Today, August 8, 2025, on Netflix “Stolen – The theft of the century”, the docufilm that tells one of the most spectacular and debated shots of all time: the famous diamond theft that took place in 2003 in the Diamond district of Antwerp, in Belgium. More than a simple robbery, it is a film company, made with surgical precision by a group of Italian thieves who have challenged (and overcome) a security system considered impenetrable. The booty? Over 100 million dollars in diamonds, gold and jewelry. But the real mystery is not just how it was possible that this happened, but because most of the loot has never been recovered today. Let’s retrace this incredible story.
The true story of the theft of diamonds of Antwerp
On the weekend of 15 and 16 February 2003, a group of thieves penetrated the Caveau of the Antwerp Diamond Center, a building located in the (very armored) Diamond District of Antwerp, supervised 24 hours a day by private guards, cameras and sophisticated alarm systems. Located two floors below the road level, the Caveau was protected by a combination of 100 million possibilities, thermal and seismic sensors, Doppler radar and a magnetic field. Yet all this was not enough to stop what “the robbery of the century” will be renamed.
At the head of the gang there was Leonardo Notarbartolo, a Turin professional thief with a long experience in the sector: for over two years there was a jeweler and rented an office inside the Diamond Center, obtaining legitimate access to the structure. From there together with a team made up of experts in electronics, scassinators and craftsmen of the keys, he studied every detail of the caveau and, according to what emerged, they installed a hidden microcamera above the caveau door to steal the combination, while spray for hair and polystyrene shields were used to neutralize thermal and infrared sensors. On the day of the blow the thieves acted in the most total darkness, avoiding any alarm, and managed to deceive the magnetic system of the Caveau using a thin aluminum plate; Therefore, 109 safety boxes out of 189 opened without leaving obvious efforts.
Even if it was a masterpiece, it was a human error that marked the beginning of the end: after the theft one of the accomplices – nicknamed “Speedy” – threw the bags of waste in the woods between Antwerp and Brussels that contained used gloves, wraps, modified tools … and a eaten Salama. Analyzing the DNA, the police managed to go back to Notarbartolo and the thief was arrested just a few days later while returning to his office. Behind him, a team that the criminal nicknamed with code names: “The monster”, giant expert on locks and engines; “The genius”, technician of alarm systems; “The king of the keys”, a mysterious craftsman and very skilled in duplicating locks. All Italians, members of the so -called “Turin School”, an informal network of professional thieves.
What happened to Leonardo Notarbartolo, the Italian Lupine behind the theft of Diamonds of Antwerp
Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years in prison and released in 2009, even if he was arrested again in 2013 for violating the terms of conditioned freedom. His accomplices received minor penis, but a question remains: what happened to the diamonds? In an interview granted after arrest, Notarbartolo stated that the blow was not an autonomous initiative but part of an insurance scam orchestrated by a local jeweler. According to him, the real value of the stolen goods was less than “about 20 million dollars” and the goal was to make the diamonds stolen to collect insurance, even if this version has different inconsistencies.
