Hatton Garden raider, 79, free after just 3 years in jail
THE mastermind of the Hatton Garden raid has been released from prison while loot worth millions remains missing.
Brian Reader, 79, was let out of Belmarsh Prison in south-east London last week after serving half his sentence of six years and three months.
Walking with two sticks, the frail career criminal was seen yesterday at his £1million home in Dartford, Kent.
Reader, who has prostate cancer and suffered a series of strokes in jail, claims he ‘did not make a penny’ from the heist.
But he may be forced to return to prison as the courts try to recover the £6,644,951 they insist was his share of the raid.
In January, a judge ordered Reader to pay the money back or serve another seven years.
But the diamond thief has been given leave to challenge this by the Court of Appeal and can remain free until his challenge to the ruling is settled.
Reader was one of a veteran team of crooks – dubbed the diamond wheezers – who targeted the Hatton Garden safety deposit vault in central London over the 2015 Easter Bank Holiday weekend in the biggest burglary in British history. Reader and the five other members were jailed for a total of 34 years. The total value of the burglary is contested, but the courts have agreed it was a minimum of £13.6million.
However, the haul of cash, gold, jewellery, watches and bullion could have been worth up to £35million, of which just £4million has been recovered.
Known as The Guv’nor, Reader was a major underworld figure in the Seventies and Eighties who helped launder some of the gold from the £26million Brink’s-Mat robbery in 1983.