The Schiphol Diamond Heist

Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands, 4 AM on Friday 25 February 2005. Two men in KLM uniforms, in a stolen KLM cargo van, drive through a perimeter gate of the cargo terminal. The single guard with a clipboard waves them through — the uniforms are correct, the van logo is correct, it is a routine pre-dawn cargo movement. They drive across the tarmac to a holding bay where a sealed shipping container is waiting to be loaded onto a 6 AM KLM flight to Tel Aviv. The container holds approximately a hundred and eighteen million dollars in uncut industrial diamonds.

They hold up the bay guard at gunpoint. They tell him to lie face-down and count to three hundred. They load the three-hundred-kilo container into the van. They drive back out the same gate. The same guard waves them through. He notices the van is riding lower on the way out. He does not regard the difference as significant.

The guard at the bay reaches an emergency phone. Within an hour, the abandoned van is found in a wooded area near Halfweg. The diamonds have been transferred to a second vehicle. They have never been recovered. The two men in the van have never been publicly identified. Multiple KLM employees were investigated for the inside leak. None was successfully convicted.

This is, in absolute monetary terms, one of the largest single thefts in modern Dutch history. Maren and Ellis on the heist that did not circumvent security at all — that walked through the front door, in the right uniform, in the right vehicle, past the right guard, at the right time.