Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby Page A

important to Notarbartolo, but not for social reasons. In fact, he had a notorious hatred of smoke, and it must have been intolerable for him to sit amid the cigarette exhaust. But it was in the smoky back rooms of cafés like this that he conducted his off-the-books business. Though gambling in such places was illegal, it took place behind doors that were labeled “private,” over velvet-topped tables scarred with cigarette burns. Those playing cards were always men; if there was a woman, she was bringing the drinks and emptying the ashtrays. Strangers stumbling through looking for the bathroom were sized up from every corner of the room; it was clear from the noticeable lull in the conversation that they weren’t welcome to stay and play a few hands.
    As with smoking, Notarbartolo didn’t believe in gambling. He believed in the sure thing. He used these rooms to hold conversations that weren’t meant to be overheard. He traded jewels and cash beneath the tables to stock his showroom windows. He also used these little espresso dens, which were scattered throughout Turin, for covert meetings with his more nefarious associates.
    It would be a few years more before the thieves’ activities were well known enough to earn them the moniker “the School of Turin.” At the time, plotting intricately detailed jewelry heists in dimly lit back rooms, they were nothing more than a band of shadows.

    Those whom the police considered members of the School of Turin would have most likely never counted themselves as part of it. Mainly that’s because “it” didn’t exist, not really. There were no official meetings, no roster of members, no roll calls, no secret handshakes, and not even a name. They understood that to name a thing is the first step in controlling it. As long as they remained under the general public’s radar, the better off they were.
    The name School of Turin was coined in the late 1990s by a newspaper reporter who needed a handy way of referring to the group of men responsible for the wave of jewelry heists. Eventually, even the cops started using the term too. It made sense, as the group had evolved into something of an institution of higher learning. These men had taken the crime of theft and turned it into an academic pursuit. They were masters of their craft.
    The School of Turin was not technically a gang, at least not in the way that term usually applies to organized crime syndicates. Even referring to it as “organized crime” is a stretch. It wasn’t all that organized in the conventional sense. There was no structure, no hierarchy, and no real leadership. Instead, it was a loose affiliation of men who shared some common traits: They were smart, patient, and greedy. They each had specialized skills that complemented the others’.
    What differentiated them from other criminal elements was their cerebral approach to each new job. The detectives who investigated their crimes believe they got just as much of a thrill from subverting a target’s security systems as they did from the take itself. The members of the School of Turin were not known for robbing at gunpoint, threatening a manager or owner into revealing a safe’s combination, or bribing a security guard to look the other way. Instead, they outsmarted every security system they encountered, whether it was physical, electronic, or human. Ingenuity was a hallmark of their operations, and they always made the best of whatever resources presented themselves. In one famous example, they ditched the high-tech approach to learning the combination of a certain store’s safe and instead sent one of their own to seduce an employee, who proved less than reliable when it came to keeping secrets from her lover.
    Organizing a heist was a loose affair. A couple of guys would venture out to case a joint, often with at least one woman, someone’s wife or girlfriend, serving as cover. Nicely dressed, they would go on what looked like a shopping expedition,