Page 28 - PWM2025_OCTOBER EBOOK

TECHNOLOGY REPORT

You couldn’t make it up

C was, but the value alone should be enough to raise eye-

onsider the Antwerp World Diamond Centre
brows.
robbery in 2003 – a break-in at a vault two floors
underground protected by no fewer than 10 lay-
And then there was the ‘lesser’ case from 2008 which
Sometimes we come ers of security. As the story tells, Leonardo Printweek also reported on. In this instance, a production
Notarbartolo disguised himself as a diamond
across stories of crim- merchant and moved into an apartment next to worker at book printing firm Clays had been stealing cop-
ies of various books over an 11-month period from a plant
inality that are so out- the centre in 2000 and in 2003 he and his crew stole dia- in Bungay, Suffolk, to sell on eBay for around £5 each. It
landish as to be monds and gold worth $100m without triggering any of the is not clear how many were stolen or how much he had
unbelievable – where 63 security cameras. Bizarrely, Notarbartolo was eventually gained from selling them.
linked to the crime by roadside rubbish and his DNA found
Interestingly, the government’s 2023 Commercial
the brass neck of the on a sandwich. Victimisation Survey (CVS), updated in September 2024,
perpetrators is Not quite as extreme, but nevertheless outrageous, is found – among things – that an estimated 26% (409,000)
beyond belief. Yet the theft in November 2024 of the entire rPET recycling of all business premises, in England and Wales, were a
these stories are plant from QC Polymer (in administration). As victim of a CVS crime during the previous 12 months; and
often, remarkably, Printweek reported in December, the line was found to the most prevalent offence type experienced by busi-
nesses was theft (14%), followed by burglary including
be stolen on the eve before a public inspection of assets
true. before an auction. Printweek wrote that, notably, “the attempted burglary (8%) .
administrators had estimated that it would have taken
Words by seven days to dismantle this plant, and a fleet of 10 articu- Risks of loss
lated lorries and two cranes to cart it away”. Zachariah Islam, managing director of Region Security
Adam Bernstein
Just as peculiar, is another case that Printweek reported Guarding, says that loss in commercial and industrial
at the beginning of this year of a “customer-owned item” environments is more prevalent than many business
worth £50,000 that had gone missing from the failed owners might assume – “while retail settings often focus
Works Manchester. It was not disclosed what the item on shoplifting, industrial and commercial sectors face

26 PrintWeek MENA October 2025 www.printweekmena.com