Hot from the Paris office:

Diamonds Valued at $50 Million Stolen at Brussels Airport:

BRUSSELS — In a meticulously planned raid that took barely five minutes to execute, armed men disguised as police officers drove onto the tarmac at the international airport in Brussels on Monday night and stole diamonds worth around $50 million as they were being loaded onto a plane bound for Switzerland, officials said Tuesday.

This heist could not have come in a more inopportune time for the world’s largest suppliers of diamonds. Recently Antwerp diamond dealers has been under a borage of an assault from Indian diamond dealers that are undercutting their prices dramatically.

I can’t feel too sorry for the Antwerp boys; last year they traded a total value of $51.9 billion in diamonds, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s precious gems. I am sure that none of them will miss their next meal; although their insurance company may have a few sleepless nights.

In less than five minutes, five armed men in police uniforms wear hooded masks stripped the awaiting cargo plane of its precious cargo and disappeared into the night.

Did anyone check to see if Whitey Bulger and his crew were still in the country? Operations like this were Whitey’s forte.

Any heist that was run this efficiently, without a hitch, in that time frame had to have been an “inside job”. These sophisticated crooks were not picked up at the local “Day Labor” hall the week before.

Take my word for it. At some point in time, one of the thieves is going to be living too large and blow his cover or one of the “dames” in their pack will be dropping a diamond on the others because her counter-part broodies has a bigger mink coat than she does.

If there is anything positive about this whole set-up is; no one was injured or killed.

A fence usually gives the professional crooks about 30 – 40 % of the face value if they are lucky. This means that these five crooks who I am sure had other participants in the heist will wind up with about $4,000,000 each (before taxes). For guys like this they can blow that amount in one good night at a crap table in Vegas.

I will give them less than a year before they are all caught or broke or both.

Give credit where credit is due;  “THEY WENT BIG OR DIDN’T GO AT ALL”