[imagesource: Daily Mail]

A ragtag team of criminals, an intricate game of deception, and a swap out of some priceless jewels before a clever escape to a European country.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m describing the plot of every heist film ever made.

This isn’t a film, though. It’s a jewellery heist that happened at New Bond Street jewellers, Boodles, in the UK, in March 2016.

The details only emerged in full this week in court, and the timeline of events plays out in a similar way to Ocean’s Eleven, which police were quick to point out.

According to IOL, this has been hailed as the “largest-value single incident of shoplifting in British criminal history”.

A gang pulled off one of the most audacious heists in British history by swapping £4 million (about R86 million) of diamonds for pebbles under the nose of a leading jeweller.

Posing as millionaire Russian businessmen, a gang of French gem thieves flew to Monaco to dupe the chairman of luxury jeweller Boodles into believing that they wanted to buy seven huge diamonds, including a heart-shaped jewel worth £2.2 million.

The chairman, Nicholas Wainwright, whose family had run the business for six generations, agreed to let the ‘businessmen’ bring in a ‘diamond expert’ to visit its flagship New Bond Street store in London to inspect the jewels.

That’s when things got really interesting.

Known only as Anna, she chatted to him in French as she weighed the jewels before wrapping each in tissue paper and placing them in opaque boxes she had with her.

When the examination was over, the boxes were placed into a zipped purse bag which was then padlocked shut while Boodles’ own gemmologist Emma Barton was watching.

But Anna performed a swap with an identical bag full of pebbles in a split second when her fake Russian buyer ‘Alexander’ phoned Mr Wainwright to ask about the examination.

Anna left with the diamonds, while the bag of pebbles was put in the shop’s safe. She then handed them off to another member of the group before changing her clothes and boarding a train to France.

Within three hours, the six thieves had left the UK with the diamonds, which have never been seen again.

The Daily Mail put together an infographic that illustrates the events as they happened:

Image: Daily Mail

The crew’s driver was caught in a matter of months, but it took Scotland Yard four years to track down one of the criminals, Mickael Jovanovic (below), following which they released the details of the heist.

Boodles didn’t notice that the gems were missing until they failed to receive payment from the ‘Russian businessmen’.

The Telegraph spoke to Detective Constable William Man, of the Flying Squad:

“Like the plot of a film, this was a truly audacious crime. They stole the diamonds and fled in a matter of hours. However, they left behind a trail of evidence which led us to where they were staying, and the Citroen they had hired in Paris.

Image: Metropolitan Police/ Daily Mail

“As a result of piecing together all of the bits of information, we knew it was only a matter of time before arrests were made.

“And whilst it has taken four years, this case does highlight that we won’t give up. We still remain determined to identify all of those involved.”

Jovanovic turned up in Italy earlier this year. The rest of the crew remains at large.

[sources:iol&dailymail&telegraph]