A crew of career criminals in their 60s and 70s drilled through a London vault over an Easter weekend and pulled off the largest burglary in English legal history.
Over the four-day Easter bank holiday weekend of April 2015, a gang broke into the underground vault of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. in London's jewelry district and stole an estimated £14 million in cash, jewelry, and precious metals.
The burglars entered through a lift shaft and used a Hilti DD350 industrial power drill to bore straight through 50 centimeters (20 inches) of reinforced vault wall, leaving no visible sign of forced entry from outside.
A burglar alarm at the site was triggered in the middle of the job, but the alarm company failed to notify police, and the burglars were able to return and finish the job on a second night undisturbed.
CCTV captured the gang, who were nicknamed by investigators 'Mr Ginger,' 'Mr Strong,' 'Mr Montana,' 'The Gent,' 'The Tall Man,' and 'The Old Man,' the last a nod to the fact most of the crew were career criminals well into their 60s and 70s.
Ringleader Brian Reader, then 76, had decades earlier been convicted of laundering proceeds from the infamous 1983 Brink's-Mat gold bullion robbery, tying this heist to an earlier era of British crime.
The gang was undone by their own overconfidence, several members were caught on camera scouting the building beforehand and discussing the plan on bugged vehicles, evidence police used to secure convictions.
In March 2016, all six core members pleaded guilty and were sentenced to between six and seven years in prison; a seventh man, an alleged 'inside man' electrician, received a suspended sentence.
Only about £4.3 million of the stolen loot was ever recovered, and courts later ordered several gang members to repay tens of millions of pounds or face additional prison time for failing to do so.
Despite, or perhaps because of, no one being hurt in a purely commercial burglary, the case captured British public affection and was dramatized in multiple films, including the 2018 star-studded King of Thieves starring Michael Caine.