Mischa van Gelder let men into his vault, let them tie him up and claimed stolen stones’ value on insurance
One of the most renowned diamond dealers in the Netherlands has been convicted of fraud and money laundering after staging an armed robbery of €4.1m (£3.4m) diamonds from one of his stores as part of an insurance scam.
Mischa van Gelder, 55, told a court in Amsterdam that he now found his plot “incomprehensible” but that he had been motivated by financial difficulties when he hatched it with three other men in 2016.