Jailed for ten years, Basil – mystery man of the Hatton Garden heist
Ringleader behind bars at last ... but £20m of loot is still missing
Up to £20million of valuables stolen in the Hatton Garden raid are likely to be lost forever after the final ringleader of the gang was convicted yesterday.
michael seed, 58, known as ‘Basil’, was known to live ‘below the radar’ and evaded police for three years before he was caught.
But yesterday he was finally put away for ten years for conspiracy to burgle and handling stolen goods.
the well-spoken electronics expert was a vital player in the raid on a safe deposit facility by a group of OAp crooks nicknamed the ‘diamond wheezers’.
He was responsible for cutting the alarms and letting the gang into the building in London’s Hatton Garden jewellery district, seemingly with a key.
He was filmed on CCtV disguised in a ginger wig, face mask and hat, and had a distinctive ‘Charlie Chaplin walk’ as a result of a motorcycle accident that left his right leg shattered.
He was caught when a police surveillance team saw him meeting a fellow gang member who had already been released from his sentence for the raid on the Hatton Garden safe Deposit Company.
Officers found a range of incriminating items in seed’s one-bedroom flat in
‘Among the worst offences of its type’
Islington, north London, where neighbours described him as ‘mr Invisible’.
His life in the shadows meant he did not pay taxes or claim benefits, used pay-as-you go phones and very rarely used his bank account.
the equipment found in his flat included an alarm system he used for ‘experimentation’, a 2G mobile phone signal blocker for alarms, and obscure books about electronics and surveillance, as well as manuals for safes.
seed, the son of a biophysicist who grew up in Cambridge and studied physics and electronics at nottingham University, remained expressionless as the verdict was read out.
sentencing him, Judge Christopher Kinch QC said: ‘you have lived, deliberately in my view, below the radar, adopting what amounted to counter-surveillance tactics and leaving a tiny footprint compared with almost everyone else in the population. you describe electronics as a hobby but it was clearly more than that.
‘In my judgment, this burglary must rank among the worst offences of its type. 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.
‘While it is true that you have no history of serious crime unlike several of the other conspirators, yours is not a case where character or even the absence of convictions can help much. you were a leading player in an offence that was the result of significant planning.’
seed’s slim build meant he was one of only two of the crooks small enough to squeeze into the vault through a 10inby-18in hole drilled into the 3ftthick concrete wall over the 2015 easter weekend. ten other people have been convicted in connection with the raid, but only £4.5million worth of the stolen items have been recovered, some stuffed in plastic bags buried in a graveyard.
the official value of the burglary is £13.7million, but police suspect it could be as high as £25million as much of the cash, foreign currency, gems and gold in the underground vault was never declared by the owners.
It had been hoped that ‘Basil’ – as he became known during the long police hunt – held the key to the whereabouts of gems, gold, watches and cash that have been missing since the heist in London.
When detectives finally arrested seed last year in his £105-a-week council flat two miles from the scene of the crime, they found almost 1,000 items stolen in the raid.
But the valuables, kept in tupperware boxes stuffed in his wardrobe, were worth only £ 143,000, meaning millions from Britain’s biggest burglary are still unaccounted for.
It was suggested seed may have taken some of the loot to portugal, where he had a holiday flat in the Algarve region.
seed was cleared yesterday of conspiracy to burgle the Bond street jewellers Chatila over the August bank holiday weekend in 2010 with some members of the same gang.
In 1984 he was given a threeyear sentence for supplying a friend with ten home-made LsD pills and a small amount of cannabis.