How Diamond Heists Actually Work | How Crime Works | Insider

My name is Bryan Sobolewski. I'm a former diamond thief, and I stole $2.3 million worth of gold and jewelry throughout New England. And this is how crime works. I would compare the jewelry, business to the drug business in terms of how shady it is. You're never getting the diamond they tell you is there. You're probably buying, junk most of the time. The markup is somewhere, between 500% to 800% when you walk into a store, to try to buy a diamond. I was 20 when this started, 25 when I was arrested. So it was a five-year span. So, you had my dad,, who was the mastermind. My brother, he was the muscle. I was usually the driver. I was usually the lookout. We had an inside guy. Bill, was a friend of my dad's. So he'd basically feed us who. was a good person to go after. If we were going into a store, he would tell us where the safe is, what time the safe opened up, what time the guy would be there. He himself was a traveling salesman. That's how he knew everybody. We used Bill to place an. order if it was a store just so we knew that that. product would be in the store and we'd have a certain amount that we'd be able to get from the store. The landscape at the time was, you had a lot of. mom-and-pop jewelry stores. You didn't have a whole lot of chains. There was Kay Jewelers, there were a couple of major chains, but most of them were independent. And they had traveling salesmen with their product lying in their car, and they would travel to these stores and try to sell to them. We tried to hit anybody that. had claimed false insurance or false robberies prior. We never went after anybody clean. And that's very hard to find in the jewelry business. You'd be surprised how many of these guys are reporting fake robberies and taking the insurance money. Casing a job is, it's maddening, but it's super, super, super important. It's about recognizing traffic. What time a patrol car might go by. All of this stuff fed into what time of day we would do a job. Usually during the day. We didn't mind crowds. Crowds. could sometimes help you. People being interested, in what's going on there. So, for Seabrook, for the Woody job, it was basically, what time does he come to work? Where does he pull his car up? The Raynham robbery, my. brother and I went into a Papa Gino's right next door, grabbed a slice, and then went back in the car and ate it. Everyone from Papa Gino's remembered us. Every single person. So that's one of the things about casing. You've got to notice, but you, can't be noticed noticing. So, the cars that we used were never ours. We would go back at night, take the car. We'd go into a mall parking lot. I would unscrew somebody's license plate. We would put that on the car. We would use the car. My dad would bring it back the next night. He'd just leave it back on the lot. You could never prepare for every eventuality. There would be no scenario that we could practice and go through that wouldn't eventually present some issue that we would have to overcome. I would go in as a customer based on being as average as possible, but I didn't like it either. It was nerve-racking, having, a duffel bag with rope, bolt cutters just in, case we had to cut a lock that we didn't have a key for. My dad would go in with his girlfriend. It sounds so sexist, but. we needed to have a female. Most of the traveling salesmen that we were going after were males. So it wasn't necessarily about. how many bodies we needed. It was more about what gender it was. One of the things that we had to do was make sure that we could get into the safe. We knew that the, insurance-company protocol for you having loose diamonds and being able to sell them. and have them insure them is that every single. time you go to that safe to bring a diamond out, that safe gets relocked. But my dad did it in a way that he kept sending the guy back and forth from the safe that eventually the guy would, just leave the safe open. And most people didn't follow, the protocol to the letter. So once we knew the safe was open, that's when we would take down the store. It was 90 seconds at the. beginning of the robbery. So when my dad and his girlfriend go in there and start talking, that's, not the 90 seconds. It's 90 seconds from when Kev comes in and the guy's subdued. That's when we hit the clock., When that 90 seconds is done, I don't know what you have in, your pockets, but we gotta go. So there were times we left a case behind. We didn't take everything. The 90-second rule came from bank robbers. They tell you that you cannot spend 90 seconds in a bank. Because if you go for the vault, it's going to be more than 90 seconds, and you're dead. Everything was based on Kev., He could subdue a victim. It was either cuffs or duct tape or sometimes just standing over them with a gun. So my brother would jump over the case, grab them, and put them down. Say, "Just keep your mouth shut. We'll be out of here in a couple seconds. Nobody's going to get hurt." My dad went after the safe.. I went after the cases. One time we encountered a. safe that, when we opened, it didn't have what we thought was in it, and my dad just wasn't convinced. And he started fooling around, with the bottom of the safe, and he pressed it, and it popped up, and everything was inside. The bottom was hollowed out. So, I'd always have a ball-peen hammer. And those cases are not easy to break because they all have a layer of plastic in the middle. So when you hit it, just a hole. You have to keep smashing, and eventually push down this whole piece of cracked glass into — and then it makes the items, very difficult to get to. So that's why some of these cases, even the jewelry-store windows, there were people in the '80s that would smash and grab through the window. My dad had rules. We. tried not to hurt anybody. In the scenario that we, were going into a store that wasn't ours and we were looking to rob a traveling salesman, we would stage it so that when the guns were pulled out, they were only pointed at the victim. So we purposely didn't point. them at the store owner so that the victim would say, "Hey, is he in on it?" And that's exactly what happened. There was a plan that my, dad had and wanted to hatch that we would go in and actually, take down as many stores as we could in the Jewelers Building in Boston. There is an actual building with five or six floors full of jewelers. And it was something that we squashed because the front-desk, guy was a police officer. We never had to deal with any security guards because at the time there, weren't many jewelry stores that required an armed guard be there. The only one was the double.

doors. And we didn't even go in. And you'll notice that about most street-level jewelry stores, is there's a foyer and you cannot hold both doors open together at the same time. You'd have to go through one, take a number of steps before. you get to the next one. And that's because they, can lock that foyer. And at that point, we're like, nope. Most of these stores buzz you in. I can't get into a jewelry store now without being buzzed in. They don't use a high-tech security system during the day because you have foot traffic. And that stuff, you know, are. you talking about laser beams that are tripped once you go past them? Well, you can't use that during the day. There are alarmed cases now, but again, you have to consider who's. responding to the alarm. When's the last time you did anything about a car alarm? If during the day, during business hours an alarm is going off, I think for a good couple of minutes, most people are going to think it's a fluke and wait for it to shut off. Most people's first instinct isn't to call the police when they hear that. So now you have a live, armed guard in a store now. I think the "Pink Panther". breaking-and-entering-style jewelry-store robbery went, away when security systems didn't have to be connected to your phone. So once a silent alarm, once it's tripped, it can contact a satellite. The satellite calls the cops. You can't stop that unless you find a way to cut the electricity, to that entire structure. And even then they have backup systems. So, yes, if the power does go out, that security system's. still going to work. If we left in the stolen car,. we would meet the Bronco, we'd throw everything in the back, and I would go home. That's when I had the opportunity to start going through the stuff. We had to keep the stuff in the house. So we would have $500,000, to a million dollars' worth of jewelry, retail. Wholesale, that's probably about a hundred grand worth of stuff. My dad would separate it, into, here are the necklaces, here are the bracelets,, here are the rings, here are the uncut gems, here are the cut gems, here are the set gems. From there it's just, putting them into packages that we could sell to jewelry stores. High-end stuff is super,, super, super hard to sell. You know, little trinkets, little chains. My dad made more money off, these little glass jars with little beads inside. If it sparkles, people will buy it. So for us, no, there wasn't a level of preference in terms of what you were grabbing. But if I got five cases in front of me and one's full of diamonds, and one's full of gold chain, I'm going for that. The gold chain is way easier to sell quicker than a diamond ring is. You don't want to deal with uncut, because then you gotta go, find a place to cut them. And that's not easy to do. I would rather sell you a, set stone than a loose stone because more of it's done and, you can charge more for it. You're charging for the gold. So when you go in and you buy a diamond, now you're paying for the diamond, you're paying for whatever, the gold is in weight. Bill was our main dump site for a lot of the stuff. was the other person., He was a jeweler in Nashua. And this was a guy that understood that the markup is where you make your money, and if you buy stolen stuff, you can mark the hell out of it. So if you buy it at $0.50 on the dollar, you can already just charge. what you normally would, charge a little bit more,. and really, really clean up. bought a lot of, our stolen stuff in bulk. So, getting rid of jewelry in. bulk, very difficult to do. Because as soon as you have your hands on it, you're an accomplice. So there's a lot to it. So you gotta understand, after a robbery, every single pawnshop is, you know, the cops say, "If you see any. of this stuff, you call us." So we couldn't just go to a pawnshop and say, here, buy all this stuff. We put it through piecemeal. So it's great to have a, pocketful of diamonds, but if you don't have anywhere, to dump it or fence it — and fencing is what we call. the selling of stolen goods. Get caught buying fenced. stuff, and you're screwed. And that's how most people get caught in these situations. Jewelry party is where you just invite a bunch — it's like a Tupperware party with jewelry. So, come and look at our product. We would lay everything out on the table, display it, and people. would just look at it. And it's cash. It's cash business. A lot of diamonds are. laser-inscribed with serial numbers. You can buy fake paperwork for this stuff. So, at the time, it was rare. that anything was engraved. The technology wasn't there, and the technology was expensive. So you have now certifying. bodies out there that will give you a certificate that says this is the diamond you're buying, and this is how it's graded, and this is blah, blah, blah. But you can pay for those. One of the ways we used to, tell was scraping glass. You might go into a. jewelry store or a pawnshop and they'll take a little pen and they'll hit it with a little electrical current to tell if it's a real diamond. You're pretty much OK buying any gold, but you gotta make sure it's stamped. So if you have a piece of gold that's, you know, they say is 18-karat gold but there's no stamp that, says "18K," it probably isn't. Gold will not magnetize. That might be a way. I used to try to, I'd take some of the stolen jewelry and try to sell it for drugs, and they used to dip it in bleach because they say bleach reacts to the other metal that's in the gold. That's not true. It doesn't work. I'm not going to a store and, buying jewelry right now. Because you're paying, an exorbitant markup, and you don't know. You don't know if it's real. Some people are probably, looking at their hand right now wondering whether or not what they have on their. hand is worth anything, but. Diamonds are not rare. A flawless diamond is rare, but sapphires and emeralds are way rarer, if that's even a word, because you just don't find. them flawless very often, and you don't find them treated or enhanced in some way artificially. Most of the insurance scams that I observed were hearing secondhand what the person reported was stolen from their store. Every job that we did. that Bill was able to go and talk to that person afterwards without knowing that Bill was,

the one that helped rob him, we heard what he said was stolen, and it was always double. At least double. These guys are taking this problem and turning it into an opportunity. And that's why you're paying. so much for insurance, is because these guys, insurance companies are getting screwed pretty bad. If you're really, really good at it, you will have knowledge of how many police are in that city, which is why we never pulled a job in Nashua, New Hampshire. Nashua, New Hampshire, had, one of the best police forces at the time. I grew up in Boston with organized crime. I wasn't in it, but we all knew. the Angiulos ran the state, ran all of the waste management,, all the construction. An entire section of Boston was devoted to strip clubs, drug dealing. And the second you stepped out of the combat zone and did any of that stuff, either an Angiulo or somebody from that crew or, a cop would thump you for it. That was the place you did it. And it ran really well. Bulger comes in, and it just became completely disorganized. No way we would've robbed 22 stores while the Angiulos were in power. They would've either come to us and asked for a piece of it or they would've said, these stores are protected and you can't hit them. When you think to. yourself, how does a father get his sons involved. in something like this? My dad lived a very different. childhood than we did. He grew up in Chelsea, right next to Heller's Bar. Heller's Bar was a mob bar. Right behind Heller's was a huge dirt parking lot where, frequently, my dad would leave his house and see a tractor trailer pulled from East Boston docks, where the mob picked, up most of their stuff. They would park it in. the back of Heller's, and that's where they would sell everything. And my dad saw this. So my dad followed every, rule. He went to college. He was an upstanding member of society, unless there was something on the ground that wasn't tied down that he could take. And that was the mentality, I think, of most people in. Massachusetts at the time. Pay your taxes, keep the man off your back, but if you see an opportunity to take a little something, grab it. My father initially gave this guy his life savings to invest in importing, diamonds into the country. This guy decided to take that money from my dad and then tell him that he never got the delivery. And my dad was in a bad place., He was in a very bad place. He finally asked if we would help him. He finally just sat down and said, "Here's the deal. You guys are going to have, to come out of college. You're going to have to work full time. I don't have any money to, pay for any of that stuff. Or we could go get the money back from this guy and set him up." And that's exactly what we did. And it started the beginning of 22 other robberies. It started as, we gotta save Dad. And then my dad started presenting all the robberies to us as, we're helping people. We're going after this guy, he's dirty, and this guy ripped people off, and if we stop him, he won't rip anybody. It was like a Robin Hood kind of thing. After five, you start. saying, hey, you know, we're not superheroes, and we're not here to save the world. What are we doing? And that's when things started to get very — my brother and I were very worried at how much further this was going to go. The real victims are anybody that we stole their dignity, their right to freedom, their. right to move about the world without somebody tying them to a chair and their families. It doesn't stop with them. It stops with anybody. that loved that person that had to hear about, what happened to them. I was arrested on December 26 of 1996. There was enough distinctiveness about us to separate us from anybody else doing it. There weren't a whole lot of crews. There weren't a lot of, multiple people doing jobs. I went to rehab and I. stopped doing robberies, and my brother and father continued. They did two more, and then they did one after prison. But I stopped because I had sobered up, and I went back to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor. My brother was already arrested. My father was already arrested. They were both sitting awaiting trial, and I knew they were coming for me. To me, prison was a lot like criminal university. So many inmates would go in there and be like, "OK, what did you do? How, did you get caught? OK." And they leave with knowledge, of how to get away with it. So prison is a, it can be an education in terms of if you want to, keep doing what you're doing, that's the place to go. and talk to the people that got caught and figure. out how to do it right. I think the hardest part. of my prison sentence wasn't the jail time. It's the stigma. I couldn't get hired. Regret sucks, man. It really does. It's not easy to live with. It was ultimately my decision. And I, you know, I could, say that I was 13 years old and wasn't capable of making those decisions, but I was 20. My father and brother passed away February 11th last year, My brother and I had a very difficult and complicated relationship. We very rarely got along. And when we bonded, it was in situations like this. So through our drug abuse, we bonded. Through the robberies, we bonded. In prison, we bonded. But whenever we were, outside and needed something substantial to solidify that. bond, it was never there. The book I wrote is. called "Family Jewels," and it was my attempt to use the book as a tool to talk to kids, to talk to people, to maybe use the how crazy this story is to kind of scare you straight. I work as a personal trainer now. I created my own certification. I wrote my own book that. lists the programming for this type of exercise. And it is now approved by three, four certifying bodies, for personal training. I do the podcast, I do "Family Jewels Podcast." Podcast allowed me to, go into greater detail. It allowed me to break down each robbery individually. It brought me and my dad together..