Robbery True

Here is a glittering true-crime tale unlike any you have ever encountered. Glittering because the take involved rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The thieves were two men from Yonkers, Dominick Latella and Pete Salerno, who hit the East Coast mansions of the wealthy enclaves of Westchester and Palm Beach. Over 20 years they became known as the most successful jewel thieves in American history...until one bleak night when they got careless.

On 24 May 1971, based on a telephone call purportedly from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her secretary P.N. Haksar, the chief cashier at the Parliament Street branch of the State Bank of India handed over Rs 60 lakh to a stranger posing as the PM's courier. The money was supposedly meant for secret operations in East Pakistan. When the chief cashier approached the PMO for a receipt, he was told that neither Haksar nor the PM had given any such instructions. He had been duped.

Mumbai has produced many dons - but perhaps none so colourful as Abu Salem. The flamboyant ex-aide of Dawood Ibrahim is best known for his involvement in the Mumbai blasts of 1993 and for the murder of music composer Gulshan Kumar. But he became equally famous for his relationship with actress Monica Bedi and his close connection to Bollywood, leading to a number of attempted murders of the film industry's biggest names.

New York City, 1972: Bobby Comfort and Sammy "the Arab" Nalo were highly skilled jewel thieves who specialized in robbing luxury Manhattan hotels. (They once robbed Sophia Loren's suite, relieving the Italian actress of over $1 million in gems.) With the blessing of the Lucchese crime family, their next plot targeted the posh Pierre Hotel - host to kings and queens, presidents and aldermen, and the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Absinthe, an elixir made of alcohol and herbs, is a booming business. Yet it is still an underground culture, associated with mystery, romance, and bohemian lifestyles, in keeping with its popularity among the writers, artists, and other ne'er-do-wells. First produced in eighteenth century, the spirit, known as "the Green Fairy," was banned worldwide by 1914 before the bans were gradually overturned beginning in 2005, the year Switzerland relegalized absinthe.

Kenneth Staton was the well-respected owner of a jewelry store in Van Buren, Arkansas. Unknown to him, two men plotted to rob the jewelry store at closing time on September 10, 1980. This senseless, bloody crime rocked the town of Van Buren and set its lawmen, sworn to find the killers, on a fiercely determined hunt that led from Rogers, Arkansas, to Jacksonville, Florida, and all the way to Vancouver, Canada.

Over Easter weekend 2015, a motley crew of six English thieves, several in their 60s and 70s, couldn't resist coming out of retirement for one last career-topping heist. Their target: the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, in the heart of London's medieval diamond district. Perhaps not the smoothest of criminals - one took a public bus to the scene of the crime; another read Forensics for Dummies in hopes that he would learn how to avoid getting caught - they planned the job over fish and chips at their favorite pubs.

Nineteen-year-old Burmah Adams, a hairdresser and former Santa Ana High School student, spent her honeymoon on a crime spree. She and her husband of less than one week, White, an ex-con, robbed at least 20 people in and around downtown L.A. at gunpoint over an eight-week period. But the worst of their crimes was the shooting of a popular elementary school teacher, Cora Withington, and a former publisher, Crombie Allen, who was teaching her how to drive his new car.

When he retired as the chief security officer of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Barelli had spent the better part of 40 years responsible not only for one of the richest treasure troves on the planet, but the museum's staff, the millions of visitors, as well as American presidents, royalty, and heads of state from around the world. For the first time, John Barelli shares his experiences of the crimes that occurred on his watch, the investigations that captured thieves and recovered artwork....

One night, in a small North Carolina town, a down-on-his-luck guard at Loomis Fargo manages to steal $17 million - literally more than one ton of cash. Despite being caught on camera wheeling the money from the vault to the getaway van, David Ghantt makes off to Mexico before the FBI can blink. There's just one hitch: Ghantt has entrusted the money to an oddball crew of accomplices who had wooed him into committing this massive theft in the first place - and who, he soon learns, are trying to take him out.

On July 24, 1964, 24-year-old Matthew Kerry Smith disguised himself with a mask and a Beatle wig, hoisted a semi-automatic rifle, then held up a bank in North York, Ontario. The intelligent but troubled son of a businessman and mentally ill mother, Smith was a navy veteran with a young Indigenous wife and a hazy plan for violent revolution.

In 2016, on stage at Wembley Arena in front of thousands of adoring fans, Dr Ruja Ignatova promised her followers a financial revolution. The future, she said, belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And the Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptoqueen vowed that she had invented the Bitcoin killer. OneCoin would not only earn its investors untold fortunes, it would change the world.

Beneath the gloss of star chefs and crystal-laden tables, the truffle supply chain is touched by theft, secrecy, sabotage, and fraud. Farmers patrol their fields with rifles and fear losing trade secrets to spies. Hunters plant poisoned meatballs to eliminate rival truffle-hunting dogs. Naive buyers and even experts are duped by liars and counterfeits. Deeply reported and elegantly written, this exposé documents the dark, sometimes deadly crimes at each level of the truffle’s path from ground to plate, making sense of an industry that traffics in scarcity, seduction, and cash.

Joan Hannington was the most notorious female figure in London's criminal underworld during the 80s, earning her the nickname 'The Godmother'. With her stunning looks and glamorous wardrobe, Joan was constantly underestimated, but she used this to her advantage and became an undetected mastermind in high-stakes jewellery theft. Often transforming herself into different characters, Joan seamlessly got away with millions of pounds in diamonds. Joan is the true story of her meteoric rise from petty offender to one of Britain's most accomplished diamond thieves

Leonardo DiCaprio. Alex Rodriguez. Tobey Maguire. Affleck. Damon. Cassavetes. What do these people have in common? Not just fame and fortune; all these men are also alumni of the ultra-exclusive, high-stakes poker ring that inspired Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-nominated film, Molly's Game. But Houston Curtis, the card shark who co-founded the game with Tobey Maguire, knows that Sorkin's is the whitewashed version. In Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist, Curtis goes all-in, revealing the true story behind the game.

Deutschlands erfolggekrönter True Crime-Bestsellerautor Adrian Langenscheid entfesselt, im fünften Band seiner True Crime-Buchreihe erneut herzklopfendes Suchtlesen. Es ist ein atemberaubendes, zutiefst erschütterndes Portrait menschlicher Abgründe, das gerade wegen der kühlen, sachlich-neutralen Schilderung gewaltige Emotionen weckt. Frei von jeglicher Sensationsgier werden in achtzehn True Crime-Kurzgeschichten einige der spektakulärsten französischen Kriminalfälle der letzten Jahrzehnte nacherzählt.

2019 erschien das Erstlingswerk von Adrian Langenscheid True Crime Deutschland und erstürmte aus dem Nichts die Siegertreppchen der genrerelevanten Kategorien. Knapp 2 Jahre und 7 Bücher später ist Langenscheid einer der bekanntesten True Crime-Autoren Deutschlands. Für das achte Werk seiner Erfolgsserie recherchierte der Bestsellerautor aufs Neue einige der spektakulärsten deutschen Kriminalfälle der letzten Jahrzehnte. Dabei ist ein atemberaubendes, zutiefst erschütterndes Portrait menschlicher Abgründe entstanden, das gerade wegen seiner kühlen, sachlich-neutralen Schilderungen gewaltige Emotionen weckt.

Stephen Jackley was a young British geography student with Asperger's syndrome. When the global financial crisis hit in 2007, he became obsessed with the idea of Robin Hood. With no prior experience, he resolved to become a bank robber. He would steal from the rich and give to the poor. Against all likelihood, his plan actually worked. Jackley used disguise, elaborate escape routes and replica pistols to successfully hold up a string of banks, making away with thousands of pounds.

Catch Me If You Can meets The Great Gatsby meets the hit Netflix series Lupin in this captivating true-crime caper. A skilled con artist and perhaps one of the most charming, audacious burglars in history, Arthur Barry slipped in and out of the bedrooms of New York’s wealthiest residents, even as his victims slept only inches away. He befriended luminaries such as the Prince of Wales and Harry Houdini and became a folk hero, touted in the press as “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived” and an “Aristocrat of Crime.”

In this breathtaking adventure, featuring colorful characters from showbusiness alongside royalty, the IRA and even Pablo Escobar, Clifford Thurlow reveals Keith Cheeseman's incredible true story for the first time.