Ringleader ‘Basil’ jailed over heist
THE Hatton Garden ringleader known as “Basil” has been jailed for 10 years – four years after carrying out the £14m heist.
Alarm specialist Michael Seed, 58, is believed to have let himself in to the building in London’s diamond district using a set of keys before defeating the security system.
He was one of two men who climbed into the vault to loot 73 safe deposit boxes after the gang of ageing criminals drilled through the thick concrete wall over the 2015 Easter bank holiday weekend.
Seed – who pays no taxes, claims no benefits and rarely uses a bank account – evaded capture for three years before police raided his flat, in Islington, north London – around two miles away from Hatton Garden – on March 27 last year.
After being convicted and sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday, Judge Christopher Kinch QC told him: “Your role was a central one. You were at the heart of the core activities that had to be carried out.
“You were not just there to fetch and carry. In my judgement this must rank among the worst offences of its type.”
Seed, wearing a light blue jumper, glasses, and with thinning grey hair, appeared expressionless as he was jailed.
The electronics expert confidently told a jury at Woolwich Crown Court he could have been on a family holiday in Cornwall or visiting his elderly mother, in Cambridge, at the time of the Hatton Garden burglary and told jurors he had never been known as Basil. “Everybody calls me Basil now,” he said. But he became the tenth person convicted in connection with the crime when he was found guilty of conspiracy to burgle the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company and conspiracy to handle the proceeds after £143,000 worth of gold ingots, gems and jewellery was found in his bedroom. He is believed to have been melting down gold and breaking up jewellery bit by bit as it was brought in from a bigger stash.
Seed was cleared of conspiracy to burgle the high-end Chatila jewellery store in Bond Street over in August 2010 with members of the same gang.
The jury of six men and six women deliberated for 35 hours and 35 minutes before returning their verdicts.
Well-spoken Seed, who grew up in Cambridge, was jailed for 10 years for the Hatton Garden charge and eight years for the conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property charge, to be served concurrently.
Seed’s fellow Hatton Garden ringleaders Brian Reader, 80, John “Kenny” Collins, 78, Daniel Jones, 64, and Terry Perkins, who died in prison last year aged 69, were all jailed in 2016.
Gait expert Dr Gordon Burrow compared covert footage of Seed with CCTV images of Basil, disguised in a ginger wig, facemask and hat as he carried a black bin bag to and from the scene to obscure his face from the cameras. The podiatrist told jurors the “unusual” limp offered “strong support” for the prosecution case that Seed was Basil.