The man behind Britain's most daring diamond heist: ‘Regrets? Obviously, not getting away with it'

Telegraph

11-04-2025

The Millennium Star is one of the most exquisite diamonds ever mined. Discovered in what was then Zaire in 1990, it took three years for it to be cut into its flawless, pear-shaped 203.04-carat form. So spectacular was the two-inch-long jewel that De Beers said it would be unmatched for 1,000 years.
It formed the centrepiece of a £350million collection of gems at the Millennium Dome, where visitors to the exhibition space in Greenwich, south east London, could admire its beauty up close as the world celebrated the dawn of the 21st century.
Inevitably, it was not just tourists who took an interest in the Millennium Star. On November 7, 2000, a gang of thieves drove a JCB digger through the flimsy wall of the much-mocked Dome in an audacious attempt to make off with the treasures. Four men wore body armour and carried sledgehammers, a nail gun and smoke grenades. One of the gang members waited with a speedboat on the River Thames to spirit them away.
Fortunately for De Beers, and that day's Dome visitors, the Flying Squad was onto the heist and managed to thwart what would have been one of the biggest robberies in history (the haul would be worth £650 million now, taking inflation into account) inside the diamond vault. After being convicted the following year, seven of the gang members were sentenced to a combined 80 years in prison.
As with any notable crime, the story of the botched raid has now been given the documentary treatment. Unlike most true-crime series, Netflix's The Diamond Heist counts Guy Ritchie as an executive producer and stars Lee Wenham, one of the gang's leaders, as he gives his side of the story. Ritchiean touches abound: early talk of the money to be made is accompanied by noisy 'kerchings', there are character comparisons to Scorsese gangster films and TV's The Sopranos, while the soundtrack includes The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and Nothing but the Best by Frank Sinatra.
It is surprising to have a convicted criminal fronting a glossy Netflix series, and when I meet Wenham himself at the streamer's London office he admits that he took some persuading to get involved. 'I was a bit dubious about doing it at first, to be honest. All the other documentaries that have been done are all very serious, and it's all about the police, how wonderful they were in catching us,' he says. 'But when they told me Guy Ritchie is going to be involved in it and they wanted to make it more of an entertainment thing, I was on board.'
Wenham's East End patter and bruiser's physique is straight out of the Ritchie casting book. Though he is now 57, he looks as though he could still handle himself if needs be. Has Wenham had the chance to meet Ritchie yet? 'He hasn't got a chance to meet me yet,' he zings back. 'I would like to meet him, to be honest. I do like his stuff: Snatch, Lock Stock and The Gentlemen, I really enjoyed that.'
A dyslexic child who left school at 12, Wenham followed his father, James, into the criminal underworld and says that, by his 20s, he was earning £6,000-a-week by, for instance, smuggling cigarettes. Coming from a gypsy family, who grew up in watering holes with gangsters, Wenham says his motivation for taking part in the raid was a mixture of money and prestige. 'Obviously I wanted to impress them. They'd all been there and done it and earned their stripes, shall we say. And so I had to earn mine,' he says. 'Coming up to these robberies, it was a chance to make a name for myself.'
The potential haul was even bigger than he imagined: Wenham says he thought that the gems would be worth £40 million at most, and only discovered their true value after he was arrested. He had earmarked how he would have spent his share of the spoils in advance of the raid, though: following his dad's lead, he would buy flats in Marbella, Spain, as well as land in Britain, that he would rent out. 'It would have been the last very big job,' he says.
After being foiled by the Flying Squad, following a tip-off and long-term police surveillance, Wenham pleaded guilty to involvement in the Dome raid (plus another failed robbery in Aylesford, Kent) and was sentenced to nine years behind bars. He was released midway through his term.
Having come so close to making off with millions, the robber says he replayed the raid and what went wrong in his head only until he was banged up for nine years. 'I thought about it a lot then, and I thought about what I would be leaving behind at home,' says Wenham, whose two daughters were then at primary school. 'But as soon as I was sentenced, it was a big weight off my shoulders and it's like, 'Right, just get on with it.' And I didn't give it much thought after that, to be honest.'
In the series, Wenham says that he was cheered into prison by his fellow lags for having tried such an audacious raid. What was it like after that? 'People who haven't been to prison fear prison, obviously. Everyone does, it's the ultimate punishment in British law,' he says. 'But I found it okay, I've got to be honest. I adapted very well, very quickly in prison, got on with a lot of people. I'm not boasting!'
Despite the raid ultimately being a failure, Wenham says he did succeed in boosting his own prestige in the underworld 'because I took a shot, I had a go... It sounds silly but you do get a little bit more respect from people. When I came out [of prison] they talked to me slightly more differently, a little bit more respectful. I walked in the pub for instance and people would say, 'I'll get that'.'
Not that Wenham wants to glamourise a life of violent crime. He says part of the reason why he took part in the series – and wrote a book, Diamond Gangster, which will be published next month – is to serve as a warning to his daughters and the nine grandchildren he shares with his partner. 'So they can see that crime doesn't pay… it doesn't work.'
Did he ever want his kids to follow him into the underworld, as his father did? 'No, no way. I didn't even want my kids to know what was going on. I had daughters as well,' he laughs. 'I want them all to be straight.'
Wenham laughs a lot, but does not seem entirely comfortable being interviewed and is wearing an obviously box-fresh black shirt for the photoshoot. He also has a surprisingly diva-esque demeanour: he drove to central London from his Kent home because he does not take trains and, when the Netflix publicist brings him a can of sparkling water, he says: 'I'm gonna be a pain here, can I have a glass? I don't drink out of cans, sorry.'
Since coming out of prison two decades ago, Wenham has avoided returning to his previous life, and today runs a landscaping business. He rolls up his sleeve and shows me a small tattoo of a diamond on his right wrist, which he says is a 'a little reminder – don't do anything'.
He needs to resist going back to that adrenaline-fuelled world. 'There's no drink, there's no drug, there's nothing that compares to it. It is something else: I can't even explain the feeling. It's just better than anything,' Wenham says. 'And I've got to be honest, there are times where I walk out into the garden on my own, everybody's inside talking, and I think, 'Cor, I wish I was doing something now.' It can just happen, because life does sometimes get a bit boring – but I've not done it!' He laughs again.
When asked about what he thinks of the police, Wenham immediately and proudly says 'they're a bunch of c–ts', but has a sort of grudging admiration for the people who thwarted his ingenious scheme. 'To us now, it's all very serious. I suppose we shouldn't have, but we had a lot of fun doing it,' he says. 'We liked taunting the police, and it's a game of cat and mouse, and at the end of the day it's their job, and this is our job.'
Does he have any regrets about the escapade? 'Obviously not getting away with it, I'd have rather had it that way. The only [other] regret really was the effect it had on my family and my children. Being absent for four-and-a-half, five years of their lives.'
Even if the would-be thieves had escaped from the Dome, they would not have succeeded. Knowing that a raid was in the offing, De Beers swapped the real diamonds for replicas. What the gang would have made off with would have been worthless. Perhaps crime really doesn't pay.
The Diamond Heist is on Netflix from April 16; Diamond Gangster by Lee Wenham is released on May 22