GUY RICHIE TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY ABOUT MILLENIUM DOME ADDED BY NETFLIX
Guy Ritchie's true crime documentary about a gang of thieves who almost stole £350,000,000 from the Millennium Dome has been uploaded to Netflix. The robbers who took part in the heist, which seems like it was taken directly from one of Ritchie's movies, talk about their strategy and the point at which it went wrong in the documentary. The Diamond Heist, a new Netflix documentary executive-produced by Guy Ritchie, tells the real story of a gang of thieves who attempted to steal a £350 million diamond collection.
The true crime story is crazy and full of unexpected turns that you might have thought were a little unrealistic if it had been included in one of Ritchie's movies.
The De Beers diamond collection was kept in London's Millennium Dome, which is now known as the O2. In a bold robbery involving a JCB truck, a nail gun, and, yes, a speed boat, a gang of crooks intended to break in and steal them. Lee Wenham, a former member of the gang involved in the possible robbery, is one of the people who speak in the Netflix documentary.
The group intended to use the JCB to bash their way into the dome, then smash into the diamond container with a nail gun and hammer before taking a speedboat down the Thames. However, this was not the final outcome. The authorities were tipped off by someone who had sold the group out, and the gems were swapped out.
300 police officers, some of whom were armed, were waiting to apprehend the gang when they attempted to flee with the fake jewels. One member of the gang jokingly said: “We would have got away with it but for the fact that there were 140 police waiting for us.”
Speaking in the Netflix documentary, Lee Wenham was sentenced to nine years in prison for his involvement in the heist, while Raymond "Black Ray" Betson, the mastermind, and his "right-hand man," William Cockram, were both given eighteen years. Wenham was instrumental in the heist; he was the one who proposed using the JCB and even used his little daughter to casing the dome. The Guardian gave the documentary, released on Netflix today, a three-star review, praising it as ‘pacey and stylish’.
As Lucy Mangan noted in her review, "the subject matter is so perfectly him that any meaningful separation in your mind as you watch it collapses quicker than a Greenwich exhibition venue's shutters under the weight of a JCB driven at speed by a man intent on a multimillion-pound payday." Guy Ritchie is the documentary's executive producer and not, technically, its creator.
However, she did have some complaints, saying that the documentary promotes some of the gang's violent deeds. She finished her review by saying: “If you put the really quite serious danger aside and all the suffering the gang members must have caused many innocent people during their long and varied careers out of your mind, it’s a hugely satisfying tale, brilliantly told.”