Thieves pull big diamond heist in Holland (US$ 99 Million)

[dutchdemocrat]

Thieves pull big diamond heist in Holland

Gunmen hijack armored car full of jewelry at Amsterdam airportMSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 6:40 p.m. ET Feb. 25, 2005

AMSTERDAM, Holland - Thieves hijacked an armored truck carrying diamonds and jewelry at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Friday and escaped with their haul, Dutch airline KLM said.

A spokesman declined to put a value on the loss, but the BBC cited unconfirmed reports that the load of “high-value goods” was worth at least 75 million euros (approximately $99 million U.S.)

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7032778/

[BrklynLiberal]

1. WOW That's a big heist!!

[RelativelyJones]

2. Sounds like the big Lufthansa heist from the 60's

A prime caper in "Goodfellas". If anybody in Northern Europe buys a pink cadillac in the next three days, that's your guy.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Amsterdam has always been...............

the mecca of the diamond trade. What surprises me is that a heist of this magnitude was never accomplished before. The diamond trade is very secretive, almost mythical in it's operations. There had to be an inside hand or two to pull this off. Every one of these were probably "blood" diamonds as well, which increases my hopes that they get away with it.

[Gman]

4. There's a soon to be made movie

coming to a theatre near you in the next couple of years.

[psychopomp]

5. Shit, it was all stolen in the first place

from Africa!

[trof]

6. Friend was victim of mistaken identity-diamond dealer.

Airline pilots carry those big rectangular bags ("nav kits").
Dutch diamond dealers use (or used to) the same bag.
My buddy had just arrived at Schiphol and went to a pay phone to call his ride to the hotel. Sat his bags down next to him. When he completed his call and turned around, his nav kit was gone. Police later found it in a trash can in the Schiphol train station. Bet the thief was disappointed.

[DulceDecorum]

7. Trouble with stealing

bags like that is one never does know what is inside.

I recall this incident where a fella at a bus station ripped off a small suitcase belonging to a young lady. Someone saw him and sounded the alarm. He was chased and caught.
The owner was nowhere to be found
and so the bag was opened to reveal
one dead infant.
Oops.
But the thief still got to go to jail.

I don't really understand why those thieves bothered to steal diamonds seeing as how there are these Russian-made machines in Florida that can create perfect diamonds out of regular carbon.

NEWSWEEK Feb. 14 2005 issue
Will the distinction between man-made diamonds and natural ones eventually disappear? The answer may hinge on whether De Beers can come up with a cheap and easy way of telling the two apart. Doing so conclusively currently entails a battery of high-tech instruments that's beyond the pale for most diamond appraisers. Gemologists at the International Gemological Institute, a New York-based firm, used a high-powered microscope on the diamonds provided by Apollo to look for inclusions—tiny marks a diamond would acquire underground while it was being formed. A diamond that's too clean (or too perfect, as Bryant Linares would have it) might be man-made—or it could simply be a very clean natural diamond. IGI then used a $40,000 machine to shoot a mid-infrared light through the diamonds to analyze the distribution of nitrogen atoms.

IGI next ran the diamonds through two devices supplied by De Beers. The first, called DiamondSure, checks the nitrogen content as well. The second, DiamondView, looks at a diamond's "growth structure" by illuminating the gem with a high concentration of ultraviolet light. The test can reveal a diamond made by high pressures, but it's stumped by Apollo's CVD diamonds, in which carbon atoms are formed more similarly to natural diamonds. In the final test—on a machine that costs $100,000—the IGI gemologists cooled a diamond in liquid nitrogen so an even more accurate reading could be taken. They then shot a laser through it and analyzed the wavelength. A natural diamond would measure a wavelength of 741 nanometers; Apollo's CVD diamond measured 737.

What happens when less scrupulous businesses start to get hold of these diamond-making technologies? High-pressure diamond presses could be made to fit on a desktop.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6920717/site/newsweek/

[AngryWhiteLiberal]

12. Good, I hope diamond-making kills De Beers monopoly & conflict diamonds.

It's about time that diamond supply exceeded demand. Maybe then 3rd world countries will stop raping the land and abusing their citizenship on behalf of the de Beers cartel.

JB

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. Noreiga's money launderers

use the same types of bags.

I worked in the jewelry industry in the 80's. When gold went sky high Noreiga was buying all the gold he could get. His guys always paid cash.

[Kingofalldems]

8. Where is Sammy Maudlin

and his MO-11 crew?

[0007]

9. I hope they were Pat Robertson's diamonds.

[genieroze]

11. Wow, bet that was an inside job. eom

[Baclava]

13. $99 million in diamonds?

How much is that in pot seeds?