Ex-cop: Holborn fireball comms outage cover for £200m bling heist gang Last Wednesday's blaze in Holborn, which knocked out power and internet access across London, could have been sparked by thieves pulling a daring heist to pocket £200m in precious stones and metals. "I think that probably was deliberate," John O’Connor, former head of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad told capital radio station LBC …
Makes perfect sense to me, in the aftermath of the big fire people will probably think any alarms are just acting up, and you can clart around town with big tools / climbing gear quite openly. If you get challenged you can say you're on the way to the fire site or checking other underground infrastructure for secondary damage.
So there's a quote from an ex-flying squad cop (they do still exist, I think the US equivalent is Robbery & Homicide division) which sounds all nice and plays well with the Ocean's 11 theme for this robbery.
Or the London fire brigade said its initial assessment showed the fire was caused by an electrical fault damaging an 8 inch gas main which ruptured and fuelled the flames.
It's a gas fire, not electrical. Could still be deliberate.
As for the actual crime... the noise could possibly been explained by work on Crossrail. But what mystifies me is that CCTV and various sensors weren't checked or triggered, and that there wasn't any physical inspection of the premises over the long weekend.
Most of the other thefts I'm aware of from the area are more of the confidence trick type, the theft in 2003 from the same safety deposit boxes seemed to involve duplicating keys or lockpicking (or bumping or some other non destructive manipulation), and a long list of people selling fake goods or switching items.
I think you will find that in most cases it is uninsured because that way nobody knows you have it. A lot of high value stuff gets shifted around (including from country to country) to disguise ownership and to stop those pesky Taxmen knowing about them.
Then there is of course the stuff which may not be in the possession of the rightful owner....bit tricky to insure that stuff too.
"You have something valuable and you don't get it valued or insured, more fool you!"
Insurance comes in many forms. Hiding it in a honking great secure vault was probably seen as being reasonably risk free, possibly at a lower cost than paying cash to an insurance company who would then probably have a clause requiring you to pay someone to store it in a honking great secure vault.
I used to work in Aldwych and in 2011~ there was a flood in the CAA building (exactly where this fire is) it took the power out for the whole area that was affected by this fire. Under the CAA is a major electrical distribution point for the area, I am not an engineer, but there is every chance that the flood and subsequent corrosion damage could be related, especially if part of the system isolated due to damage was put back into service?
Just a thought...
So, they had an underground transformer burn up in New York City like 10 or 15 years ago. The cause? Some restaurant had been dumping their grease down the drain for like 20 or 30 years... eventually, the grease completely covered this ~6-8 foot tall transformer, it overheated and lit the grease on fire. Lots of smoke, lots of flame, lots of burnt out wiring.
Right, so the fire was by the CAA, about 1/3 the way up Kingsway north of the Aldwych.
So, obviously the cables in the immediate area were damaged, but there's a lot more work that that area going on...?
Can anyone explain why they seem to have been digging up the roads and replacing cable, all the way from Fleet St round the Aldwych including Drury Lane & Catherine St, all the way up Kingsway, and back east along Holborn by the station too?
beats doing your heists on GTAV
I heard that locals were warned ahead of time to expect underground drilling noises due to some crossrail work that didn't exist
Given that telecoms and power was out for a wide area it is entirely plausible that it was designed to take out either security systems or remote monitoring of those security systems
Despite all the crap about self publicist O'Conner, doesn't the whole affair indicate the precarity of modern comms? Looking at the tv footage the "victorian tunnel" where it happened is a shambles of cabling with multiplr fibre trunks mixed up with electric cables of doubtful vintage. The police have prohibited anyone else from going in while they "investigate" Makes one wonder were MIx involved, there is likely to have been defence/security/intelligence traffic passing through.
> ... doesn't the whole affair indicate the precarity of modern comms?
Yes, it's a good reminder (to those either affected or who have joined the dots) how much we've come to depend on "always on" internet. A few times I've heard (mostly from customers at work) things along the lines of "we need this working to do ${some important transaction}" - you certainly get "a sense of urgency" when it's the day they've got to send the payroll to the bank !
But many of these are on the cheapest broadband deal they could find, with SLAs in the "we'll fix it if can be bothered" range. And then complain if it goes down and isn't fixed *now*.
On the other hand, when you pay silly money per month for a dedicated leased line, with a 4 hour SLA, from a "top tier" outfit - and it takes them 5 hours just to work out that they need to send an engineer out. Well that is a tad annoying.
Most of my comments were factual and contained useful information.
Also personal relevant experience ie talking to actual people who mentioned that at least one exploding substation over here was caused by some crazy phool messing around with it.
The interesting thing is the intelligence connection, what if the fire was caused by the lithium backup battery for the CHQG fibre tap(s) ? Its as plausible a theory as any and they would never admit it for obvious reasons.
I also read somewhere that copper theft in some places has become as sneaky as actually sending in a DIY robot *down the freakin' pipe* and using a blade or mini oxy rig to cut through say an unused drain pipe then pull it back out in sections.
Also copper thieves sometimes steal lead drain pipe as well because its absence isn't always immediately obvious and it is not protected by SW because of its age.
Hmm. According to some sources, the alarm at Hatton Garden did go off. But for some reason, it was not given the attention by police that (in hindsight) it deserved.
It's possible that the Holborn electrical fire and subsequent BT outages may have triggered quite a few false alarms* and resulted in the police ignoring this as just one more. Some forensic analysis into the cause of the fire should be done. And if it turns out that it was vandalism and possibly related to the heist, there are bigger problems. On this side of the pond, utility infrastructure is generally considered to be economically critical. Access to cable routing and other construction details are not easily available to the public. So there is the possibility of insider connections within the various utility companies.
*Triggering false alarms in advance of a burglary is one method of getting a real alarm to be overlooked or even have the system disconnected. Some years ago, a safety deposit box heist was facilitated by the thief renting a box and placing an alarm clock inside it. The alarm clock triggered a sound/vibration sensor in the vault, setting off the burglar alarm. Repeatedly finding nothing, the acoustic sensor was disabled (in the belief that it was faulty). After that, the theif struck.
This has all the hallmarks (ho ho) of a right little conspiracy theory fit up.
The 'Special Operations Unit' (I hesitate to call these blaggers 'thieves'), was down there for FOUR days according to some reports. Did they take a packed lunch with them, or just nip out for a take-away when they got a bit peckish?
Something is seriously fishy with all of this.
Apparently they had heavy drilling equipment to get through 2 metres of concrete, after abseiling down a lift shaft that they had put out of action. But they got in through the roof, with no 'forced entry'. How did they get all that up there? Carry it? Drone/Helicopter drop off?
Also the fire that happened a few days before. The media made no connection whatsoever until a day or so after the event. I was thinking 'Mmm.. fire in Holburn a little way away from the blag, wonder if it's connected'. Apparently the media didn't cotton on until after me and my suspicious mind. And the Police as well. The fools.
Now we find out an alarm went off, but it was ignored. Of course it was. Of course it was. The Police were on Stand-Down. They are doing a 'local' investigation to find out what could possibly have gone wrong. Yeah, right, I eagerly await the findings of their report. Not.
Something else that was odd was the way the Police Man reporting the crime nearly had tears in his eyes saying 'It's beautiful really, you've got to admire them. In all my years of policing I've never come across such a well executed blag. Its sheer simplicity, coupled with the elegance of its execution is a joy to behold. If I ever found out whodunnit, I'd like to shake their hand. Simply wonderful. Fuck me, this will be something to tell my grandchildren'. Or words to that effect.
There was obviously something in there that someone in an extreme position of power wanted to get their hands on. Nuclear bomb plan details by Mossad of where they've hidden their rogue nukes. Perhaps? Prince Harry, taking his office of Mr. Wales a bit too seriously and caught worrying a sheep? Could happen. Or maybe nothing as fantastic as that, perhaps just a big wad of diamonds or gold or something extremely valuable that they wanted to get their hands on. That they knew was not insured. That they knew would not be reported to the insurance companies. Some kind of blackmail material? Perhaps an item of such financial magnitude, possibly just kept there temporarily, that was just too much to resist getting their grubby mittens on?
They 'say', that there were 70 boxes done over. That's what they 'say'. Pah, I'm long past believing the lies I'm being force fed, like a good little sheeple. What if all of that was just a further distraction and there was only ONE TARGET. A la Salamander (Belgian drama about blaggers who knock off a safety deposit box place, but make it look like a general robbery when there is only one person after one thing). We only know what we are told.
Also, the police seem pretty sure how much and what was in there, even though they have said 'we have no idea how much was stolen or what was in there'. And they seem pretty certain they'll never catch the little buggers too. 'They're in the wind', said a police officer that had just finished watching the last episode of The Wire.
Smoke and mirrors indeed. I don't buy the fact that this was some audaciously well executed blag by 'Mr. Diamond' (did you hear about him?) and his chums. This was a high level set up. Mi5/6 or higher! Maybe an agency we have never even heard of. Mi7? 8?
And yes, some good points about the distraction fire. They sent some old salt down there with a clever tip off and a promise of a big pay day. But little did he know, what a small pawn he was in this grand charade. No doubt, if he still has his fingers and toes (and lips and tongue) he will have been told to keep quiet. Or else! Probably lobbed him a few K to sweeten the loss of limbs and hair.
Plus, the engineers are not allowed in now. Oh, making sure you mop up properly eh? I get it. This is all rather obvious. Sexy beast my arse! This job came from the highest levels in the land. Those boys that went in there were 'Special Ops'. Bankrolled by the kind of misfit and miscreant that only has one eye and obsessively stokes a particularly long haired cat. The Police were on Stand-Down, and the media complicit in the spreading of the fog of war!
Just what the _hell_ was in at least one of those boxes to make all this necessary? That, we probably never _shall_ know. It's the crime of the century!
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