Drawdock Road / Millennium Way, Greenwich Peninsula, London SE10 0BB, England
Date
7 November 2000
Target
De Beers Diamond Exhibition
Perpetrators
Lee Wenham
Raymond Betson
William Cockram
Terry Millman
Aldo Ciarrocchi
Robert Adams
Kevin Meredith
James Hurley
The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the Millennium Dome's diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London occurring on 7 November 2000. A local gang planned to ram-raid the De Beers diamond exhibition, which was held in the riverside Dome. The gang had then planned to escape via the Thames in a speedboat.
The De Beers diamond exhibition had many jewels on display, including the Millennium Star, a flawless 203.04-carat (40.608g) gem with an estimated worth of £200 million (equivalent to £425million in 2023[1]) and considered one of the most perfect gems in the world. Also on display were priceless blue diamonds.[2]
The attempted robbery was foiled by the Flying Squad (led by Jon Shatford) of the Metropolitan Police Service as a result of information from Kent Police Serious Crime who already had the gang members under surveillance for their suspected roles in several unsuccessful armoured vehicle robberies. The operation to foil the robbery was the biggest in the Flying Squad's history. At trial, the judge commended the way it was carried out.[3]
If the heist had succeeded, then with a haul of £350 million worth of diamonds (equivalent to £744million in 2023[1]), it would have become one of the biggest robberies in history.[2][4]
Operation Magician
In the summer of 2000, the Flying Squad became aware of a significant armed robbery plot after receiving a tip-off. The location of this robbery was unclear, but the identities of some of the robbers were known to the police. The police spent several months developing intelligence on the plot and set up an operation they codenamed Operation Magician. During the intelligence gathering, the location of the robbery was found to be the Millennium Dome in Greenwich.[3]
In February 2000, armed men tried to pull off a £10 million raid on a security van in Nine Elms, South London. The gunmen had stopped the security van by blocking both ends of Nine Elms Lane. They had planned to use their lorry carrying Christmas trees as a battering ram. This lorry had a huge metal spike welded into the chassis and covered by the foliage. The gang planned to split the security van's rear doors with the ram. The gang's plan failed when a motorist who was late for work removed the keys from the ignition of the unattended Christmas tree lorry. The robbers, left with no choice, escaped in an inflatable speedboat towards Chelsea.
It was attempted again on 7 July in Aylesford, Kent. This time, the gang got closer to the cash, with the metal spike rammed into the van. They were seconds from taking the money when an unexpected police car appeared; the gang shot at the approaching vehicle and again made their escape in an inflatable speedboat.
Detective Superintendent Jon Shatford stated that this attempted robbery brought to his attention a gang capable of carrying out a robbery with this level of planning. This unsuccessful attack provided the police with important clues and led them to track some of the vehicles used in the raid to two isolated farms in rural Kent; these properties were then put under 24-hour surveillance.
After this unsuccessful robbery, the police received a tip-off about the Dome raid from an informer. At a meeting between detectives to discuss the Nine Elms Lane attempted robbery and the information the informer provided about the Dome raid, one detective who had recently visited the Dome quipped, "Maybe they are after the Millennium jewels?" This comment led to the beginning of an investigation into the raid.[citation needed]
Surveillance
On 1 September 2000, the team identified three suspected robbers—Lee Wenham, Raymond Betson, and William Cockram—at the Dome. It was then found that the Thames were at high tide every time they visited the attraction. They were observed visiting the exhibition and recording video footage, leading the police to suspect the exhibition could be a target. The surveillance on the men was significantly increased, and the Dome was placed under close watch.
The precautions taken by the Flying Squad included replacing the priceless gems with replicas of the same size (one of which is now in the Crime Museum[5]), allowing the originals to be stored elsewhere, as well as installing a false wall inside the exhibit room, behind which 20 police were waiting in full tactical gear.[6]
Due to an increase in surveillance, the police discovered other members of the gang. These included Terry Millman, tasked with obtaining the getaway speedboat for the escape.[2][3] Cockram and Betson were also observed filming the surrounding river and jetty. The surveillance of the gang continued, and their visits to the Dome became more frequent. In late September, a few members of the gang were spotted testing a speedboat in a harbour in Kent.[3]
Aborted robbery attempts
The Metropolitan Police identified the possible days the raid could occur and communicated this information to De Beers and the Dome's management. Two of the days that the police had identified resulted in aborted attempts. The first aborted attempt occurred in early October and was called off due to the malfunctioning of the speedboat, which was to be used for the getaway. The second aborted attempt occurred one day before the date of the actual raid but was cancelled upon the gang discovering the tide was too low to ensure a safe getaway.
After this attempt, the police suspected the raid was imminent and were convinced the raid would take place the following day. The police then replaced all Dome staff with armed undercover officers.[2] On several days in October, the gang under surveillance looked as if they were about to commence the raid.
Some members were spotted towing a speedboat to Greenwich and placing the boat in the river opposite the Dome. This activity indicated to the Squad that the robbery was close; however, this was not the case. Police then investigated the delay. The detectives analysed the times and days of the aborted attempts and found that they had something in common—the high tide. Upon closer investigation, the detectives discovered that the tide was at its highest possible level each day when the robbery was aborted. The police began to investigate the patterns of the tide and were able to predict the possible times that the raid was to take place. One of the predicted days happened to be the date of the actual raid.[3]
Day of raid
On 7 November at 9:30 am, Operation Magician was underway, commanded by Detective Superintendent Jon Shatford of the Metropolitan Police. A total of two hundred officers were involved in the operation, of which forty were from the Specialist Firearms Command (SCO19). A further sixty armed Flying Squad officers were stationed around the Thames and twenty on the river to prevent escape attempts. Surveillance officers were disguised as Dome employees. The police used the Millennium Dome's CCTV room as a control room.[3]
All the officers were briefed at 3 am, the day of the raid, on the contingency plans in place. Before the raid, some officers were positioned behind a dummy wall, and others were dressed as cleaners and Dome employees, with their firearms concealed. Before the raid, four members of the gang had been identified in a JCB earth digger, and all were wearing body armour and gas masks. The men were armed with smoke bombs, sledgehammers, and nail guns to be used to penetrate the security glass that was protecting the exhibit. The digger was used by the gang to break through the perimeter fence and to crash through the side wall of the Dome to reach the Money Zone, where the De Beers diamonds were kept.[2] The digger entered the Dome and parked outside the Money Zone.
Once inside, Ciarrocchi started throwing smoke bombs, and Cockram attempted to break the glass where the diamonds were stored. Cockram knew that the bombproof glass could resist the force of a 60-ton ram raid, but he planned to weaken the glass with three shots from a powerful Hilti nail gun. Then, another gang member, Robert Adams, would use a sledgehammer to break the weakened glass. The plan worked, and the gang was inches from the (decoy) diamonds.
The police pounced on four members of the gang as they attempted to smash their way into the display case. As the four men were arrested, other officers stationed around the Dome arrested another man in a high-powered boat on the Thames. The police also arrested a man they suspected of monitoring police radio frequencies: he was detained on the north shore of the Thames, opposite the Dome.[4] All the suspects were apprehended; Millman was apprehended in a van.[3][2] Once all the suspects had been detained, they were taken to police stations in South London. By noon, some areas of the Dome had reopened, but other areas, including the Money Zone, were cordoned off.[4]
Shatford defended the decision to wait until the gang had reached the diamonds before arresting them. He said, "Our chief concern throughout was public safety. We decided it was better to let the robbers get to the vault where they were effectively imprisoned".[4]
The serious crime unit of the Kent Police worked in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service. It arrested six more people in connection with the raid on Tuesday morning in the villages of Collier Street and Horsmonden. Police said the ages of the men ranged between 38 and 62.[4]
Trial
The case came to trial a year later, on 8 November 2001. It was heard at the Old Bailey, and only six members of the gang were present, as Terry Millman had died of cancer. The court heard that Betson, Cockram, Ciarrocchi, and Adams were caught by undercover officers in the Dome when they burst inside by using a JCB digger.
On the first day of the defence case, Cockram discussed the lack of security inside the Dome: "I couldn't believe how simple it was.... I was thinking, this cannot be true, it was a gift. At first, I had thought it was pie in the sky, but after going down there, I couldn't believe security was so bad.... There was nobody in the vault, no security workers walking around". He stated that had the plan succeeded, "It would have taken a very short time from hitting the main gate to getting back across the Thames – five minutes maximum". He also added, "No one was going to get hurt – there was no one to hurt.... The Dome was always empty".
Cockram explained that the nail gun bought by the gang was to be used to break the glass in the vault, not as a weapon. The ammonia was to be used to contaminate any traces of blood left by him, he said. He explained that the body armour was to be used after the raid for protection when he was scheduled to meet with associates to discuss the sale of the gems.[7]
Betson told the jury that his brother-in-law, Michael Waring, working at the Dome as part of the perimeter security, had told him about a school friend, Tony, who was also working there. Betson claimed that Waring had told him about Tony's plan: "Tony had got this plan together. He had a backer – someone to buy the jewellery. He said the security was crap."
Betson said, "I had every confidence in him – there was no way I thought he would betray me – not for two seconds.... If this had come to me from someone else – in a pub – I would not have gone along with it, but it was the background to where it had come from. It was solid." Betson explained how he developed a trusting relationship with Waring: "I did not think he would try and do me any harm. I trusted." Cockram also said that Betson had told him that Waring was in on the plan.
Called as a prosecution witness, Waring "totally denied" that he was part of the plan or had offered to act criminally by providing information on security.[8] The gang had invested tens of thousands planning the raid and stored the equipment needed at a disused commercial yard in Plumstead, southeast London, as well as two remote Kent farms, near Maidstone. Terry Millman, who had died of cancer before the trial, used the name T. Diamond when he paid £3,700 in cash to purchase a getaway speedboat at a yard in the seaside town of Whitstable, Kent.[citation needed]
At the trial, Crown Prosecutor Martin Heslop, QC, said that "the raid was planned professionally, carefully and down to the last detail.... So well organised was it that it would probably have succeeded had it not been for an equally professional, careful, and detailed police operation." Heslop stated that to minimize the risk to the public, "Arrangements were made to keep children away from the danger area, but for obvious reasons, it was not practicable to alert all staff to the possibility of an attack."[9]
After three months of the trial, the jury of seven women and five men reached a 10–2 majority verdict against the defendants after they had deliberated for nearly seven court days.[10] After a week of deliberations the judge Michael Coombe accepted the majority verdict and so the men were found guilty.[11][2]
The judge told the defendants, "You played for very high stakes, and you must have known perfectly well what the penalty would be if your enterprise did not succeed." The judge added, "This was a wicked, professional plan, and one which was carried out with the minutest attention to detail. Mercifully, the police were on to it."[2]
Betson and Cockram, considered the two leaders of the gang, were both given 18-year sentences.[9]
Aldo Ciarrocchi and Robert Adams were sentenced to 15 years. Kevin Meredith was cleared of conspiracy to rob but found guilty of conspiring to steal and was sentenced to five years.[9]
Sentenced to four years in jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to steal. At the same time he was sentenced to nine years after pleading guilty to the Aylesford attempted robbery, in July 2000. Considered to have masterminded the raid.
Raymond Betson
Sentenced 18 years for conspiring to rob. Sentence later reduced to 15 years.[12] Convicted again in 2014, following a botched raid on a cash depot in 2012, and sentenced to 13 years.[13]
William Cockram
Sentenced 18 years for conspiring to rob. The sentence was later reduced to 15 years on appeal.[12]
Terry Millman
Died of cancer before trial date of 8 November 2001.
Aldo Ciarrocchi
Received 15 years (reduced to 12 years in 2004).[12]
Robert Adams
Received 15 years.
Kevin Meredith
Was cleared of conspiracy to rob but found guilty of conspiring to steal. He was sentenced to five years.
Aftermath
Cockram, sentenced to 18 years for his part in the raid, was awarded legal aid to sue the Metropolitan Police Service in March 2003. The decision to award Cockram the money was condemned by the then-shadow home secretary David Davis. Cockram claimed that a police officer assaulted him at about 9:39a.m. on the day of the raid, as he was lying handcuffed on the floor.[citation needed]
One of the diamonds displayed during the raid was a pear-shaped rare blue diamond. In March 2010, the London Evening Standard reported that the gem would be sold in a collection at Sotheby'sHong Kong the following month.[14] The blue diamond, which had an estimated worth of £3 to £3.8 million, was sold for £4.2 million in April 2010 in Sotheby's Hong Kong.[15][16]
The Flying Squad arrested a man believed to be the mastermind behind the plot, but he was not present on the day of the raid.[17] The man, James Hurley, from Bermondsey,[18] south London, was arrested following an undercover operation. The undercover operation tracked Hurley to Puerto Banus on the Costa del Sol. The officer in charge of Operation Magician, Detective Chief Superintendent Jon Shatford, arrived in Spain with a team of three others and an emergency warrant for Hurley's arrest.
Hurley had been under surveillance by the police when he was spotted refining and testing the robbery plan for weeks in advance. He was dubbed the "boatman" by the police as he was seen taking photographs of the Dome from vessels on the Thames and was organising the speedboat to be used for the getaway. Hurley disappeared at the last minute before the raid took place. After his disappearance, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the Spanish police were unable to locate him. Hurley was living in a luxury villa in a private enclave close to Puerto Banus. Once Hurley had been photographed, and his identity confirmed, a High Court judge in London issued a red extradition warrant for his arrest.
Hurley was arrested by Spanish police following a chase in Puerto Banus on the Costa del Sol, however on 26 February 2002, the extradition warrant was withdrawn by the Crown Prosecution Service, who decided there was not a realistic prospect of securing a conviction against Hurley.[18]
The JCB digger used in the raid was put up for auction, but it still displayed damage from the raid. The digger was sold at JCB's biannual auction of surplus parts and machines. JCB had taken possession of the machine from insurers after a court hearing.[19]
In popular culture
Dome Raiders: How Scotland Yard Foiled the Greatest Robbery of All Time, a book by Detective Superintendent Jon Shatford and William Doyle, details the raid.[20]
The Crime & Investigation Network, as part of their series on Britain's Biggest Heists, ran an episode that featured the Millennium Dome raid. This episode includes CCTV footage of the raid and footage recorded by undercover police at the time.[21]
Kris Hollington, a Sunday Times bestselling author and freelance journalist, wrote a book entitled Diamond Geezers: The Inside Story of the Crime of the Millennium. The book tells the story of the raid and contains interviews with the police and De Beers.[22][23]
The Millennium Dome Heist with Ross Kemp (also distributed internationally as The Great Diamond Heist) is a 2020 British documentary about the raid hosted by Ross Kemp.[24][25]
The Discovery+ series Inside The Heist focused on the raid as part of the first episode.[26]
The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.61 million from a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
Since the invention of locomotives in the early 19th century, trains have often been the target of robbery, in which the goal is to steal money or other valuables. Train robbery was especially common during the 19th century and is commonly associated with gangs of outlaws in the American Old West. It has continued into the 21st century, with criminals usually targeting freight trains carrying commercial cargo, or targeting passengers of public transportation for their valuables.
The Flying Squad is a branch of the Serious and Organised Crime Command within London's Metropolitan Police Service. It is also known as the Robbery Squad, Specialist Crime Directorate 7, SC&O7 and SO7. It is nicknamed The Sweeney, an abbreviation of the Cockney rhyming slang "Sweeney Todd".
The Brink's-Mat robbery was one of the largest robberies in British history, with £26 million worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash stolen. It occurred at the Heathrow International Trading Estate, London, on 26 November 1983, from a warehouse operated by Brink's-Mat, a former joint venture between US security company Brink's and London-based company MAT Transport. The bullion was the property of Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd. Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson were convicted of armed robbery. Most of the gold has never been recovered. Lloyd's of London paid out for the losses, and several shooting deaths have been linked to the case.
On 20 December 2004, a total of £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the headquarters of Northern Bank on Donegall Square West in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal used and unused pound sterling banknotes. The money was loaded into a van and driven away in two trips. This was one of the largest bank robberies in the history of the United Kingdom.
The Brink's Company is an American cash handling company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. Its operations include cash-in-transit, ATM replenishment & maintenance, and cash management & payment services, such as vault outsourcing, money processing, intelligent safe services, and international transportation of valuables.
The 2006 Securitas depot robbery in Tonbridge, England, was the UK's largest cash heist. It began with a kidnapping on the evening of 21 February 2006 and ended in the early hours of 22 February, when seven criminals stole almost £53million. The gang left behind another £154million because they did not have the means to transport it.
The Pink Panthers are an international jewel thief network responsible for a number of robberies and thefts described as some of the most audacious in the history of organized crime. The organization has roughly 800 core members, many of whom are ex-soldiers with extensive military and paramilitary backgrounds. Both women and men play an equal part in the structure of the organization. The organization's membership mostly consists of Serbian and Montenegrin citizens, who are believed to be Bosnian War veterans making use of their military experience for criminal activity. The organization was named by Interpol after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films.
The Emergency Response Unit (ERU) is the police tactical unit of the Garda Síochána, Ireland's national police and security service. The unit was a section of the forces' Special Detective Unit (SDU), under the Crime and Security Branch (CSB) until 2017, when the Special Tactics and Operational Command was created to take over its operational duties alongside Armed Support Units.
The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safety deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled 40 feet (12 m) from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault. The value of the property stolen is unknown, but is likely to have been between £1.25 million and £3 million; only £231,000 was recovered by the police.
The Armed Offenders Squad was a unit of Victoria Police in Australia tasked with investigating non-fatal violent crimes. Subject to frequent complaints of police brutality, the squad was disbanded in 2006 following an investigation by the Victorian Office of Police Integrity.
The Graff Diamonds robbery took place on 6 August 2009 when two men posing as customers entered the premises of Graff Diamonds in New Bond Street, London and stole jewellery worth nearly £40 million. It was believed to be the largest ever gems heist in Britain at the time, and the second largest British robbery after the £53 million raid on a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, in 2006. The robbers' haul totalled 43 items of jewellery, consisting of rings, bracelets, necklaces and wristwatches. One necklace alone has been reported as being worth more than £3.5m. Britain's previous largest jewellery robbery also took place at Graff's, in 2003.
The Comtesse de Vendôme is a diamond necklace composed of 116 diamonds, including a centerpiece 125-carat diamond, and an estimated value of approximately 31 million dollars. The necklace was stolen from the Tokyo jewelry boutique Le Supre-Diamant Couture de Maki on March 5, 2004 by thieves who are believed to belong to the Pink Panthers crime ring.
The National Surveillance Unit (NSU) is the principal clandestine intelligence gathering and surveillance operations unit of the Garda Síochána, the national police force of Ireland. The unit operates under the Crime & Security Branch (CSB), based at Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, and also works from Harcourt Street, Dublin. Members of the unit are specially trained and selected Detective Gardaí who are tasked to remain covert whilst on and off duty, tracking suspected criminals, terrorists and hostile, foreign spies operating in Ireland. The unit's detectives are routinely armed. The National Surveillance Unit is understood to possess a manpower of approximately 100 officers, and is considered to be the most secretive arm of the force.
The Antwerp diamond heist, dubbed the "heist of the century", was the largest ever diamond heist and one of the largest robberies in history. Thieves stole loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewelry valued at more than $100 million. It took place in Antwerp, Belgium, during the weekend of 15–16 February 2003. Though arrests were made and time was served, most of the diamonds stolen remain unrecovered.
On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately €38,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a single shot being fired.
The Great Dome Robbery is a 2002 crime drama film directed by Gabriel Range, based on the actual Millennium Dome raid of 2000.
In April 2015, an underground safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden, London, owned by Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd., was burgled.
The Chandler's Ford shooting was the shooting of armed robbers in the town of Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, in southern England, on 13 September 2007. Two men were shot dead by Metropolitan Police officers while they were robbing a cash-in-transit van at gunpoint. The Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad had been tracking a gang of armed robbers from South London who were estimated to have stolen £500,000 from 18 robberies of security vans. The Flying Squad received intelligence that the gang intended to target the HSBC branch in Chandler's Ford and planned to lie in wait and apprehend the suspects as they attempted the robbery.
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