Using a diamond-business front, Notarbartolo rented office space and a safe-deposit box. His tenant badge and routine visits provided repeated access to the building, its procedures and the underground vault long before the burglary.
A miniature camera concealed near the antechamber reportedly recorded a guard entering the combination and using the long vault key. Police later recovered a torn invoice for low-light surveillance equipment in Notarbartolo's name; the detailed placement and operation come from the later reported reconstruction.
Security footage showed Notarbartolo making a routine vault visit the day before the burglary. In his later account, he said he coated the combined heat-and-motion detector with hairspray to delay its response; that particular act is a reported claim, not an independently published forensic finding.
From shortly after midnight until around dawn on February 16, a crew entered through an adjoining property, neutralized layers of physical and electronic security, opened the vault and forced more than one hundred safe-deposit boxes. The broad route and tampering are supported by the scene and convictions; several precise countermeasures in this sequence derive from later reporting and Notarbartolo's account.
At about 6 p.m. Sunday, Notarbartolo and Tavano left Antwerp with a bag of material intended for destruction. According to the reconstruction, they abandoned it in the Floordambos woodland after Tavano became anxious, leaving papers, videotape, food packaging and small gemstones exposed rather than burning them.
When the Diamond Center reopened Monday morning, its three-ton vault door stood open and the floor was covered with forced boxes, containers and valuables the burglars had left behind. Alarm monitoring still reported the vault secure, immediately demonstrating that its layered protections had been bypassed.
The same morning, August Van Camp found the refuse on his woodland property and called police after noticing Diamond Center envelopes. Detectives recovered and reconstructed a surveillance-equipment invoice naming Notarbartolo, found D'Onorio's contact material, preserved the salami remains for DNA testing and collected tiny gemstones.
Unaware that the refuse had identified him, Notarbartolo returned to Antwerp to return his rental car and appear at the Diamond Center as usual. Building staff alerted investigators; police detained him and used his directions to locate the nearby apartment as companions were preparing to leave with bags and a rolled carpet.
Investigators searched the apartment used by the group, recovering a time-stamped salami receipt and small emeralds from the carpeting. The receipt led to supermarket video identifying Finotto, while the stones corresponded with gemstones collected from the woodland refuse.
The Antwerp Court of Appeal sentenced Notarbartolo to ten years and imposed a substantial fine. Finotto, D'Onorio and Tavano received five-year terms. The convictions established their participation but did not identify every specialist or recover the bulk of the property.
After serving part of the ten-year sentence, Notarbartolo was conditionally released. Belgian authorities later sought his return after he failed to comply with compensation-related conditions.
French authorities detained Notarbartolo during a layover under a European arrest warrant, returning him to Belgian custody to serve the remaining sentence.
Notarbartolo was released after serving the remaining term. The unidentified specialists had not been publicly resolved and the overwhelming majority of the stolen diamonds, jewelry, cash and precious metals remained unrecovered.