The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London. A local gang planned to ram-raid the De Beers diamond exhibition which was being held in the riverside Dome at the time. If the heist had succeeded, then with a haul of £350 million worth of diamonds, it would have become one of the biggest robberies in history. The attempted robbery was foiled by the Flying Squad of the Metropolitan Police Service, as a result of information from Kent Police Serious Crime.
About Millennium Dome raid in brief
The Millennium Dome raid was an attempted robbery of the diamond exhibition in Greenwich, South East London. A local gang planned to ram-raid the De Beers diamond exhibition which was being held in the riverside Dome at the time. The gang had then planned to escape via the Thames in a speedboat. If the heist had succeeded, then with a haul of £350 million worth of diamonds, it would have become one of the biggest robberies in history. The attempted robbery was foiled by the Flying Squad of the Metropolitan Police Service, as a result of information from Kent Police Serious Crime. The operation to foil the robbery was the biggest operation undertaken in the Flying Squad’s history and at trial the judge in the case commended the way it was carried out. In February 2000, armed men tried to pull off a £10 million raid on a security van in Nine Elms, South London. After this unsuccessful robbery the police received a tip-off about the Dome raid from an informer. On 1 September 2000, the team identified three of the suspected robbers – Lee Wenham, Raymond Betson and William Cockram – at the Dome. It was then found that every time they had visited the attraction, the Thames was at high tide. They were observed visiting the exhibition and recording video footage, leading the police to suspect that the exhibition could be a target. The Dome was placed under close watch and the surveillance on the men was significantly increased. Due to an increase in police gear, the police discovered other false gear as well as a false wall inside the exhibit room, behind which 20 police were waiting in full tactical gear.
These included Terry Millman, who was tasked with obtaining the getaway speedboat which was to be used for the escape. Two of the first days that police had identified the first aborted attempts resulted in the first arrest of the gang. The Metropolitan Police Police were able to identify the possible days upon which the raid could take place and communicated this information to the Dome’s management. The first aborted attempt resulted in two days that the first police had Identified the first possible days on which the first attempt had taken place and this information was communicated to De Beer’s management and the Dome management. In September a few days later a few members of the robbers were spotted testing a speed boat in a harbour in Kent in a bid to get away from the police. This led them to track some of the vehicles that were used in the raid to two isolated farms in rural Kent; these properties were then put under 24-hour surveillance. In July, the gang got even closer to the cash, with the metal spike being rammed into the van. They were seconds from taking the money when an unexpected police car appeared; the gang shot at the approaching car and again made their escape in an inflatable speedboat towards Chelsea. In a meeting between detectives to discuss the attempted robbery and the information that the informer had provided about the dome raid, one detective who had recently visited the dome quipped, \”Maybe they are after the Millennium jewels?\” It was this comment that led to an investigation into the raid.
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This page is based on the article Millennium Dome raid published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 28, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
