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Zaren No Wake up. Hey, I was not sleeping my eyes or just kidding.
Me, Elizabeth.
I know you, yeah, you do.
You know what's ridiculous?
I do? Clyde, Oh okay, you know, like I bring this up often karate masters.
Yeah, I know you did, ye right?
So I found this headline quote humans are no match. End quote says japan karate master who fended off two bears advises caution. Oh right, so I thought this was awesome. Right. There's this story of this dude's Matsato Fukuda. He's fifty years old, Japanese cat. He lives up in Hokkaido, like the top of Japan. Right, So he's out he said he's wanted to go out to these falls, the Yyoko Falls apparently spectacular, I don't know, okay, And he's going
out there. He wanted to see the winter snow mills. Right. So we were in April and he's out there. The road narrows. He gets out. He's walking and he's like, oh, is the waterfall ahead? And he hears some rustling. All of a sudden, ow it comes these bears. He's like, oh, no, like black bears. He's like, yeah, it was like it's on, right. He sees them, they see him, and these ones they're like five feet six feet tall bears, right, big enough that they can mess him up and most likely, you know,
probably kill him. So what does he do? He remembers, Oh, if you turn your back, they'll chase you. So he watches the bears and he keeps eyes on them, and he backs up and then doesn't matter. The bear circle behind him. So now it's on. So what does the karate master do? Elizabeth?
He should make noise and make himself look bigger.
He does karate.
Oh man, he says, if I'm going to be attacked, there's no choice but to fight.
So he goes and I don't know how I love this line. He also used a pair of scissors that happened to have he happened to have on him to strike the animal's body. I guess, I don't know. So apparently the scissors ended up cutting his hand right because they glanced off the bear. The bears moving, not standing still, it's not working out. So then he has to go just and count on his karate. So now it's just him two bears in his karate. So he does it right.
He punches one bear and then he says, quote, my attack wasn't effective at all, but it seemed to make the bears flinch for a moment. Like he punches one bear and he does a flying kick on another bear. Oh yeah, the bears retreat and then fakuda, my man. He goes and gets close to his car because he still hasn't left his car. He hasn't made it to the falls yet. So he gets to his car. Then he slams the door and the bears run off. Now the thing is it's funny, is he's not a karate master.
That was just stuf that the press threw in. What yes, he's like he mentioned occasionally that he had done karate and he was in junior high school. He's like, I did karate. That's how much karate. He has exactly as much karate as I do. But everyone was like, oh yes, so tell me karate fighter guy, and they all turned him to a karate master and all the international stories, and he resented it. He was like, you know, basically, he's like, yo, that's not fair to the bears. I'm
not a karate fighter. And he didn't want other karate fighters to come and be like, hey man, you, why are you fighting bears? We have rules against that belt. So how ridiculous? Is that?
Very ridiculous? Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Ever? Thinking that safety deposit boxes are actually safe?
Huh?
This is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
You damn right, zaren.
Do you know what the biggest heist in modern history was?
Is it in Brazil?
I'll go ahead and tell you as a little treat it was in two thousand and three. It was in Iraq, that's the one. Yes, it was pulled off by Khusey Hussein. Oh you know, son of brother of Udai total goon. Oh my god, I love that as a pejorative for like brother of fail sons. So the US invaded Iraq March nineteenth, two thousand and three. On March eighteenth, Kusey showed up at the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad. He had with him a handwritten note from his dad,
Saddam Hussein. The note demanded one billion dollars with a b in US dollars be handed over to him outside did had three trucks and a bunch of Iraqi officials.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot. It's considered to be the largest heist in modern history, one billion dollars. There's some who say that since Saddam Hussein was an absolute dictator.
I'm still in power at the moment.
Yeah, he had every right to take the cash. And there is speculation that the money might have been his own personal funds that he amassed while ruling Iraq with an iron fist.
Sure, we'll call them his thought from other people.
So the US government, they figured he was trying to like move the cash over the border to keep it out of the hands of the invading Americans. US Army special forces near the border with Syria, they saw trucks just like the three outside the bank crossing that border soon after. Others thought Hussain was using the money to like stir up resistance to the American troops and you go around paying castle. That's what a lot of Iraqi's thought, Yeah.
To fight the Northern Front people.
Yeah, and there was enough cash to pay to get his family and like government muckety MUCKs out of the country ahead of the invaders.
Yeah, there's always there's enough get them to London or where.
After the heist, coalition forces tracked down about six hundred and fifty million dollars of the bank's camp. Really yeah, where was it, Sarah? Where was it was in Udai's palace? One of them, Udai, Kusse and Saddam all met violent ends.
You know, it's war.
But three hundred and fifty million dollars of the cash was never recovered. So Iraq in those days was like a black hole for US.
Cast Wait, I've seen three kings.
In two thousand and four, the US flew almost twelve billion dollars in shrink wrapped one hundred dollars bills into Iraq and lost it. Yeah. About that's about two hundred and eighty million notes, which is like three hundred and sixty three tons of money.
Have you ever seen them on the palace? Oh?
Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Whears of cash.
They would fly from New York to Bagdad in these c one thirties, and the flights were happening like twice a month. The biggest load was two point four billion dollars on June twenty second, two thousand and four. So the thing is the cash. It was distributed, no real control over who was receiving it, how it was spent. Where did all this cash come from? Great questions, Aaron.
Where did is all this cash come from? Elizabeth?
It came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN Oil for Food program and seized Iraqi assets. So a government memorandum that was prepared for the House Committee on Over and Government Reform said, quote, one contractor received a two million dollar payment in a duffel bag stuffed
with shrink wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack, and then quote they also found that seven hundred seventy four thousand, three hundred dollars in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck and the cash was stored
in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given six point seventy five million in cash and was ordered to spend it in one week before the intraim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.
It's like brewsters millions of rock.
Six point seven million got a week to burn it. There are these minutes from a May two thousand and four US led Coalition Provisional Authority.
CPA meeting the Green Zone people.
Yeah, and they reveal quote a single disbursement of five hundred million dollars in security fundled labeled merely T meaning to be determined. Many of the funds appeared to have been lost to corruption and waste. Thousands of quote ghost employees were receiving paychecks from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and
insurgents fighting the US. So the CPA, they're supposed to like select an independent, certified public accounting firm to oversee these payouts, and that is not what happened. No, they hired a quote obscure consulting firm called north Star Consultants Incorporated. The firm was so small that it reportedly operates out of a private home in San Diego.
Oh in San Diego and San Diego.
So it looks like American officials didn't care what happened to the cash because it wasn't US tax payer money. Yes, and they were basically burning Iraqi assets.
Yeah, it's like black box money.
Yeah. So in those same minutes, retired Admiral David Oliver was asked, like, what happened to the eight point eight billion that you were in charge of? And he said, quote, I have no idea. I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't, nor do I actually think it's important. Wow, they said to him, quote, but the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without a trace. Here's how he answered, of
their money. Billions of dollars of their money. Yeah, I understand. I'm saying, what difference does it make?
Wow?
That crazy?
So they really were just like because it's their money and this is therefore it's like casino money and still money.
Yeah. So that that Central Bank of Iraq job is pretty much considered the biggest heist on record, even if it does kind of the military right thread thread the notion that Saddam's thing threading the notion of legality.
I'm going with the other one.
I'm going, what's the second biggest tyston.
The one you just said is also that one they're together. No, it's in Brazil, right in Brazil.
That would be the Bonco Central burglary in Brazil. That one was for about seventy million dollars. It went down in two thousand and five after a criminal gang started up a landscaping business that just so happened to be right by the Brazilian Central Bank.
I think this kind of inspired the fast and the furious. Oh did it seriously? They have a big heightst well so over police station.
Yeah. Over three months, the heist crew tunneled through more than two hundred and fifty five feet of dirt and concrete. And then remember they had that landscaping company, so like no one suspicious of excavators or like truckloads of soil.
Being driven off the property.
So they got into the bank. They disabled the security systems. They busted through three and a half feet of steel reinforced concrete to get into the bank vault. That's crazy. So now you know it's the central bank.
So they had a powerful lance.
Yeah, so they're in control of the money supply at this bank. All of the money in the.
Normal lance and a powerful jet exactly get it.
Right, So all the money in the vault was supposed to be checked and then tagged for either recirculation or to be destroyed.
Oh yes, okay, And so the.
Bills they're not in sequence, and that means they can't be traced.
Yeah, it's a grocery store money, perfect.
Place to go. So the cops they did a pretty good job of tracking down most of the crew, like in the grand scheme of things. And the reason I'm not making this into an entire episode is because of the absolute bloodshed and violence that radiates out from the heist.
And I was trying to avoid that.
But you know, a tonneal job is always ridiculous. And it is noted as the second largest heist in history.
Wait, wait to go. You know what, the top two have problems with blood, with a.
Lot of blood. I know you like numbered lists.
I love them.
So what's the third?
One of my third favorite things?
That's the third largest bank?
Ice, the third largest bank? Hest is it in? It's not the same brings? Is it? The train rod? It's not London, not New York, London.
It was a heist London. It was are you going to tell it?
It was?
It was in London and it was pulled off by an Italian.
Oh, is not the one I'm thinking of.
No, So I'm talking about the Knightsbridge security deposit robbery in nineteen eighty seven.
Oh nice.
So I've done my share of British heists, and by that I mean I've told you about them, not that I've pulled the heist myself.
Yes.
So, in the Knightsbridge security deposit robbery, the crew made off with sixty five million dollars. That's a lot of deposits.
Sixty five million, insane amount. Yeah.
So the robbery took place July twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, and as the name suggests, it went down in the affluent district of Knightsbridge, London.
I've been there.
There was there was, as there always is in a heist, a mastermind.
Yeah yeah, tell me about it.
This time it was an Italian criminal named Valerio Vizzi.
Valario Vizi.
Yeah, now, Valerio. He had already been involved in a bunch of bank robberies in Italy. He was born in the town of Sulmona in the province of Lakila in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Very nice, so beautiful. You know who else is from Solima.
Regis Philbin.
Yes, how did you get that one?
I think he's pretty sure he's.
Irish Pope Innocent the seventh.
Oh I'm so close though.
And you know who else? Roman? Covid Avid Roman, author of Metamorphosis. Yes, of course it was he who wrote quote, we are ever striving after what is forbidden and coveting what has denied us.
Yes, true, appropriate. Oh, it's very that's it's timeless advice.
So sulmona beautiful town according to Google street View. Can you guess if I want to go there?
Did you Google street view this one? Did you take a drive and turn around?
Of course? And of course I want to go there, even outside of the old town. The it's lovely. It's sort of a nestled.
Among mountains in the he recommended.
You know, the town was leveled by an earthquake in seventeen and it took a lot of hits in World War two.
Oh yeah, but they've lost a lot of old churches.
Ten years after the end of that war.
A boy was born, a boy val Hey, a man.
He started criming young, okay, and he came from a respectable family. His dad was a lawyer, Like no lawyer jokes. Please, your family is crawling.
We've got tons.
So as a young man in the nineteen seventies, and can we talk for a moment about how amazing Italian style was in the seventies and eighties.
Even throughund the sixties. And come on, they got a run, just a three.
Decade run in fifties too, so we'll four decade run.
Really tough time. The warriors were tough, but other than that, just a solid run.
I've been getting into the genre of Itallo disco.
Yeah, I keep talking about this. How you digging it?
I'd say it was out of left field for me, but I do love desperate styles of music. There's a good Italo disco essentials set on Apple Music. It's a good house cleaning music, or like walking at a track or conducting drug deals out of a ferrari.
There you go. Yeah.
So anyway, as young guy Vale, he became involved in a series of armed robberies all across Italy, and at seventeen, he and an Italian right wing terror group blew up an electricity substation.
Oh wow, so there's that. Okay, there's that. He was like me, trying to like slide the politics Yeah.
He was known for his intelligence. That guy was super smart, and he was a planner, which you know I love, Yes, and he totally ruthless, which I don't really love. So he built this reputation for himself in Italy as a skilled thief, and that meant that the law would come a calling.
Oh, they're like, how do you do it?
Yeah? Tell us more. The cops are like closing in on him. He's feeling the pressure. So he leaves Italy. And at this point he'd been involved in like fifty bank robberies. Was racking him up. So he leaves Italy. Zaren Where did he go?
New Italy?
I have no idea. I was hoping you knew you. He went to London. This is nineteen eighty five, so new place, new Valerio. Yes, not on your life, son. In fact, he stepped it up a little. Yes, let's take a break when we come back, We're going to meet up with Valerio in London, all right. So we met Valerio Vizzi bank Robert Italiano. He looks about how you'd imagine, by the way, not the tallest fella.
Yes, does have kind of flowncy hair.
He has a head of like thick, lustrous black hair, a bit of a widow's piece.
Oh perfect, Harry chest I don't care about that, but whatever, where's a gold chant? Good for the look?
Yeah, his eyebrows refused to be parted and they reach over to kiss at the top of his Oh nice, like Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, it's a never ending smoocher. He could easily be an extra on The Sopranos, which I watched and I loved because I watch and love television.
You know, I don't ever watch it.
You've never seen it.
I'm just going to take it from you, right.
Okay, So now let's direct our attention to the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Center.
Please.
It's located directly across the street from Harrod's department store on Brompton Road.
I've literally been the I got put up there, stayed inherits No, No, they're in that neighborhood. Was right where I kept walking, that's right.
Okay. So the deposit center, it was in a basement across a building across the street. It catered to these wealthy clients who used its vaults to store cash, jewelry, and other valuables. Some of the clients were known to be less than on the up and up. Oh yeah, So if this sounds familiar, let's not forget the Lloyd's bank robbery in nineteen seventy Baker Street job.
The Sexy Beast one.
Yeah, that was about two and a half miles from this location. And in that heist, the crew made away with somewhere between one and a half to three million pounds. And then there was Hatton Garden twenty twelve.
Which one said the Princess Margaret photos.
That's uh Street, Baker Street, Yeah, Hatton Gardens. They got almost fourteen million in valuables from the safe deposit boxes. And that's like three and a half miles from that's the old hard night Bridge spot. Yeah, so decades and miles apart in all of them, but within the same class of crime, looting safe deposit boxes on the sly heists as we call them.
So what about Vale, Yes, how's he going to make it new?
He knew exactly what it took to pull it off. He was familiar. Yeah, he was familiar with these kind of targets. He devised a meticulous plan to get access. So first he had to like scope the place out, but he did it in style. He rented two flats, one in Saint John's Wood and the other in Hampstead. Okay, and then his car.
I'm gonna need two apartments a ferrari.
Of course, he drove a white Ferrari Mondialo and I made a joke about drug deals out of a ferrari before. Well, as you can probably guess. This guy who, by the way, people called the Italian Stallion.
No.
Yeah, he's got my friend's nickname, yes, but.
They also called him Gigi. That was like his main nickname.
Wow, I've got an ant. This guy's like running parallel with exactly.
He did a lot of coke.
This guy out of a Ferrari with my aunt's name.
So he romanced a lot of women.
This guy with.
Your Yeah, I mean like he hit the Drappini.
He was like they were ladies.
A total playboy. So the Italian under he comes up with a plan. He he does all this crazy surveillance of the deposit center. He studied the comings and goings of the staff, like all the security protocols, the layout of the facility, and then he and his team they bought an array of tools and weapons necessary for the job, including handguns, drills, cutting equipment, perhaps a thermal lance, powerful jack.
Maybe here and there are they going to shoot the boxing?
They had all this attention to details. So on July twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, he and an accomplice, a dude named Pati de Confuerto.
Oh, so you're only working with his countryman.
Yeah, well and then you'll see but mostly yeah, attack probably early on.
Yeah.
So he enters the facility, he's pretending to rent a safe deposit box, and they're impeccably dressed. They're in these just sharp suits for yeah, and they fit right in designer suits. Parvez Latif is the owner of the place, and he shows the two of them in. Will Digny, he's in control of the like the security center on the day of the robbery, so the bank, yeah he works for. So he's like, you know, sitting here at the control.
All the computers in the sens in front of him.
So Latif he brings these two dudes in with their briefcases and their suits and he's describing to them the security arrangements. And so then Latif asked Digny to move away from the desk where like all the alarm buttons were so that he could show the men the TV monitors, because they wanted to inspect the level of security and make sure it was up to their standards and their.
Knees no blind spots in the cameras.
So all of a sudden, though, Digny's got a gun pressed in his face. And so while they todd guns, they had no intention of ever using them, like Gigi didn't want bloodshed. Yes, so Gigi and Conferto they send Latif back out to the front to lock the doors so that they don't get any interruptions, but not before letting in a few more members of the heist crew. Okay, yeah, and then they even put a closed sign on.
The door, handmade.
Yeah, and so this like bought them ours. And as you can guess, Latif was in on the whole thing.
Oh, I did not have that.
In it seems like he was looking for an insurance scam. And he was also Gigi's coke buddy.
Uh oh, yeah, you totally by me. I did not see the coke connection.
But yeah, so Latif he had opened the safe deposit center with a silent partner. He actually he bought it from another guy, but in sixteen months. Yes, it had an operating loss of four hundred and seventy thousand pounds, oh my god. And his overdraft was running just over like fifty grand. So he was happy to disable the alarms and the gang had plenty of time to work, so he allowed himself to be chained up, you know, in the lobby, while the gang smashed open security boxes
in the basement. So we've got Valerio Vici, Patadi Conferto, David Poole. He was an unemployed caterer. Okay, Peter o'donnegh, you an unemployed mechanics.
That catered the break in. Yeah, we're going to need a cater We're going to drive fruit plate.
They're Italians, israel Pinkus, who was an Israeli antique stealer, and then another guy known only as Eric, and then and then there was Eric. So some of them were inside somewhere outside.
K name Eric.
Eric, he's like the super Italian. So all of them, they're working hard to pop them boxes. They worked at it for hours. They were prying the boxes open with as you said, crowbars of them, and so Digney he could hear the banging on the boxes and the boxes popping open, and then he would hear voices shouting bingo, like look what I've got.
I shouldn't say that, but you know, you know how it goes.
So the hall would have been much bigger if one of the crew members outside had been able to operate his walkie talkie radio. Oh yeah, he kept pressing the wrong button. And then they had to bail, even though there were still hundreds of unopened boxes, having all this cash and jewels. Uh, Gigi was so pissed about this that he threatened to quote find the man by deducting
thirty thousand pounds from his cut. That's fair, right, So even so, the gang hauled out four suitcases and eight large green bags four feet high full of stuff.
Damn.
One of the bags was full of just money, just cash. So while in the vault, Gigi made a mistake. He cut his hand. See some of the tools failed and he started but he just started smashing boxes with his fish, with his fists, and he left behind bloody fingers.
I thought he was doing it.
You get tired he punching stuff.
Oh that's not good.
He left behind bloody fingerprints, which is a total amateur fingerprints.
They didn't even do it your DNA testing with bloody.
Finger bloody fingers. So that's what he left behind. But what did he take?
What did he take? Elizabeth?
They busted open one hundred and forty six boxes. This place list have been huge. They pulled out what was dubbed a quote colossal haul of cash, So millions in cash and in all different currencies too, not just in British pounds, millions in diamonds, all this exquisite jewelry, gold, bricks, gold jewelry.
Imagine some blackmailed uh.
Oh information, expensive paintings and statues.
Oh right, and statues.
Wow, two kilos of cocaine. Someone was keeping two kilos of cocaine in here, so his own gigi's own attorney would later say of it, quote, it was a large amount of loot by any standards. Enough jewelry to satisfy a coach load of Elizabeth Taylor's, enough cash to fill a bathtub, and diamonds all over the floor. And weren't the victims of this robbery a rum bunch with millions and pounds of jewelry kept in locked box just for
the odd night out? Who worthy people? Twenty of them would not come forward three totally refused to make statements, and seventeen owners were never found. Among their number were quite a few shady people. So he's like, victim blame.
I'm just about to say this, like the one time we're like vick them blaming. I'm like, well, the man has a blank, Like, can we just hear him out?
Well, we saw this with all the other safety deposit box heists that we've talked about. There's always a significant number of box holders who don't want to come forward.
Most of them, it seems like near half.
That's one of the things I love about them.
And I love the discretion.
I love crimer on crimer crime.
Oh yeah, that's good stuff.
So after the heist.
And you don't want to call the police when you've been wronged, yeah, exactly, like.
A little just good, I'll take us to own business. After the heist, the crew go to their safe house, which they called the Flop Flop Yeah in Hampstead, and there's this old Italian man answers the door okay, and a lot of people and the crew thought it was Gigi's father, the attorney, but like it was never full and he was never identified. He just like took off later back to Italy.
Really the guy who ran the flop. Nobody ever learned what Lundy was.
So that they carry all the looten completely. So they carry all the loot up. They filled the bathtub with money, like right up to the top, and they just rolled around and punctiously.
I wanted to get dirty.
Wanted everything split up and like divided into its different types of stuff. He wanted it organized, watches together, all the rings, the firs, the necklaces. There was one briefcase that was filled just with diamonds.
A briefcase, a briefcase of diamonds, loose diamonds.
There's so many diamonds, yeah, loose diamonds that like weeks later, one of the crew members is at the flop and he finds diamonds like still scattered on the floor, parts of the rug, the thick red carpet diamond exactly. So in the weeks following the robbery, the crew they traveled all over the world in all these attempts to like hide the hall and make deals on the diamonds, the gold, the jewelry.
Oh, all their different fences. They're going like internationally for fence.
Yeah, so Israel Pinkas. He flew to Tel Aviv and he opened a bunch of different bank accounts and he deposited sums in each of them at like fifty grand, thirty grand. Peter O'donahue he flew to the US and basically did the same thing. David Pool went to France. On their returns, those two both opened safety deposit boxes in London. O'donahue put O'donnahue put eighty four thousand.
Anyone knows that's not safe.
It's right. Pool put almost thirty grand in his. The missed up there is that the cash that they put in there was still in bank wrappers that would be able to trace to the busted box. Yeah, so they didn't even bother to take the wrapping off.
Wow.
Gg flew to Switzerland and deposited two hundred thousand pounds in a bank, and then he bought half a million Swiss francs.
Did the Swiss ask any questions when you show up with money? They might just take it. We'll take it. You want some chocolate, go go.
Off, you go. He goes back to Britain, opens the safe deposit box in Park Lane. He deposited the barretta pistol used in the raid. No false passport, no, and the half million Swiss francs and then like fifty two thousand pounds in cats.
And like a signed picture of him with his address on back and then the.
Bloody thumb, the double up, and he drove around in his ferrari and he stayed in the luxury hotel, and then he flew to Antwerp to negotiate the sale of five diamonds for one million dollars or one million pounds. Yeah, so he sold five diamonds on that hand. And the diamonds they had been sold for seven hundred and fifty two thousand on the black market to a Belgian dealer who was supposed to be acting like for an international group.
So they're just like you said, international fences. The diamonds belonged to Donatella Flick, who was a London based wife of a member of a West German industrial family. So they there are huge diamonds. After the deal, Gigi goes to Luxembourg. It was five hundred and sixty eight thousand pounds in a bank account.
There another great place for crime, another great and then Luxembourg there was a big purchase that he made.
So he loved his white Ferrari Mondial, but he wanted to go one better now. He used his ill gotten gains to buy himself a black on black Ferrari Testarosa.
He loved.
Oh my god, he loved it.
I love his car like he.
But still there's the bloody fingerprint.
There is that over the star, always there.
The whole whole thing was just so bold. Broad Daylight took their time, lifted what would be estimated to be about seventy two point seventy five million pounds so much. That was about ninety seven million dollars at the time, which is the equivalent of two hundred and sixty eight million dollars today. I'll take it right, So in just a couple of hours, imagine. So obviously the banking industry was just shook. They were they didn't know what to do in the company.
Were they jealous?
Oh? The cops they turned it up to eleven to catch these guys. Okay, do you know who they called in.
The flying squad?
Yes, yeah, that's right, Scotland Yard's flying on DCI pickle.
Yeah.
And as we've don.
The flying Squad, they take on the big stuff they do armed robbery, organize crime, anything high profile. They're their major case for yes to put him, and they aren't tied to a specific precinct. They go where they want, they do what they want.
You can't stop them cowboys.
There were complications, of course, so there were all those people who wouldn't come forward to claim their losses, right, and a lot of the stuff, especially like the large sums of foreign currency that could be moved out of the country really quickly and then just like cashed in and no one would notice you exchange it, no big deal. So the Flying Squad they used good old fashioned shoe leather police work, but they also pulled some CSI stuff and such.
You love that stuff I do with cops.
So they worked the criminal underground for tips. And I'm guessing like a lot of guys got slammed into dimly lit pub walls by bill eager to be trench coated detectives.
But what about the guys going to like shoe stands and then going, here's five dollars, send me a little information, here's ten dollars. They're just making like, you know, fifty bucks on.
Shoeshine guy kind of looks back and forth and then like you didn't hear it from me exactly. Well, like the Flying Squad figured that like low lifes like this crew wouldn't be able to help themselves when they had all this cash.
They're going to spend it.
They're going to spend it. It's very good fellas.
Yeah, they're buying the not wrong, they're not wrong.
So the cops they watched high end car dealerships, they kept their eyes on like real estate and posh neighborhoods for new buyers who just like didn't belong. And then there's the fingerprint hovering over us. With DNA technology and fingerprint data from inner poll and the Italian police. The cops identified Valeria.
Gigi the Italians because I'm sure the Italian authorities have plenty of his fingerprints exactly.
So Gigi he had fled or he was getting ready to flee to South America.
That's the move.
Yeah, and he knew the heat would be on. He wanted to take his cash.
Lilo for Europeans that seemed to be the maybe.
Plenty of coke, Yeah, something was nastcars, plenty of coke. Someone was bugging them, was the black Ferrari Testarosa.
Oh, he couldn't get that to Argentina.
I loved that car. He wanted that car. It was his baby, his bembin. So he's like trying to get the ship information. He wants to ship it to South America so they can be together forever.
Yeah.
So he's in London to kind of get the Ferrari settled and shipped out. But police had been monitoring the vehicle. They figured that he would want to come back for this prize possession. Let's stop there. What's her ridiculous takeaway? Oh wait, you gotta have friends stopping for ads. I'm stopping friends. There's so much more to come back in a flash.
Where were we, Saron, Italy? No, London, London?
Ah, yes, London. So the cops, yes, they're watching.
Gigi watching his car, My car, Our car, Our car.
The Bambino, the black Ferrari, Testa Rosa. In the hopes that he would come back from wherever he was to get his baby. They also tailed all of his known associates, and they all had something in common. They all contacted the same pager number on a regular basis, and they all came and went from a hotel in the Bayswater area of London and the cops. They were also able to identify Israel Pinkus's Mercedes and then they figured out it had been towed after being parked illegally right outside
this hotel. So the cops go to the hotel and they spot something something right outside. The black Ferrari testis zaren. Close your eyes, I want you to picture it. You are a member of the Flying Squad. Specifically, you are Detective Inspector Dick Leech. You heard that the man heading up the investigation into the heist. You are a copper's copper,
no nonsense, brilliant and you always get your man. You and your team have been tailing the heist crew for a while now, slowly building a case and working to bust the mastermind. Valerio Vizzi. You are sitting outside of a hotel in Bayswater in an unmarked vehicle. Traffic glides by occasional hornhwks. You've sent one of the new guys into the hotel with a photo of Gigi, whom you now know as Gigi. The young detective trots back out to the car and gets in the passenger seat. Yup,
He tells you hotel staff recognized him. He's got a room there. You nod and pick up your radio and forming the rest of the squad with a squawk that this is indeed the place. You're just about to suggest the young underling go run and get you guys some tea. When you see a man exit the hotel, it's Gig and he's headed for the Ferrari. The supercar roars to life. Your detective whistles at the sound of the engine, but
you just roll your eyes. Gigi rolls down the window and you can hear the euro Disco bumping from the car's sound system. He pauses a moment and you turn the ignition over on your Rover eight hundred. That baby perd as Gg rolls his baby out into traffic. You radio the team that you are on the move. Operation Crest is coming to a climax. You pull into the road and you tail the Ferrari at a safe distance. As you follow the sleek black car, you can tell
that he feels he's being followed, and you're right. You hit the straight away and he guns it. Patrol cars swoop in and try to give chase. Siren's glaring. You know this city like the back of your hand. You see the Ferrari make a left, and you know it's time to make your move. He's headed to a t intersection and the only option is a one way street coming back your way. You hang a quick left onto a side street. Your pulse is racing, but you're in control.
You are the Flying Squad for crying out loud, damn right, You've timed it just right. You hear the Ferrari decelerate in the narrow lane, thinking he'd outrun and Outsmarten all those cop cars with the blues and twos whaling. But he's wrong. You pop the Rover eight hundered out into the lane and ram into the Ferrari as it glides slowly by. You and the other detective jump out and descend on Gigi. Another police car pulls up and the officers join you in attempting to pull Gigi from the car.
He doesn't want to budge, so an officer runs back to his car, pulls a crowbar from the boot and smashes the windshield. Oh, Gigi gives up and you are the hero of the day.
Wow.
Yeah, I like the unnecessary windshield bashing totally. The Ferrari. They get searched. The police find bank deposit slips for that Luxembourg bank jewelry worth hundreds of thousand dollars, and then they also find thirty seven thousand pounds in cash just hanging.
About and the car maybe a little bag of cocaine on the dashboard, just a little toot.
The car gets impounded by the Flying Squad. It only had three thousand miles on it. Oh, by the way, brand new, and there were only like a hundred of these made, so it's it's peak. There are rumors that the Flying Squad was using the car to pull off quote Miamivice style raids. According to the Evening Standard newspaper, we got a new whip, y'all d Leach. He denies it, but the car had a smashed up windshield. And then Dick Leach had this to say about it, quote I
don't like the car myself. It's like a space car, space car.
I got a spaceship, a space car, space car, non picturing cars.
That drive in space, like yeah, zooming and.
Some kind of vultron stuff. I don't know totally.
I found a message board called piston Heads, and someone there asked about the car and whatever happened to it, and they even had a picture. Oh really, Oh yeah, it'll be on Instagram. Someone on the board linked to an Instagram post that explained how after the arrest the car was sold at an auction in nineteen ninety so off it went back.
It was sold for like how much under market?
It was huge, it was I can't remember. It was not undermarket. It was over a lot because it was like even rare. They fixed it up.
And it was part of crimes exactly. It had a story.
A lot of stuff came up in this investigation. The trail even led to hatt and Garden.
What, yeah, did he connect to one of our hard men.
No, the Flying Squad found out that there was this small metal company at hatt and Guarden. Remember there was the safety deposit boxes in the basement, but then all the jewelers. So someone took twenty six kilos of scrap gold that had been melted down from the heist to Hatton Garden try and sell. The trial was a total zoo, absolute zoo, mainly because of all the crazy information that.
Came out closed the courtroom.
Oh yeah, well no, it was revealed that Gigi had two girlfriends. Yeah, but that was that's sort of expect maybe he was characterized as this total playboy, but it came out that these were actually a fair partners and they had they had actual boyfriends themselves, and who were their other boyfriends. One of the women was dating Parves Latif, the owner of the deposit center, and the other one's boyfriend was fellow Highst crew member Peter o'donahue.
Wow.
Yeah, so they were like polyamorous completely, and it's like, so you find out all every every day there was a new newspaper report of some crazy scandal from the court.
The ladies. Those ladies they got indicted too, Like I'm bad everybody got indicted in this state. It's like it seems like everyone in the underworld had a hand. And I mean they were finding all sorts of stuff, like they were tying it to like American drug dealers, and they were tying it to you know, one of the guys would like pay his ex wife for like childcare
with the money. And she was like an advertising person at Sachi and Sachi really yeah, and she was like I didn't know where the one I figured it was stolen money, but like, hey, I got to pay for Chuck, so the government determined to bust everybody. Gigi's lawyer took a really interesting defense. Quote, but was this the crime of the century, a meticulously planned and executed robbery planned
by a criminal mastermind? Look at mister Vicci. He leaves his fingerprints and bloodstains all over the doors, flashes around in a ferrari after the event with two million pounds in the boot. Hardly a master criminal.
Is he?
Then he goes on to talk about how like the men recruited for the job were bumbling incompetence is what he called cou't they couldn't buy the right uniforms, they couldn't operate the walkie talkies, and that they turned the whole thing into a farce. He said, quote, was it, therefore a robbery at all? Or was it, as my client says, a conspiracy arranged by mister Latif to defraud insurance companies, made to look like an armed robbery.
Wow?
Yeah, everyone's framed.
You know, supposed to defend you zealously. This is what it looks like. That's crazy. He found an angle. I did not see that coming.
These dudes are more.
Yeah, look at these guys, my honor, my client is an idiot. I had to tie his shoes, all right.
GG was ultimately found guilty. He got sentenced to twenty two years in prison, and then he confessed to a bunch of other London jobs. Oh yeah, and he was given an additional seventeen years behind bars. Bro bad choice, but they could run Concurrently, they asked him, why did you confess?
Yeah, that's me, I asked that question.
He told the detectives quote, I think life is a game. When you realize you've lost, I think it's silly to give aggravation to the winners.
Huh.
He's like, look, I know you got to close some stuff. Let me help you. That's wild, right, So he gets shipped off to Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. Oh yeah, and people are people were pretty miffed at how he was living it up there. The newspaper reports.
Are just goes out of care o garden.
Well yeah, no, he's a category A prisoner and that he has, you know, more access to stuff. So his girlfriend was bringing and this is just some blonde, I mean, had rotating a woman. She was bringing him cash and goods during her visits and like cash. That's pretty obviously from the heights. Papers are like breathlessly telling, just like a busted up safe deposit box with blood on the side exactly. So like the papers are talking about how oh, his life is so much better inside than most of
us on the outside. Like his breakfast was like eggs, bacon and rolls, and it was brought from one of the island's best hotels. And lunch he got like his parents, No, that's part of what is cash. So he's like, yeah, so he can get all the stuff, but he's not paying for it.
The vault is paying exactly.
So he for lunch they give him, like, what's your favorite pasta, Let me make it for you. They ordered in his dinner from like top restaurants.
Pay for it, egg omelet for you exactly.
He had his own toilet and wash basin in his cell. He took two showers a day.
I like that, respect make one of them a bath.
He wore silk boxer shorts from Harrod's also respect designer label track suits and Gucci loafers, and like he needed to keep busy, right, Like he's just lounging around, so he would like fiddle around on a computer. He watched satellite TV, and apparently he got like he would let other prisoners watch TV with him, and then they were asking like, can we get a D scrambler so we can watch porn? And that's when the warden was like, okay, I ve no. He would like he had a stereo.
He'd listen to his stereo. He he had a deck chair in his own little garden on the prison dround. We had a garden. And then he also exchanged letters with d I Leach.
But I've seen The Gentleman by Guy Ritchie. I know how this plays out.
So he's right, he's writing to Di Leach and they write back and forth, and they you were calling him either Garfield or the Wolf. They had like nicknames for each other, and Gigi called Leech Fred I don't even bread and Garfield, Fred and Garfield or Fred and the Wolf. And so they're just riding back and forth all the time. Okay, this was obviously great. Sure Gg wanted more. He wanted to go home, of course, I mean he's Italian, he's well, yeah, so he put in for a transfer to an Italian prison.
UK government they were like happy to deport him and have Italy pay for this incarceration. Okay, yeah, so off he went. November eleventh, nineteen ninety two, Gigi's flown to Italy and they like parade him out on the tarmac at Heathrow and there's presses all there. Had a T shirt like some of the reports said he was wearing it, but I saw the pictures and he's not. But apparently in his luggage he had a T shirt that said I love Night's Bridge, so like a tourist shirt. Yeah.
So this is in November of ninety two. Earlier that year he published a book Boom. It's called Knightsbridge, The Robbery of the Century, and so in it he like spills the beans about a lot of things, mainly like exactly how he planned and then carried out the whole heightst And then he also told about this affair that he had with Lady Bien Vanita Buck. Lady Bien Vanita Buck. It was the young Spanish wife of the elderly MP Sir Antony.
Buck, lady and Lord Buck.
Yeah, so Bien Vanita she was like a common sight on his arm and like the wild days in West London, she went out to visit him in jail on the Isle of Wight, and then she came home and she convinced her husband, Sir Anthony Buck, to talk to the Home Office about getting Gigi sent back to Italy like he wanted, and he did. He pulled strings, he helped make it happen for his wife's venita. I guess they divorced around that time too, So in Italy, his time
in jail was even better than that. He was sent to what's called a quote open jail in the popular seaside resort town of Piscata, close to his.
Hometown side resort town. Yeah, but it's like right on the water, but the freshest seafood.
So because an open jail they have, the Italians have this policy of like semi liberty. So he left in the morning from jail and he could do whatever he wanted during the day and then he had to check back in at night.
You just have to sleep there.
You just have to sleep there.
So they just want you to sleep in jail. That's the punishment, the punishment. You can't sleep at home, are you kidding?
He had like an apartment just outside of town.
So basically like the thing that children don't want to do, or they're like I don't want to go to the sleepover and they have to go, and they call their mom. The mom and their dad is a drive across town and pick them up. That's the Italian's.
Worst part, Italians worst punishment.
They're like, okay, you're gonna have to sleep only.
So far as he could drive out, but it was something like sixty miles.
Sure, exactly. Those people don't Some people don't even go fifty months past house their whole life.
He had like a fancy sports car that he drove around a kid child, Yeah, completely like wearing designer clothes. And then he'd just checked back into the prison at eleven.
I'm telling you, Italian crime is where it's at.
He would also occasionally get these like five days total release what yeah, and they like furloughed. Yeah. So he would like stay at a hotel, pala around with his family and his friends. He wore Gucci clothes like Ferragamo loafers and a Rolex.
You know, I'm not like pro prison, but this is wild toly wild.
He paid for things with a gold card. He was just living it up and he always he always had these new girlfriends every few days he's just living it up, even though he had declared bankruptcy.
Is the next level above this, like the medium security prison. It's like you don't get seconds at a meal. Is that what that one is? You can't sleep at home, you don't get second you don't And then the next one's like a low securities You don't get to wear the outfit you want.
I think so, I think so so. Remember I said he spilled a lot of beans in the book, but he didn't give up the location of the missing loot because only ten million pounds was recovered out of sixty five million.
Yeah.
Yeah, so some thought he'd buried it in London at Hampstead. He sure, but he denied it. It's out there, though he would never tell. So he gets paroled in nineteen ninety seven, and like a lot of people feel like he had mafia connections and that's like what influenced him to get out. In two thousand, his run came to a violent end. He got into a shootout with the cops. Oh didn't survive it, oh one percent. But he took the information. So he took the information about the location
of the rest of the loot to his grave. Well, no one ever found it.
Yeah, he took it there someone else may know, right, I guess did you have anybody he trusted?
I make sure he had to have someone who's going in fetchings.
Yeah, that's what I'm guessing. The girl's money, so somebody.
Okay, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
That easy bank robbing thropple is just wild? I mean, like, I don't mean to like pick on the Italians and it goes and this one I have to say, like I make fun of a lot of groups that usually I have their like genetic to like, like, oh I can make fun of Germans. I got German family, right, Yeah, I don't have any Italian family that I'm aware of. So I'm saying this as an outsider. The whole approach to crime of like you know, like, oh I knew need a flashy car. I mean, of course, I mean,
I'm gonna need to look good. And then he's like, I don't like this prison. Can you send me to Italy and it works out better? I mean, no offense to Italy, but I can see why you have associations with crime historically if this is your approach, I mean, how fun and there's no punishments.
Well, and he was like mister charming. Even the judge was charmed. The judge said in trial, you're just such a charming guy. And then when his book came out, the judge asked him for a sign.
That's how you know you did it? Judge like, hey, can I get an autograph? Yeah? Exactly in the book I.
Got one, exactly exactly.
Mean what yours, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous? Taken away?
Just a flashy character. And I kind of was avoiding this because of the violence at the end.
But stop on the brakes and.
I got to the good part. So that's my takeaway. You know what, My actual takeaway is what I need to talk back.
I know, just the man. Producer Dave hot Off the press, ripped from today's headlines, jump in the queue. Oh my god, I went.
Hails a best.
This is Meg from Path shutting her Masters of Education and it sucks, but I love you, Philip Morris. That is not a movie. It is a film, and I really think you should watch it. It's awesome. Oh my love. I love to Saron.
Bye, cheers.
I will take that. I will take that advice.
I like the distinction by the way, because I do that too. That some are films, other flicks.
Okay, yeah, that's good.
Or if you really want to get into it, something back in the and there's a group of them. The pictures, oh yeah, used to make pictures. Yeah, the talkies.
Meg, thank you for that. And I know you said you're working on your degree in education. I hope everything's going well with that. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also in the movies.
No we're not.
We're in the picture.
We're on social media. You could you know how to find that. You can email us ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com or first and foremost, leave a talk back on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by founder of the Flying Squad Dave Kusten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by Marisa Mimi Brown and Andrea Dre Dre song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is
by Thomas t t Lee and Travis Treetree. Dutton host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred Hotel Accommodations are provided by the Omni Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben Beab Bollen and Noel Nini.
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