teams would be sky high. It provided
this perfect cloak of noise and confusion right
as the Easter weekend began. So the stage is
set. London is distracted by this fire. The city
is emptying out for the holiday. It's Thursday,
April 2nd. Why was Easter weekend so critical
for their plan? One word. Time. That is the one
resource a burglar usually lacks. In a typical
smash and grab, you've got minutes. Maybe, if
you're lucky, 10 minutes before the police response
time catches up with you. But Easter in the UK
isn't just one day off. No, it's a four -day
bang holiday. Good Friday is a public holiday.
Easter Monday is a public holiday. So all those
businesses in Hatton Garden, they lock up on
Thursday night. And nobody is expected back at
their desks until Tuesday morning. Which is the
crew. A 96 -hour window. 96 hours where they
can make noise, where they can take breaks, where
they can troubleshoot problems if something goes
wrong. It completely changes the game. It turns
a sprint into a marathon. Okay, so let's walk
through the timeline of the entry itself. It's
Thursday evening. The clock ticks over to 9 .11
p .m. The staff at the Safe Deposit Center lock
the main doors. They set the alarm. They head
home for the long weekend. And barely four minutes
later, at 9 .23 p .m., the operation begins.
This is that quick. We see them on the CCTV footage.
The man the press later nicknamed Mr. Ginger
appears first he lets himself in and descends
into the vault area and then the rest of the
team follows and i have to bring up the equipment
they were carrying because it's just such a strange
detail they weren't carrying tactical duffel
bags or anything like that no they were dragging
plastic wheelie bins the kind you put your household
trash in it looks absurd on the camera footage
these elderly men dragging garbage bins into
a building it looks absurd but from a logistical
standpoint it is absolutely brilliant think about
it if you're walking down a street in central
london wearing a high -vis vest and dragging
a bin, you are invisible. You're a workman, a
cleaner. Nobody looks twice. And practically
speaking, if you plan on stealing gold bars,
what's the one thing you know about gold? It's
heavy. It's incredibly heavy. You can't carry
a million pounds worth of gold in a backpack.
You need wheels. You need something durable,
something that won't attract attention. The bins
were the perfect transport method, both for the
tools on the way in and the loot on the way out.
So they get into the building. But they didn't
break down the front door, did they? No, there
were no external signs of forced entry at all.
They entered through a communal fire -staped
door at the side of the building, which suggests
they had done extensive reconnaissance or, more
likely, had some kind of inside knowledge. And
from there? From there, they made their way to
the building's lift shaft, they disabled the
lift on the second floor, forced the doors open,
and then climbed down the lift shaft to get to
the basement. I mean, that's physically demanding.
Climbing down a dark lift shaft is not easy for
a 20 year old, let alone a man in his 70s. It
requires upper body strength. It requires a certain
amount of agility. And remember, they're not
just climbing down themselves. They're carrying
tools. They're lowering heavy equipment down.
This really dispels that idea that they were
frail old men. They might have been old, but
they were physically capable. OK, so they're
in the basement. They're standing in front of
the vault. And this is where the Hilti DD350
enters the story. Right. The vault door itself
is a monster. I mean, it's designed to withstand
explosives, thermal lances, you name it. it,
a direct assault on the door would be pointless.
So they didn't even try. They didn't even try.
They attacked the wall next to the door. The
concrete wall. The reinforced concrete wall.
We're talking half a meter thick. That's 20 inches
of aggregate and steel rebar. It's basically
the foundation of the building. And to get through
that, they brought the Hilltide DD350. Let's
geek out on this drill for a second. This is
not something you buy at a hardware store for
a weekend DIY project. No. Absolutely not. This
is an industrial diamond coring drill. It's designed
for major construction projects, you know, drilling
huge holes for pipes through bridge foundations,
that kind of thing. It uses a diamond tip circular
bit that doesn't so much drill as grind the concrete
into dust. And it's not a handheld tool, is it?
No way. The torque would break your wrists. You
have to bolt the rig itself to the wall or the
floor to get the leverage you need. It also requires
water cooling. So you have a hose constantly
running water onto the bit to stop it from overheating.
Which creates a mess. A huge mess. A slurry of
wet concrete mud. It's incredibly loud. It vibrates
the entire room. It's a brutal piece of machinery.
And the plan was to drill three holes, right?
Yes. Three overlapping circular holes. If you
can picture a Venn diagram or maybe... be the
Audi logo. You drill three holes that are all
touching each other. You knock out the center
pieces and you're left with an opening. How big?
Roughly 10 inches high and about 18 inches wide.
Just enough for a skinny man to crawl through.
So they're down there. In the dark, drilling.
And this wasn't a quick process. It took hours
and hours. They were down there all through Thursday
night. They were working into the early hours
of Friday morning. And this is where the story
takes a turn that just emphasizes their sheer
persistence. They hit a snag. The timeline shows
they actually left the building and came back.
Why? Well, they managed to drill the holes. They
created the opening in the wall. But the back
of the vault was lined with this heavy cabinet
of metal deposit boxes that was bolted to the
floor and the ceiling. They couldn't push it
over. The hole was blocked. So they couldn't
get through the hole they just made. Exactly.
They tried to use a hydraulic ram. It's a tool
called a port -a -power to try and force the
cabinet out of the way. But the ram broke. The
equipment failed. The equipment failed. Just
imagine that situation for a second. It's the
middle of the night on Friday. You've broken
in. You've drilled through a 20 -inch wall. You
are inches away from millions in gold. And you
can't get in. Most burglars would panic and run
at that point. But they didn't. They didn't.
They packed up. They left the building. They
went home. They sourced a new pump for the hydraulic
ram. I mean, they essentially went shopping for
replacement parts over the holiday weekend. And
then they came back. They came back to the scene
of the crime. They did. Mr. Ginger returned on
Saturday, April 4th, with two others. They reentered
the building the same way, went back down the
lift shaft, set up the new ram, and they finished
the job. The audacity of that is just staggering.
To leave and then return a day later. It speaks
to their all -in mentality. This was their retirement
fund. This was the one last job. They weren't
going to let a broken bit of equipment stop them.
But it also speaks to their absolute confidence
that nobody was coming for them. And that brings
us to the most frustrating part of this entire
deep dive. The missed opportunity. The alarm.
Because listeners are probably screaming at their
speakers right now. Didn't the drilling, the
noise, the vibration, didn't that trigger a sensor?
It did. Let's rewind a bit. Go back to shortly
after midnight on Friday, April 3rd. It's 12
.21 a .m. The drilling causes enough vibration
to trip the building's intruder alarm. So the
system worked. The technology did its job perfectly.
The signal went straight to Southern Monitoring
Services, the private alarm company that was
contracted to watch the building. OK. They received
the alert. They tried to contact the key holder
for the building, but they got no answer. So
as per their procedure, they called the Metropolitan
Police. Hello, Scotland Yard. The alarm is going
off at the giant vault full of diamonds. Essentially,
yes. They passed all the information to the police.
The call was logged in the police computer aided
dispatch system, the CAD system. Everything was
done by the book. And the police sent a SWAT
team, right? Right. Or at least a patrol car
to check it out. They sent nothing. Nothing.
Zero response. Why? I mean, how is that even
possible? It comes down to a really mundane piece
of bureaucracy, a grading system. The operator
who took the call graded it as a grade N response.
Grade N. Which stands for no response required.
No response required for an alarm going off at
a major safe deposit vault in the jewelry district.
The reasoning that was given later was complex
and, frankly, a bit of a mess. There was a policy
in place at the time that said unless the alarm
company could actively verify that a crime was
in progress, you know, by seeing someone on CCTV
or hearing voices on a microphone, the police
wouldn't automatically attend every single alarm.
Because there are too many false alarms. Exactly.
But there's also a lot of evidence that the call
was simply mishandled or at the very least deprioritized
because of the massive workload from the Kingsway
fire and it being a holiday weekend. But the
consequence of that one decision was total silence.
Total silence. And just think about the psychology
of the thieves for a moment. They're in the vault.
They know they've tricked the alarm. They must
have heard the bell ringing upstairs. They freeze.
Waiting for the sirens. They're waiting for the
sirens. They're checking their watches. Five
minutes go by. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. No
sirens. Nothing. silence tells them one thing.
Nobody is coming. It's the green light. It's
the green light. That failure to respond was
everything. If a single patrol car had just driven
by at 1240 a .m. and shown a torch at the fire
escape door, the gang would have fled. They would
never have come back on Saturday with the replacement
pump. That single grade end decision by one operator
turned a failed break -in into a 14 million town
catastrophe. It really highlights the fragility
of security, doesn't it? Yeah. You can have 20
inches of reinforced concrete and sophisticated
sensors, but if the human being at the other
end of the line presses the wrong button... It's
all completely worthless. It's the human factor.
Complacency. Oh, it's probably just a spider
on the sensor. It's probably just a glitch from
the power surges from the fire. Those little
assumptions cost the victims everything. So let's
fast forward. The gang finishes the job over
the weekend. They finally drive away for the
last time at 6 .10 a .m. on Sunday morning, their
wheelie bins now full of loot. The bank holiday
finishes. Tuesday morning, April 7th, arrives.
And the world wakes up. The staff return to 8890
Hatton Garden. They open the doors, they go down
to the vault, and they walk into a scene of absolute,
total devastation. The photos of the aftermath
are just incredible to look at. The floor is
covered in inches of concrete, dust, and debris.
Safety deposit boxes have been ripped out of
the wall. They've been angled ground open. Papers
and empty jewelry boxes are just scattered everywhere.
It looked like a bomb had gone off. The staff,
obviously horrified, called the police. And this
time, the police do respond. And very, very quickly,
they realize this isn't a job for the local beat
cops. This gets kicked up immediately to the
Flying Squad. We hear that name a lot in British
crime dramas. The Flying Squad. Who are they,
for those who don't know? They're the Sweeney.
The name comes from Sweeney Todd, which is old
Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad. They
were the elite branch of the Met Police, and
they are dedicated to tackling serious, organized
crime -armed robbery, tiger kidnapping, high
-value heists. If a bank gets robbed in London,
the Flying Squad takes the case. So these are
the heavy hitters. But before they could even
really lock down the investigation and get started,
the media got involved. And this is where the
public perception of the heist just got completely
warped. Yes. The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid,
pulled off a massive scoop. On April 10th, that's
just three days after the crime was even discovered,
they somehow obtained CCTV footage from a camera
on a nearby building that overlooked the fire
escape. They got it before the police released
it. Yes. The police were absolutely furious.
Right. But the Mirror ran it on their front page.
And because the footage was grainy and it was
taken from a distance, you couldn't identify
any of the faces. You could just see these indistinct
figures. In Hy -Vee's jackets, moving bins in
and out. And the newspaper, in true tabloid fashion.
They gave him nicknames. This is where the whole
cast of characters was born. Exactly. Mr. Ginger,
because one of them appeared to have reddish
hair. Mr. Strong, because he was seen carrying
heavy bags. The Gent, because he wore smart shoes
and a jacket. The Tall Man, and of course, the
Old Man. It turned a crime into a caper. It fictionalized
them instantly. It did. It framed them as movie
characters from the very beginning. And crucially,
because they didn't look like threatening thugs
and balaclavas, but rather like a bunch of ordinary
workmen, the public didn't feel afraid of them.
They felt amused. They felt amused. It seemed
quaint. Look at these cheeky old guys pulling
one over on the establishment. And that narrative
just stuck, didn't it? Even when the police finally
released the official crime scene photos showing
the sheer destruction inside the vault. The public
was, in a strange way, still kind of rooting
for the underdogs. Which was a massive headache
for the investigation. They had to pivot from
hunting dangerous criminals to managing a media
circus. But the flying squad was working away
in the background. And despite the very analog
nature of the break -in drills and wheelie bins,
the investigation that caught them used cutting
-edge digital forensics. And that's the great
irony of this case. The thieves won the analog
battle. They beat the concrete. They beat the
physical security. But they lost the digital
war. So what did the police do? They used AMPR.
That's automatic number plate recognition. They
scanned thousands of hours of footage from cameras
all around Hatton Garden. And they started tracking
vehicles that were seen in the area over that
weekend. They found a white Mercedes that was
seen circling the block. They traced a Honda
CR -V. And once you have a license plate. You
have a name. And then... The police did something
very old school. They started listening. Surveillance.
Covert surveillance. They identified the core
suspect's men named Kenny Collins, Terry Perkins,
Daniel Jones, and they managed to place listening
devices bugs in their cars, specifically in Kenny
Collins' white Mercedes and in Terry Perkins'
Citroen. And the transcripts from those bugs
must have been gold dust for the prosecution.
They weren't just discussing the weather, I assume.
They were bragging. They were arguing about how
to split the money. They were discussing the
drill, the problems they had. At one point, one
of them is literally boasting about pulling off
the biggest robbery in history. It was a full
confession captured on tape. So on May 19th,
2015, about six weeks after the heist, the hammer
finally drops. The police execute a series of
coordinated raids across London and Kent. And
they arrested nine suspects. And as the monk
shots started coming out, that... Diamond Geezer's
name was cemented forever because the ages were
just shocking. Truly. Let's meet the crew because
we really need to dispel this idea that they
were just some cute old man from the pub. Let's
start with the man they call the mastermind,
Brian Reeder. Brian Rader was 76 years old when
he was arrested. The press called him the mastermind,
or the old man. And the detail everyone loves
is that he used his senior citizen freedom pass,
his free bus pass, to travel to and from the
scene of the crime. Which saves him, what, two
pounds fifty? On a multi -million pound heist?
It's comical, isn't it? But it's also smart.
A bus pass doesn't leave a credit card trail.
But Brian Reeder wasn't just some pensioner trying
to supplement his state pension. He was a serious,
heavy -duty criminal. He was a key lieutenant
for a notorious gangster named Kenneth Noy. Kenneth
Noy. Now that's a serious name in the British
underworld. A very serious name. Noy was a key
figure in the infamous Brink's Mat robbery back
in 1983. That was the 26 million con gold bullion
heist near Heathrow that completely changed British
policing. And Brian Reeder was right there. He
was involved in laundering that gold. He had
been a top -tier professional criminal for over
30 years. So this truly was the one last job
for him. In the most literal sense, he was the
elder statesman of the crew. Then you have Terry
Perkins, who was 67 at the time. He was no slouch
either. He'd been involved in the Security Express
robbery also in 1983, which at the time was the
largest cash robbery in British history. Six
million pounds. He was sentenced to 22 years
in prison for that. So these guys had spent decades
of their lives in prison already. They knew exactly
what the consequences were if they got caught.
They were institutionalized criminals. They didn't
know another way of life. This wasn't a hobby
for them. It was their profession. And then you
had Daniel Jones, who was 60. He was described
as being very eccentric, obsessed with the military.
He used to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor
of his house, even though he had a bed. He was
the one who was obsessed with the mechanics of
the drill. But there was one man who didn't quite
fit the profile. The mystery man. The one the
press called Basil. Basil the ghost. Oh, yes.
In the CCTV footage, you see this one figure
who is clearly trying to disguise himself. He's
wearing a red wig. He keeps his face hidden.
He seemed younger, more agile than the others.
And crucially, he seemed to have the keys and
the alarm codes to get into the building in the
first place. The inside man. Potentially. And
when the raids happened in May, Basil wasn't
there. He vanished. He vanished. The police arrested
everyone else in the core group, but they couldn't
find Basil. He stayed free for three years. Three
years. So he actually got away with it for a
while. He did. It wasn't until March 2018 that
the police finally tracked him down. His real
name was Michael Seed. He was an alarm specialist.
an electronics expert. He lived a very quiet,
unassuming life in Islington, North London. When
they finally raided his flat, they found jewelry,
gold ingots, and a whole load of electronic equipment
used for jamming and bypassing alarms. Finding
him closed the final chapter on the crew itself.
But it doesn't close the book on the most important
part of the story, does it? The loot. This is
the part that still stings for the victims and
for the police. The police estimate that the
game stole approximately 14 million worth of
goods. 14 million. And that's the 2015 valuation.
In today's money, when you factor in inflation
and the significant rise in gold prices since
then, that figure is much closer to 20 million.
That is a staggering amount of wealth. It is.
But of that amount, only about 4 .3 million was
ever recovered. So wait, you're saying roughly
10 million pounds sterling is still missing?
Gone. Vanished into thin air. Where? I mean,
how do you hide 10 million worth of gold and
diamonds? Well, that is the multi -million pound
question, isn't it? Some of it was recovered
in a very strange place. A cemetery. Daniel Jones,
one of the ringleaders, led the police to a stash
he had buried under a family memorial stone in
Edmonton Cemetery. Bizarre. Very. But that was
only a fraction of the total haul. The rest...
It's highly likely it was broken down and moved
on very very quickly after the heist. Gold can
be melted down into untraceable bars. Diamonds
can be popped out of their settings and recut.
Once you remove the identifying marks, gold is
just element 79 on the periodic table. It's untraceable.
It's still hidden somewhere. That's the other
great speculation. Is there a stash of gold buried
in a field somewhere in Kent? Is there a bag
of diamonds bricked up in a wall of a house somewhere
in London? Or did they sell it all to an international
fence for pennies on the pound just to get rid
of it quickly? We may never know for sure. Let's
talk about the consequences for the men who were
caught. The sentencing. Because the law came
down very hard on them, not just with prison
time, but with huge financial penalties. That's
right. In March 2016, the main crew was sentenced.
Brian Reeder, the oldest, got six years and three
months. Collins, Jones, and Perkins all got seven
years each. Now, to a listener, seven years for
a 14 million pound robbery might sound a bit
light. It does on the surface. But under English
law, burglary is technically a nonviolent crime.
They don't use guns. They didn't threaten anyone
directly. So the sentencing guidelines put a
cap on how long they can serve for that specific
offense. However, the legal system has a very
nasty sting in its tail. It's called the Proceeds
of Crime Act, or POCA. Explain how that works.
POCA is a piece of legislation specifically designed
to stop criminals from profiting from their crimes.
The court basically does a calculation. They
say, right, we know you stole 14 million pounds.
We've only managed to find 4 million pounds.
Therefore, you are hiding 10 million pounds.
You are now jointly liable to pay that back to
the state. And if they don't pay or can't pay?
Their prison sentences are extended significantly.
In January 2018, the court ordered the ringleaders
to pay back a combined 27 .5 million. That massive
figure includes the stolen value plus punitive
interest and legal costs. And they didn't have
it. Or at least they refused to give it up. T
.D. Perkins, the career criminal, he died in
his prison cell at HMP Bill Marsh in February
2018, just one week after that ruling was made.
He was 69 years old. He died bankrupt, owing
millions to the state. That is such a grim image.
Dying in a concrete cell. broke after pulling
off what everyone called the heist of the century.
It completely strips away the romance of it,
doesn't it? Daniel Jones and Kenny Collins also
failed to pay their share, so they each had nearly
seven years added to their sentences. So a seven
-year sentence suddenly becomes a 14 -year sentence.
For a man in his 70s, that is effectively a life
sentence. It is. The government played hardball.
They basically said, if you are hiding that gold
for your family or for when you eventually get
out, we will make absolutely sure you never live
to enjoy it. It turned the tactical victory of
the heist into a total crushing strategic defeat.
And Michael Seed, bezel the ghost. He was sentenced
much later in 2019 after he was caught. He got
10 years for burglary and eight for conspiracy
to run concurrently. And then a year later, he
was also hit with a £6 million repayment order
under POCA. It's just such a tragedy of waste,
really. Human potential, ingenuity, all wasted
on crime. Decades of their lives wasted in prison.
and all that wealth stolen from people who had
worked for it. And we absolutely have to address
the victimless crime myth here because the movies
and the media coverage often portray this as
just sticking it to the man. But the victims
were real people. They were small business owners.
They were independent jewelers. Many of them
were uninsured or underinsured because the premiums
for jewelry stock in Hatton Garden are just astronomical.
For many of them, losing their stock meant losing
their livelihood, their business, their life's
work. Some people lost irreplaceable heirlooms.
that had sentimental value you can't put a price
on. The gang didn't just steal metal and stones.
They stole people's security and their past.
Yet, despite that reality, the cultural impact
was massive. Within a few years, we had, what,
three movies? The Hat Garden Job. King of Thieves
with Michael Caine, and a big ITV television
series. There's a deep fascination with heists.
It's the ingenuity, I think. We can't help but
admire the planning, the sheer mechanics of the
drill, the audacity of the timeline. And then
seeing legendary actors like Michael Caine and
Ray Winstone play these parts, it reinforced
that sense of nostalgia. It connected this very
modern crime back to some mythical good old days
of British villainy. But the reality, as we've
discussed, was far less charming. It was dusty.
It was dirty. It was physically exhausting. And
ultimately, it was desperate. And futile, utterly
futile. They did all that work, took all that
risk. And in the end, they ended up with nothing
but a prison cell, a huge debt to the government
and a legacy of ruin. So as we wrap up this deep
dive, what's the big takeaway for you? How should
we really remember the Hatton Garden heist? I
think it stands as this perfect collision between
two different worlds. You had the analog world
of the 20th century criminal. the heavy drill
the wheelie bin the reliance on silence and time
going up against the digital world of 20 first
century policing. The old school versus the new
school. Exactly. The gang won the battle in the
vault because they understood concrete and mechanics
and persistence. But they lost the war because
they didn't understand data. There were dinosaurs
in a digital age. They didn't grasp how ANPR
cell site analysis and covert listening devices
would create a web they couldn't escape from.
And that is ultimately what caught them. And
it leaves us with that one final tantalizing
question that we've touched on. The missing millions.
And the ghost money. That's gone forever. Melted
down, recut, scattered to the winds. Or is it
still out there somewhere? It's a provocative
thought to end on, isn't it? If you're walking
your dog through a field in the English countryside,
or you're renovating an old house in North London,
and you pull up the floorboards, are you standing
on top of the Hatton Garden loot? A fortune just
waiting to be found. But a fortune that, as we've
seen, came with a very, very high price. Indeed.
Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
the London Underground. It's a story that proves
that sometimes the truth isn't just stranger
than fiction. It's a whole lot grittier, too.
Until next time. See you then.