King of Bling was victim of UK’s biggest unsolved diamond theft
THE Conti cyber hack is not the first time the jewellery empire that Laurence Graff founded when he was 18 has suffered at the hands of hardened criminals.
In August 2009, two sharply dressed men entered the Graff Diamonds branch in Mayfair, pulled out handguns and started threatening staff.
A female shop assistant was forced to empty the display cabinets before being taken hostage.
The raiders freed her in the street, firing a shot into the air and escaping in a BMW with a haul of 43 rings, bracelets, necklaces and watches, valued at nearly £40 million.
But the two robbers left a mobile phone behind as they swapped escape cars. Numbers on it led to the culprits, who had spent four hours being disguised by a professional make-up artist who thought it was for a music video.
In all, five men were jailed for their involvement in the raid. But none of the stolen jewellery in Britain’s largest unsolved gems heist was ever recovered.
Almost three decades earlier, in September 1980, the 45-carat Marlborough diamond – worth more than £2million at today’s prices – was stolen from a Graff store in Knightsbridge.
Although the two robbers, believed to be members of the Chicago Mafia, were arrested and jailed, the diamond, which once belonged to the wife of the Duke of Marlborough, a cousin of Winston Churchill, was never recovered. The pair were believed to have posted their haul to New York on their way home.
Now worth £2.9billion, Laurence Graff, 83, started as an apprentice in the diamond district of Hatton Garden, London. The 15-year-old East End boy scrubbed floors and cleaned toilets while taking classes in his spare time at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where he was told he would ‘never make the grade’.
Determined to prove his teachers wrong, Mr Graff began selling his own designs in 1960 and opened two London boutiques two years later. Now, there are more than 60 worldwide. Former US President Donald Trump bought his wife Melania’s £1million, 15-carat emerald cut diamond engagement ring from Graff, adding a Graff 25-carat ring worth £2.8million for their tenth anniversary.
In October 2009, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Mr Graff had fathered a love-child at the age of 71 with a former employee 34 years his junior. He announced his divorce from Anne Marie, but they decided to stay together minutes before their court hearing.
The couple have two sons – Francois, 56, chief executive of his father’s business empire, and Stephane, 55, a successful artist – as well as a daughter, Kristelle, 41.