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Premieres 21 October 2026 at 9:47am UK time
The Old Fox: Case Files · Episode 1
The pensioner gang behind the Hatton Garden heist
Ever wondered what pensioners get up to on a bank holiday?
Easter 2015: a gang led by a 76-year-old drills through half a metre of concrete into a London safe deposit vault, gets stuck, goes home for new kit, and comes back. Then they make old men's mistakes.
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What the fox said
Ever wondered what pensioners get up to on a bank holiday? Let's see what's on.
Easter weekend, 2015. Hatton Garden, the heart of London's diamond trade.
Under one building sits a safe deposit vault, full of jewels, gold and cash.
On Thursday night, a gang slips in. The ringleader is seventy-six. Several of them are drawing a pension.
A mystery man they call Basil lets them in with keys. Then they climb down the lift shaft.
And they drill. A diamond-tipped drill, through half a metre of solid concrete.
The alarm goes off. A call reaches the police. But nobody comes.
One snag. Behind the wall stands a steel cabinet, bolted to the floor and ceiling. They can't shift it.
So they go home. Buy new kit. And come back on Saturday night to finish the job.
This time, the cabinet falls. They open more than seventy boxes. Up to fourteen million pounds, by police estimates.
But they'd made old men's mistakes. One drove his own white Mercedes, right past the traffic cameras.
Police bugged their cars and their local pub, and recorded them bragging about the job.
Four of them got six or seven years. Basil wasn't caught until 2018. And much of the loot has never been found.
Old dogs, new tricks? Not quite. Case closed. Keep your nose to the wind.
Sources
- Over the Easter bank holiday weekend, 2–5 April 2015, a gang broke into the vault of Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd in London's jewellery quarter (court record, 2016 trial; widely reported in the UK national press).
- The ringleader, Brian Reader, was 76, and other gang members were in their late 50s to 70s (court record; widely reported).
- The gang went down a lift shaft and used a diamond-tipped core drill to bore through about 50 cm of reinforced concrete (court record; widely reported).
- An alarm alert reached the police on the Friday morning but was graded as needing no response; the Metropolitan Police later apologised (widely reported; e.g. BBC/national press coverage at the time).
- More than 70 safe deposit boxes were opened (reports give 72 or 73), and police estimated the losses at up to £14 million (police estimate, widely reported).
- The gang were traced through number-plate recognition cameras and covert recordings, and arrested on 19 May 2015. In March 2016 three were jailed for 7 years and Reader for 6 years 3 months; the man known as 'Basil' was arrested in 2018 and convicted in 2019 (court record).
- Much of the stolen property has never been recovered (widely reported).
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