Over Easter 2015 a gang of mostly older career criminals drilled into the vault beneath 88–90 Hatton Garden and emptied 73 safe deposit boxes. Here’s what the court record says happened, what it cost the jewellers who rented those boxes, and what it shows about vault security.
73
safe deposit boxes ransacked
£14m
estimated value taken (just under)
⅓
roughly how much was recovered
£27.5m
confiscation orders on the four ringleaders
Key takeaways
- The target was Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd, a basement vault of 996 boxes rented mainly by small independent jewellers.
- The gang didn’t open the vault door. They drilled through the vault wall over two nights of the Easter weekend.
- Eight men were convicted or pleaded guilty; the longest sentence, ten years, went to Michael Seed, the man the gang called “Basil”.
- An intruder alarm call reached the police during the first night, but it was graded as needing no response. The Met later apologised.
- About two thirds of the loot was never recovered, and the safe deposit company went into liquidation within five months.
In This Article
The Hatton Garden heist at a glance
| What | Burglary of a safe deposit vault |
| Where | Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd, basement of 88–90 Hatton Garden, London EC1 |
| When | Easter weekend 2015: the nights of 2–3 April and 4–5 April |
| Discovered | Tuesday 7 April 2015, when staff returned after the bank holiday |
| Boxes | 996 in the vault, about 500 rented; 73 ransacked, 44 of them in use and emptied |
| Value taken | Just under £14 million (estimate given at sentencing) |
| Recovered | About a third, roughly £4.5 million, by March 2016 |
| Convicted | Collins, Jones, Perkins, Reader, Wood, Lincoln, Doyle (2016) and Seed (2019) |
| Longest sentence | 10 years (Michael Seed) |
| Confiscation orders | £27.5 million in total on the four ringleaders (January 2018) |
| The company | Resolved to wind up in August 2015; dissolved in December 2018 |
Hatton Garden and its safe deposit company
Hatton Garden takes its name from Christopher Hatton, a close adviser to Elizabeth I, who was given part of the Ely Palace estate in 1576. The street wasn’t a jewellery quarter until much later. In 1807 the directories listed 11 jewellery, watch and clock businesses there; by 1907 there were 264, including 78 diamond firms. When the southern African diamond fields opened up in the 1870s and 1880s, a syndicate of Hatton Garden firms handled the rough stones, and the London Museum says that at its peak as much as 90% of the world’s diamond supply was marketed through “the Garden”.1
Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd sat in the basement of an office block at 88–90 Hatton Garden, which was also its registered office.2 Companies House records the company as incorporated on 28 June 1946; its own website, quoted in the press after the raid, said it was founded in 1954 and was one of the first companies in Britain to offer safe deposit boxes.34 We couldn’t find anything that reconciles the two dates, so treat 1954 as the firm’s own claim.
Most of its customers weren’t households keeping the family silver. The judge who sentenced the gang described a vault of 996 boxes, about 500 of them rented in 2015, “mainly by jewellers working in the Hatton Garden area”: independent jewellers and sole traders rather than big chains.5
Why jewellers rent safe deposit boxes
For a small jeweller, a box round the corner is a stockroom with a vault door. The evidence at trial was that the box holders used it as “convenient, local, secure storage”, both for jewellery kept long term and for pieces they were working on.5 A workshop safe holds only so much, and few one-person businesses can afford a strongroom of their own (our guide to the difference between a vault and a safe explains why the two aren’t the same thing). Bank holidays mattered too. The head of the Met’s Flying Squad said the victims had put their most valuable property into the vault “to keep safe during the bank holiday weekend”.6
That’s what made the losses so personal. One jeweller of more than 30 years lost cash, gold bars and jewellery; another, whose statement the judge read, had been keeping stock for his retirement. Some had insurance, the judge noted, while others “may have viewed the safety deposit vault as adequate insurance”.5 It wasn’t the vault’s first loss, either: the BBC reported that in 2003 a criminal posing as a customer emptied a number of boxes there, taking about £1.5m.7
What happened over the Easter weekend of 2015
The account below follows the judge’s sentencing remarks and the court reporting. We’ve kept it at that level on purpose: this site doesn’t publish how a vault was attacked, only what happened and what it meant.
The vault looked formidable. At night the premises were protected by a series of locked doors, an intruder alarm linked to a monitoring company, an “airlock” of metal gates and a vault door that opened only with the correct combinations. Nobody was on site overnight: staff left around 6 p.m.5 The gang had planned for months, meeting in a pub and making reconnaissance trips, and the judge found they had a very detailed knowledge of the building and its security.5
On the first night, Thursday 2 April into Good Friday, they drilled through the vault wall but couldn’t get at the boxes, and left. Brian Reader, the oldest of them, had had enough and didn’t come back. Carl Wood also walked away on the second visit. The rest returned on the Saturday night, got into the vault, broke open 73 boxes and loaded gold and jewellery into bags and two wheelie bins. They were gone in a white van before 7 a.m. on Easter Sunday.5 Nobody noticed until the security staff came back on Tuesday 7 April; police were alerted at 08:10.58
Timeline
- 1946 Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd is incorporated (the company later gave 1954 as its founding date).
- 2–3 Apr 2015 First night. At 00:21 an alarm company calls the Met about a confirmed intruder alarm; no police are sent.
- 4–5 Apr 2015 The gang returns, enters the vault and leaves with the contents of 73 boxes.
- 7 Apr 2015 Staff return after Easter Monday and the burglary is discovered.
- 19 May 2015 About 200 officers raid 12 addresses; nine men are arrested.
- 24 Aug 2015 The safe deposit company resolves to wind up.
- Jan–Mar 2016 Trial verdicts, then sentences of up to seven years.
- Jan 2018 Confiscation orders totalling £27.5m on the four ringleaders.
- Mar 2019 Michael Seed, “Basil”, is convicted and jailed for ten years.
How were they caught? Not by the vault. Detectives picked up John “Kenny” Collins’s distinctive Mercedes on CCTV near the scene, then watched and covertly recorded the men as they met to divide the haul. When the bags of jewellery were moved to a house in Enfield for sorting, the police moved in.5 On 19 May 2015 about 200 officers raided 12 addresses in London and Kent and arrested nine men aged between 43 and 76.9
The Hatton Garden robbers and their sentences
Four men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary in September 2015: Collins, Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins and Brian Reader.10 The judge described them as the ringleaders. Carl Wood, William Lincoln and Hugh Doyle denied the charges and were convicted by a jury in January 2016; a fourth defendant at that trial was cleared.11 These weren’t retired amateurs who’d wandered into one last job, and the judge said as much: far from being “relics of a past era”, they took great care not to leave traces. He also set out long records: Perkins had been convicted in 1985 over the armed robbery of the Security Express vaults, and Reader’s record included a conspiracy to handle the proceeds of the Brink’s-Mat robbery.5
Judge Christopher Kinch QC sentenced them at Woolwich Crown Court on 9 March 2016. He said the sentencing guideline for burglary was “simply not designed with a case of this scale in mind” and took the maximum of ten years as his starting point for the conspiracy, reduced by 30% for the guilty pleas.5 Reader was too ill to attend and was sentenced on 21 March.12
| Name | Plea or verdict | Offence | Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| John “Kenny” Collins | Pleaded guilty | Conspiracy to commit burglary | 7 years |
| Daniel Jones | Pleaded guilty | Conspiracy to commit burglary | 7 years |
| Terry Perkins | Pleaded guilty | Conspiracy to commit burglary | 7 years |
| Brian Reader | Pleaded guilty | Conspiracy to commit burglary | 6 years 3 months |
| William Lincoln | Convicted by jury | Conspiracy to burgle; conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property | 7 years |
| Carl Wood | Convicted by jury | Conspiracy to burgle; conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property | 6 years |
| Hugh Doyle | Convicted by jury | Concealing, converting or transferring criminal property | 21 months, suspended for 2 years |
| Michael Seed (“Basil”) | Convicted by jury (2019) | Conspiracy to burgle; conspiracy to conceal or convert criminal property | 10 years |
The roles were very different. Lincoln wasn’t at the burglary; he handled transport and looked after bags of stolen jewellery. Doyle, a plumber, let the others use his business premises in Enfield to move the bags from one vehicle to another, and the jury cleared him of the wider conspiracy. Wood got a modest reduction because he’d walked away before the vault was entered, though the judge was clear that he did so out of self-preservation, not a change of heart.5 Perkins died in prison in 2018.13
Who was “Basil”?
At the 2016 sentencing, “Basil” was still just a nickname. The judge said he “remains at large” and was probably the one who let the others into the building.5 Police arrested Michael Seed at his flat in Islington, about two miles from Hatton Garden, on 27 March 2018. Seed, an electronics and alarm specialist according to BBC court reports, denied being Basil. In March 2019 a jury at Woolwich convicted him of conspiracy to burgle and of conspiring to hide the proceeds, after £143,000 of gold ingots, gems and jewellery had been found in his bedroom. He was jailed for ten years, and cleared of a separate charge over a 2010 burglary in Bond Street.13
What was recovered, and the confiscation orders
Most of the recovered property came from the bags seized in Enfield. Jones also led police to jewellery he’d hidden in a cemetery in October 2015, and more turned up under another stone there. By the time of sentencing the prosecution estimated that “at best” about a third of the value, roughly £4.5m, had been recovered. The higher-value items, many loose stones, the gold bullion and most of the cash were missing.5 The Met said most of what was found had gone back to its owners.6 Five years after the raid, the BBC was still reporting that only £4.5m had ever been recovered.14
Did you know?
Identifying the loot was nearly as hard as finding it. One victim spent meeting after meeting with the police trying to pick out his own pieces, a process the judge called “painstaking and laborious”, because it was often impossible to say for certain whether an item was his.5
On 30 January 2018 Judge Kinch ruled that the four ringleaders had jointly benefited by an estimated £13.69m and ordered them to pay £27.5m between them, or serve up to seven more years each. The orders, based on each man’s available assets, were about £7.7m for Collins, £6.6m each for Jones and Reader, and £6.5m for Perkins.15 (A later High Court judgment gives Collins’s order as £7.64m.)16
Collecting it proved harder. Jones was given a further six years and 287 days in August 2018 for failing to pay.17 Collins, released after serving half his sentence, was sent back to prison in 2019 for 2,309 days after a district judge found he had wilfully refused to co-operate in selling his assets.18 Reader lost an appeal against his order in October 2018,19 and by 2021 the prosecution accepted he wasn’t fit to take part in enforcement proceedings.16 Seed was ordered on 1 October 2020 to pay £5,997,684.93 within three months.1620 Wood, who’d taken nothing from the raid, was ordered to pay £50,500 under the “criminal lifestyle” rules,21 and Doyle £367.50.15
What the heist showed about vault security
Every strongroom is a trade-off between delay and response. Steel and concrete don’t stop a determined gang forever; they buy time for someone to notice and turn up. At Hatton Garden the gang had the building to themselves for a long holiday weekend, and the one warning that did go out wasn’t acted on.
Detection
An alarm with no response
The monitoring company called the Met at 00:21 on 3 April. The call was given a grade that meant no police were sent.22 The Met later admitted its procedures “were not followed” and apologised.9
Construction
The wall, not the door
The vault door could only be opened with the right combinations. The gang didn’t try: they drilled through the vault wall, so the door’s locks never came into play.5
The Met added that a security guard did attend the building that night but “saw nothing more than our officers would have done had they been deployed”.23 Whether a police visit would have changed anything is unknowable; the force itself said early on that it was too early to say.22 What it does show is that an alarm is only as good as the response behind it.
Compare that with how bank vaults are meant to work. A classic vault door is a mass of steel bolt work, often fitted with a time lock: clockwork that keeps the door shut, whatever is dialled, until the hours set by the staff have run out. It’s a brilliant answer to robbers who kidnap a bank manager for the combination, and it’s explained in our guide to how bank vault doors and time locks work. But a time lock protects the door. It does nothing for the walls, floor or ceiling around it, which is why the best-guarded vaults rely on depth, mass, divided knowledge and people who will come when the alarm goes off, as we describe in the world’s most secure vaults.
“The attraction of a safety deposit vault obviously lies in its security.”
HHJ Christopher Kinch QC, sentencing remarks, 9 March 2016
How the safe deposit company failed
A safe deposit business sells one thing, and after Easter 2015 nobody believed it any more. In late August 2015 the company moved its registered office away from 88–90 Hatton Garden, and on 24 August it resolved to wind up.2 Stella Davis of SPW, the firm handling the liquidation, confirmed it was insolvent because it “owes money to companies and people”.24 At sentencing the judge described its “reputation in ruins” and said it no longer operated as it had.5 The creditors’ voluntary liquidation ran until 2018, and the company was dissolved on 24 December that year.3
If you keep valuables in a safe deposit box today, the lesson from Hatton Garden is simple: ask what happens if the vault is burgled, and don’t assume the box itself is your insurance. The judge thought some of the 2015 victims may have done exactly that.5 For keeping smaller valuables at home, see our guide to choosing a jewellery safe.
Films and books about the Hatton Garden heist
Few British crimes have been dramatised so fast. By June 2017 there had already been a film and a radio play, with a second film and an ITV series on the way.25 Here’s the short list, if you want the “real life” version on screen or on paper:
- The Hatton Garden Job (2017). A cinema release in April 2017 starring Larry Lamb and Phil Daniels.25
- King of Thieves (2018). Directed by James Marsh, with Michael Caine as Brian Reader; released in the UK on 14 September 2018.26
- Hatton Garden (ITV, 2019). A four-part drama with Kenneth Cranham as Reader and Timothy Spall as Perkins, broadcast in May 2019.2725
- Books. Wensley Clarkson’s Sexy Beasts (2016), Jonathan Levi and Emma French’s Hatton Garden: The Inside Story (2017), and Dan Bilefsky’s The Last Job (2019).28
All of them are dramatisations or journalism, not court records, and the gang’s own accounts aren’t evidence. Jeff Pope, who made the ITV series, said his research “blew away many of the misconceptions” and that it “was not about a bunch of ‘loveable old blokes'”: many box holders lost everything.25 Which brings us to the myths.
Up to £200 million was stolen.
That figure was press speculation in 2015. The estimate given in court was just under £14 million.
The gang cracked the vault door.
They went round the door, not through it: they drilled through the vault wall.
It was the biggest burglary in English legal history.
That was the claim in court. The judge said he didn’t know whether it could be proved.
Brian Reader led the raid from start to finish.
He was one of four ringleaders, and he gave up after the first night.
“Basil” was never caught.
Michael Seed was convicted in 2019 and jailed for ten years. He denied being Basil.
Sources for the myths: the £200m figure was reported by the BBC as an unconfirmed belief in May 2015;9 the rest come from the sentencing remarks and the 2019 verdict.513 Hatton Garden isn’t the only London safe deposit raid that ended in court. The 1987 Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Centre robbery is one of the cases in our list of failed bank robberies and heists that came undone, and the older story of how thieves attacked safes is told in our history of safe-cracking.
Frequently asked questions
What was the Hatton Garden heist?
The burglary of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd in London over Easter 2015. A gang drilled into the basement vault and emptied 73 safe deposit boxes, taking cash, gold and jewellery estimated at just under £14 million.
Who were the Hatton Garden robbers?
John “Kenny” Collins, Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins and Brian Reader pleaded guilty as the ringleaders. Carl Wood, William Lincoln and Hugh Doyle were convicted at trial in 2016, and Michael Seed, known as “Basil”, in 2019.
What sentences did the Hatton Garden robbers get?
Seven years each for Collins, Jones, Perkins and Lincoln, six years three months for Reader, six years for Wood, a 21-month suspended sentence for Doyle and ten years for Seed. Those who didn’t pay their confiscation orders faced extra time.
Was the Hatton Garden loot ever found?
Only about a third, roughly £4.5 million, by the 2016 sentencing. The most valuable items, many loose stones, the gold bullion and most of the cash were never recovered.
Is King of Thieves a true story?
It’s based on the real Hatton Garden burglary, with Michael Caine as Brian Reader, but it’s a drama. For the facts, the judge’s published sentencing remarks are the best single source.
Is Hatton Garden Safe Deposit still open?
No. The company resolved to wind up in August 2015, went into creditors’ voluntary liquidation and was dissolved on 24 December 2018.
Sources:
- London Museum, “Hatton Garden: London’s diamond & jewellery quarter”. ↩︎
- Companies House, filing history of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Limited: change of registered office from 88/90 Hatton Garden (21 August 2015), extraordinary resolution to wind up (24 August 2015), creditors’ voluntary winding up, final Gazette notice (24 December 2018). ↩︎
- Companies House, Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Limited, company no. 00413870 (incorporated 28 June 1946; dissolved 24 December 2018). ↩︎
- NBC News, “London Police Hunt Gang Who Hit Hatton Garden Safety-Deposit Boxes” (8 April 2015), citing the company’s website. ↩︎
- HHJ Christopher Kinch QC, sentencing remarks, R v Collins and others, Crown Court at Woolwich, 9 March 2016 (Judiciary of England and Wales). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Gang of men sentenced for Hatton Garden raid” (9 March 2016). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden safety deposit box vault burgled” (7 April 2015). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hole drilled by burglars at Hatton Garden revealed” (22 April 2015). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden raid: Nine men arrested” (19 May 2015), quoting Det Supt Craig Turner of the Met’s Flying Squad. ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden raid: Prison ‘difficult’ for jewel thieves” (8 March 2016). ↩︎
- Associated Press via Philstar, “3 men convicted in London jewelry district heist” (14 January 2016). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden heist ringleader Brian Reader jailed” (21 March 2016). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Final Hatton Garden raider Michael ‘Basil’ Seed jailed” (15 March 2019). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden: ‘Basil’ faces order to pay back £6m” (29 July 2020). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden gang ringleaders ordered to pay £27.5m” (30 January 2018). ↩︎
- High Court, Collins v Director of Public Prosecutions [2021] EWHC 634 (Admin) (19 March 2021). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden raider Daniel Jones given more jail time” (14 August 2018). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden thief John ‘Kenny’ Collins sent back to jail” (1 August 2019). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden gang ringleader to pay back £6.6m after losing appeal” (30 October 2018). ↩︎
- FS Matters, “Confiscation Order for Hatton Garden ringleader” (October 2020), quoting Adrian Foster of CPS Proceeds of Crime. ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden raid: Burglar ordered to pay back £50k” (10 November 2017). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden raid: Police failed to respond to alarm” (11 April 2015). ↩︎
- Channel 4 News, “Hatton Garden: police make arrests and recover jewellery” (19 May 2015), quoting the Metropolitan Police statement. ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden jewellery heist firm in liquidation” (1 September 2015). ↩︎
- BBC News, “Hatton Garden: Fourth heist drama planned” (9 June 2017). ↩︎
- Cineuropa, King of Thieves (James Marsh, 2018), film record. ↩︎
- The Irish News, TV review of ITV’s Hatton Garden (25 May 2019). ↩︎
- Wensley Clarkson, Sexy Beasts: The Inside Story of the Hatton Garden Heist (Quercus, 2016); Jonathan Levi with Emma French, Hatton Garden: The Inside Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Heist (Blink, 2017); Dan Bilefsky, The Last Job: “The Bad Grandpas” and the Hatton Garden Heist (W. W. Norton, 2019). ↩︎
