0:00 The hundred-million-dollar Antwerp Diamond Heist of 2003 was unraveled by a half-eaten salami sandwich.0:08 Last week, on 'Almost Perfect,' we looked at breathtaking capers that were foiled by a single slip-up, but the story of Leonardo Notarbartolo and the School of Turin is in a class of its own.0:23 It’s a masterclass in criminal genius, undone by the most mundane mistake imaginable.0:29 For over two years, Notarbartolo posed as an Italian diamond merchant, renting a small, unremarkable office inside the Antwerp World Diamond Center.0:41 This gave him a key.0:42 It gave him access.0:44 But most importantly, it gave him time.0:47 Time to study the building’s legendary vault.0:51 The vault was protected by ten layers of security.0:55 Doppler radar.0:56 Infrared heat sensors.0:57 A seismic sensor that could detect the slightest vibration.1:02 A lock with one hundred million possible combinations.1:06 It was considered, by everyone, to be impenetrable.1:10 Notarbartolo and his team, a hand-picked group of specialists, saw it differently.1:17 They saw it as a puzzle.1:19 So, they began solving it, piece by piece.1:22 They placed a tiny camera above the vault door, hidden inside a fire extinguisher, to record the guard dialing the combination.1:32 They figured out that a simple can of women's hairspray could temporarily blind the infrared heat sensors.1:40 They made a perfect copy of the vault’s supposedly un-copyable key.1:45 On the night of February fifteenth, 2003, they went to work.1:50 They disabled the alarms.1:52 They used the stolen combination.1:55 They opened the vault door.1:57 They then faced a final, locked steel gate.2:00 For this, they had a custom-built aluminum tool to trip the magnetic bolts from the inside.2:07 One by one, they defeated every single system designed to stop them.2:13 Inside, they emptied 123 safe deposit boxes, walking away with over one hundred million dollars in diamonds, gold, and cash.2:22 They were ghosts.2:24 No alarms triggered.2:25 No witnesses.2:26 No clues.2:27 So how did it all fall apart?2:29 One of Notarbartolo’s accomplices was tasked with burning the evidence.2:35 But instead of doing that, he panicked.2:38 He drove out to a wooded area just outside of Brussels and simply dumped a garbage bag full of their tools, notes, and trash.2:48 A local landowner found the bag the next morning.2:52 And inside, among the debris, police found a receipt from a nearby supermarket.2:58 They found a half-eaten salami sandwich.3:01 And they found DNA.3:02 Notarbartolo's DNA.3:04 Security footage from the supermarket showed him buying that exact sandwich just before the heist.3:12 It was the thread that unraveled everything.3:15 The police had his name, his face, and his genetic profile.3:20 After two years of meticulous, high-tech planning… after defeating a hundred-million-dollar security system… the whole thing came crashing down because one of them got hungry and the other got nervous.3:36 Notarbartolo was arrested within days.3:39 He later claimed it was all an insurance fraud, that they only stole about twenty million.3:46 But the vault wasn't even insured; its security was supposed to be the insurance.3:52 So what does it all add up to?3:54 It's the oldest pattern there is.3:57 The human element.3:58 Most of the diamonds were never found, and Notarbartolo became a legend.4:04 But his story proves that the most complex lock in the world is still no match for the simplest human error.
