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The Concrete Bypass At 9.30 a.m. on November 7, 2000,
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a heavy industrial earthmover plowed through the perimeter fence of
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London's Millennium Dome, sending glass panels and decorative steel crashing
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across the exhibition concourse. Inside the cab sat four men
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wearing ammonia-soaked gas masks and ballistic body armor. In the
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vault room ahead sat their quarry. Twelve rare stones, anchored
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by the Millennium Star, a pear-shaped, flawless diamond worth hundreds
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of millions of dollars. The crew's plan relied on brutal
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industrial force. They deployed smoke grenades to blind the interior
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security posts, smashed the outer display barricades in under 30 seconds,
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and went to work on the reinforced casing with a
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ram and sledgehammer. The mechanics of their escape were equally precise.
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A high-speed pursuit boat idled on the River Thames, just
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yards from the dome's riverside exits, ready to whisk the
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team upstream to a waiting industrial safe house before local
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police cruisers could navigate South London's gridlocked traffic. In criminal terms,
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the timing was perfect. Breach to riverbank in under five minutes.
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What the crew failed to realize was that they were
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performing for an audience. For months, the Metropolitan Police's flying
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squad had been running Operation Magician, Through wiretaps, tailing teams,
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and discrete monitoring of maritime rentals, detectives had identified every
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phase of the crew's preparation. Instead of stopping the operation
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before it began, the flying squad made a calculated practical choice.
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Let's go ahead and let the team commit the overt
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act so the conspiracy charges would stick without a shadow
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of legal doubt. Every variable inside the dome had been
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quietly altered. The security staff standing near the vault were
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not museum employees. They were undercover tactical firearms officers disguised
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in blue maintenance jumpsuits. The heavy display glass had been
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reinforced with additional polycarbonate layers to cost the intruders crucial seconds.
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Most decisively, the De Beers Millennium Star wasn't even in
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the building. Days before the raid, detectives had replaced the
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genuine diamonds with high-grade optical crystal replicas. As the sledgehammer
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finally cracked through the inner display casing, the maintenance crew
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dropped their brooms and drew sidearms. At the exact same second,
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armed river units intercepted the idling gateway boat. The entire
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operation unraveled without a single shot being fired. The crew
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believed they were executing a masterpiece of physical force and
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rapid water extraction. In reality, they were loading worthless glass
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into kit bags while handcuffed to a casing. Built on
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months of silence surveillance. The Flying Squad's proactive surveillance and
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sting operation monitored the gang from their initial recon at
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the dome through their equipment acquisitions across southern England. That
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was Operation Magician. And a very successful one indeed.