Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in Hist
by Scott Andrew and Greg Campbell
Published in 2012 (I finished it on August 13, 2013)

Book Review - Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History

By Scott Andrew and Greg Campbell

It’s one of those books where you’re reading it and thinking, “Why isn’t this a movie yet?” I guess it probably will be in time, but for now, it’s only in written form. I had bought it because I had read a Wired article on it years ago (the heist happened in 2002) and was intrigued by what went down. What was interesting was that the facts from the Wired article were mainly from the author interviewing the prime thief, who apparently told a quite different version of the story as to try and pass the blame and deter other criminals from thinking he still had tons of riches to now steal. In short, turns out that thieves are often liars as well. Who knew?!

But the book seems to get it right; however, it’s impossible to say for sure since the thieves aren’t talking much.

The story is unique, because you’re almost rooting for them (the bad guys) since they are the key players in the story, but then you start reading about the details of what they stole. They put companies out of business. They stole from old and young alike. They snatched family heirlooms and irreplaceable treasures.  Hard to have much empathy for thieves like that. Imagine someone breaking into your home when you’re on vacation and stealing everything important to you. Hard to root for such types.

But still, it’s also a good depiction of how too many companies rely on technology alone (and in this case, far outdated devices) to protect what humans could do so much more handily. When you read about how the state-of-the-art security systems were disabled, you’ll certainly be speechless as the alarms that never sounded.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s a fun and informative read and you learn a lot about the questionable practices of the diamond industry as a whole.

So many books … (you know the rest)