I planned £200m Millennium Dome diamond heist & I’m finally ready to tell how we did it and why we got caught
IT was a crime with all the swagger of a Guy Ritchie gangster movie – a band of hardened criminals plotting to steal the world’s second-largest diamond and escape via speed boat like James Bond villains.
It’s no surprise, then, that when this real-life crime went wrong, it made global headlines and became known as one of the most famous botched heists ever.
But you’d be wrong to think that the case is dead and buried.
Because nearly a quarter of a century after the November 2000 raid took place, the criminal mastermind who crafted the plan is speaking out.
Lee Wenham, 57, will tell his side of the story for the first time in new Netflix series The Diamond Heist, laying bare his crooked past.
He said: “I’ve never spoken about what happened, but I feel like I’m finally ready to tell my side of the story.
“And while it was a bit hard to talk about at first, I’m a different person now.
“I’ve left a mark on the world, and it might be the wrong one. But I’ve still left a mark.
“I’ve done something, and I’ve got hopes that people will keep talking about it.”
The three-part documentary, which has been co-produced by The Gentlemen director Guy, dives headfirst into the attempted theft of the £200million Millennium Star diamond.
The one-of-a-kind, 203-carat gem, which was under the watchful eye of diamond industry giant De Beers, was housed for an exhibition at London’s Millennium Dome, now the O2 Arena.
It was kept behind bullet-proof, 3inch-thick glass in a vault designed to repel a crash from an armoured vehicle, bullets and fire.
‘It would be my last job’
But it was in the perfect position, according to Lee, to carry out what would have been one of the biggest and most successful heists in history . . . had it all gone to plan.
The failed raid sparked the famous Sun front page headline, I’m Only Here For De Beers.
Lee said: “Thinking about it now, it was a bit of a p*ss-take putting it in the East End of London. “It was a rat race of thieves, and you go and put it in the lion’s den.
“Obviously, I was thinking, ‘We’ve got to have it’. It was a big risk, but I thought we could do it.
“I wanted to be involved in something really big, and it couldn’t get much bigger.”
Growing up in London, Lee was introduced to crime at a young age thanks to his father, James, having a close involvement with local gangsters and running his own crooked deals.
He revealed: “Growing up, my role model was my father — he was involved with some really heavy gangsters in South East London, and I was around them all the time.
“We’d go down to the pub and meet these gangsters, and I respected what they did, how they carried themselves. I wanted to be like them. I really wanted to be like my dad.
“I was pulled out of school at 13, and then I was working with my dad.
“So from then on, every day was something to do with crime, and I was getting good at it.
“I started getting into bringing over cigarettes and taking out cash points. I was pulling in £6,000 a week, which is a lot of money in your twenties.
“I just didn’t want to be like the average Joe, I wanted to be different. I wanted to do something big.”
It was Lee’s father who introduced him to local gangster Ray Betson, who first approached him with the idea to steal the rare gem to sell to an unnamed buyer.
Ray had high hopes that Lee would be able to deliver, despite the latter’s role in a failed £9million heist in July 2020, which saw him and a team of trusted gang members try to steal cash from a Securicor van.
The team rammed a truck with a large metal spike to pierce the vehicle carrying the money, before scaring the driver into submission with the use of fake landmines and a gun.
Despite the plan failing, Lee managed to get away from the scene of the crime, and was only spurred on to try something more extreme.
I really did think it was going to work. I didn’t ever think it would all go wrong.
Lee Wenham
He explained: “I’d never been arrested, I’d never had a criminal record or anything like that. I’d had a really good run — I’d done crimes and got away with them.
“I’m not saying that makes you careless, but it does make you confident, and then you feel like you can keep going until you get whatever target it is that you want.
“Ray approached me about getting involved, getting some vehicles together, a joint effort — so I did my background on him and he came with an excellent pedigree.
“I thought [the diamond target] was crazy, a bit too far-fetched, but he told me if we could pull it off, it would be the biggest heist of all time — that I’d get a million quid, and that sounded good to me.”
For Lee, the heist was not just about the money, but to secure a legacy in the criminal underworld he had been raised in — and also to protect his family.
Plan was audacious
At the time, his daughters, Emma and Beth, were still young. He recalled: “I was more or less there with what I wanted to achieve in my twenties. I had money, I had my daughters, but there was one thing missing — the respect of my dad.
“I’d be someone. I wanted to slow down, to have a straight life, and I decided it would be my last job. I was going to be a millionaire — I’d have put the money to good use, and then drink the rest!”
Beth believes that her dad’s part in the crime was cemented by her interest in the diamonds, after Lee took her along with him to scout out the Dome before the raid.
She joked: “I remember asking Dad, ‘Can I have a diamond one day?’.
Maybe he took that seriously. With a plan in motion, it was up to Lee to figure out the logistics and help gather the team — builder Bob Adams, tech expert Aldo Ciarrocchi, robber Terry Millman, who died before the gang’s case went to court, and tough guy Bill Cockram.
Their plan was audacious.
They would crash through the Dome’s metal perimeter fence with a JCB digger and push onward through the perspex and metal outer skin of the building before entering the vault.
The gang would then use a power tool, a Hilti nail gun, and a sledgehammer to smash their way through the display case, before grabbing their loot and boarding a waiting speed boat to escape on the Thames.
Lee, meanwhile, would be waiting miles away to hear about the raid over his car radio.
But the gem had been switched for a replica and police lay in wait for the robbers, scuppering their plans.
Lee explained: “It was a lot of fun planning it all, and I suppose I was trying to show off a little. I really did think it was going to work. I didn’t ever think it would all go wrong.”
He insists that there was never a moment that the public were in danger, after he carefully made certain there would be no visitors in the Dome at the time of the raid.
“I’d never harmed anyone before, I didn’t want to,” he explained.
“There was never a lack of care, and it may seem silly for me to say it now, but I cared about the safety of others.
“There was no intention to harm anyone, just to get the diamond.”
‘We can laugh about it’
This was only helped by the fact that the gang thought they had an unlikely inside man, Ray Betson’s brother-in-law, policeman Michael Wearing, who had been offered £250,000 to join.
However, the Met officer — who was part of the team surveying the Dome in its early days of opening — had gone straight to his supervisor with the information.
It was this detail that would be passed to the Flying Squad, who had already been watching Lee and his gang for months, but without a clear idea on what was planned.
This helped lead to Lee’s arrest, which he claims only took place with the insider information provided by PC Wearing, and a second leak that he refuses to reveal.
He doesn’t mince his words in the documentary, saying: “The police are all a bunch of c***s.”
He added: “Maybe that was a bit tongue in cheek to call them c***s, but it wasn’t all down to their good police work that we got caught.
“They were informed about us from the start.
“Everyone has a job to do — we had ours and the police had theirs, and it was quite fun having them chase us for all those years, really.
“Everything with our plan went really well, apart from when we were caught, obviously.”
Lee was sentenced to nine years in prison on a combined charge for the Dome robbery and his previous failed van heist, leaving behind his daughters.
Looking back, it was this element of the crime that Lee most regrets — that and, naturally, not taking home the diamond and the million-pound payout that came with it.
“I just wanted to do something with my life, and it was f**ing gutting,” Lee, now a grandfather of nine, said.
“That’s the gamble you take, You play with fire and you get burned. And I did get burned.
“I don’t regret having a go at trying it, but I do regret leaving my kids.
“I regret putting my family through all that, and it’s been a real rollercoaster for me. Prison changed me. It makes you think a bit more before you do things.
“I wouldn’t do it again now. I’ve got too much to lose — though looking back the only thing I would change is we get the diamond.”
Nonetheless, Beth is in some ways proud of her father and who he has become — a landscape gardener with a successful business who now uses JCB diggers for good, and a soon-to-be author, with his book, Diamond Gangster, out next month.
She said: “Not many people can say their dad was involved in something like that.
“He’s definitely one of the last of the generation of this kind of crime, and we can all laugh and joke about it now.”
- The Diamond Heist airs on Netflix from Wednesday.