Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby

two grams, about the same heft as a pencil—is worth as much as $200,000 at retail. A kilogram of the same type of diamonds, weighing the equivalent of a liter of water and taking up as much space as a jar of peanuts, would retail for $200 million. Because of their small size, their enormous value, and their liquidity, diamonds are among the most coveted forms of wealth in the world.
    They may be a girl’s best friend, but because of their return on investment—of time and planning—they’re also a thief’s. Because the diamond merchants in Antwerp were aware that, at any given moment, a plot was in the works to rob someone, there was a cautionary saying all along the diamond pipeline, from mine owners to diamond traders to the mom-and-pop jewelry store: “If they can touch it, they can steal it.”
    Considering that, it was remarkable that the men gathered at the tables in the bourse could be so relaxed when dealing them from hand to admiring hand. It was common practice to temporarily part with your goods—whether to have them analyzed for cutting or to entrust them to a broker to sell for a specific price—and, therefore, merchants were often in possession of stones they didn’t own, perhaps from several different sources. These stones could easily be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. There weren’t even formal records of who had exactly what in their safe deposit boxes from one day to the next. Of course, this would only happen between people who trusted each other. Trust was the cornerstone of the diamond industry, and it acted as an antitheft device more powerful than the most advanced surveillance system or biometric lock.
    This was one of the enduring paradoxes of the industry. Those who worked with diamonds were thoroughly paranoid about theft and yet, in order to do any business, they had to take one another at their word. It was an ancient and powerful tradition in the diamond industry that deals hinged on the weight of one’s reputation. Generally, this practice worked well, in large part because the industry was tightly cloistered. The ownership of many diamond companies spanned generations, and memory in the Diamond District went back just as far. Anyone tempted to run a scam on a fellow diamantaire risked not only his own reputation, but also his extended family’s.
    This wasn’t to say that scams didn’t happen. Quite the contrary, they happened regularly enough that Antwerp had a dedicated unit of federal police detectives solely devoted to investigating crimes involving diamonds. They looked into everything from allegations of smuggling and money laundering to bait-and-switch schemes and other rip-offs. By and large, the latter con occurred when diamond merchants weren’t as vigilant as usual about with whom they did business.
    Sleight-of-hand cons were common, in which someone examined a stone of a particular size and shape and deftly swapped it with a diamond of lesser value or a cubic zirconia, making off with the original before anyone noticed. In one particularly crafty switch, a man posed as a buyer for several meetings with a merchant selling a small parcel of stones. They came to an agreement on price and, as was typical, the merchant sealed the diamonds in a small envelope, scrawled the buyer’s name and the details of the stones on the outside, and placed it in his safe. When the buyer returned within twenty-four hours with the money, as had been agreed, he asked to take one more look at the goods. He was handed the envelope, but before he opened it, he patted his pockets as if he’d forgotten something. Looking embarrassed and apologetic, he handed the envelope back and said that he’d left his loupe in the car and that he would return momentarily. No one ever saw him or the diamonds again; in the brief moment he’d held the envelope, he’d switched it with one that was identical, except in one respect: it was filled with gravel, while the one he took had