Meet Saq Mumtaz, the man who almost got away with £2m of diamonds

"If there were a Nobel prize for criminal ingenuity I have to say I would give it to these men", said Saq Mumtaz's QC following his sentence for committing one of the most famous scams of the Nineties. Along with three other men and the help of an insider at American Express, Mumtaz made a luxurious living out of credit card fraud before masterminding the stealing of £2,000,000 worth of diamonds from one of America's most exclusive jewellers in 1996.

Fooling Beverly Hill's Bijan into thinking the Prince of Brunei was ordering the jewels over to London, Mumtaz acquired the diamonds in Manchester before being arrested a year later after all four men were linked to the scam by voice analysis of the jeweller's tapes and mobile phone records.

Now Mumtaz's life story is the subject of British film Plastic, starring Alfie Allen, Ed Speleers and Will Poulter, which sees the British cast travel to Miami to steal millions from some of the world's wealthiest elite. We spoke to him about how wild life can get with no limits, starting over post-prison and why conning isn't an addiction.

GQ: What would you say is the biggest thrill about conning?

Saq Mumtaz: Everything from start to finish. It's like a jigsaw, so when it comes together and the transactions go through the thrill is unreal. For example when we went to LA, if we were buying some jewellery, some Rolexes, we'd have a limousine driver and we'd get him to go in so they would have no way to identify us. The thrill is hard to describe.

How did you get into conning?

It was a big process through the years and no one's born into committing fraud, we kind of stumbled upon it.

At our hotel we met up with Will Smith and Tupac Shakur.

(Saq Mumtaz)

How did you know how to mastermind such a large-scale operation? How much did luck play a part?

It wasn't luck because we were aware that Prince Mohammad of Brunei had been into this exclusive jewelers of Beverly Hills. Once we had rang up the jewellers, from there, we had the details. If you're going to go in to something like that, you can't go into it without doing your research, you need to know pretty much everything. We researched for weeks, weeks. The only luck we had came at the end. When we obtained the jeweller, luckily it was a very easy process. Seeing as we're not violent people and we would never have used force, we were lucky that it was such an unaggressive hand-over.

What were the most challenging parts of the operation?

I'd definitely say getting the Prince of Brunei's people over.

From arranging the Leer jet, to the limousines, the five-star hotel, the bodyguards, even to the little detail of arranging flowers on the runway when they arrived - everything had to be precise. We had to make them feel at ease, we needed them to believe that they were dealing with the prince. We needed to glamourise life. The final challenge was obviously to get away with the jewellery without being arrested there and then.

How hard was the whole thing to do?

The fact that the Daily Record listed it as one of the top ten scams of all time, you can imagine how hard it was. If it was easy, why has nobody ever done it since? Don't forget as well, at that time, nobody had internet. All the research we did was done by one pay-as-you-go phone and just looking at top line magazines to understand the lifestyle. It wasn't easy at all. These days you can transfer money at the touch of a button so that's the unique thing about what we did, it was more of a blag, a heist, than anything else.

What parts were surprisingly easy?

I'd say, once we'd made initial contact with the jewellers they were very accomodating. I think to be honest with you, their eyes must have lit up thinking of commission. It wasn't done over a day but it was surprisingly easy - once they had a certain amount of information they were at ease. I mean, even when they travelled you would have thought they'd have their own security over or something, but they didn't.

What was your most extravagant trip?

It was going to watch Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. The MGM

[Grand Hotel and Casino] was new and honestly it was just limousines and high-life. At our hotel we met up with Will Smith and Tupac Shakur. In those days, kids our age never went to Vegas, now it's a common thing but it was just so completely different yet we couldn't really boast about it because it would have been like "what are these kids from Cheetham Hill doing hanging about with Tupac".

What was Tupac like?

He was nice, he was cool. We were holding our own, let's just say, as far they concerned we were big deals. When you're with people like that you don't want to let them know that you're just a fan, I asked him about his beef with Sugar Knight, when he was going to come to Manchester, I gave him my number if he ever came. Will Smith was really nice, the way he comes across on TV is the way he was, but his sidekick in Prince of Bel Air [Carlton Banks played by Alfonso Ribeiro], he had small man syndrome, he had a chip on his shoulder.

Did people not ask where you'd suddenly got all this money from?

I just told my parents that I'd taken out a loan. I wouldn't tell the truth to anyone because the area that I lived in was so violent that I didn't want to make myself a target. I also didn't keep things for very long. Remember, when we were travelling it's not as if we were on Facebook or anything, whatever we did, we did and no one would know because nobody had internet.

You pretty much don't exist when you're in prison (Saq Mumtaz)

If you hadn't got caught do you think you'd still be doing it?

No. You'd have to be stupid to think that you could do that for the rest of your life. The thing is to get in and get out with something to show for it.

So if you'd got away with the diamonds you really think you would have been able to just leave that lifestyle behind?

Yeah because where do you go from that?

Isn't it just like gambling, you think, "I can keep winning more - how far can I push this?"

No because I've never been addicted to anything in my life, you know? I don't smoke, I don't drink so it's not something in my nature. It wasn't an addiction.

Do you know where the diamonds are?

We had some debts with the Russian mafia and I believe they took them.

How did you get debts with them?

To be honest, I don't really want to get into that but let's just say they were never recovered.

Do you think they'll ever be found?

No. It's been over 15 years and they've not been found. I believe they're out of the country somewhere and when you have jewellery such as that only the cream of the crop can hold on to it. Not everyone can wear half a million pound necklace or a watch for £250,000.

Do you believe you could you have got away with the heist?

Technically we could have. One major thing was that I asked the jewellers not to declare the diamonds because of tax and they didn't, so as far as we were concerned, we didn't get nothing, how would they prove that they actually did bring over millions and millions of pounds of jewellery? The other side of it was, it would have been a cut-throat defence because you would have had four guys blaming each other so we just held up our hands.

What do you do now?

My father passed away a few years ago so I'm now a full time carer for my mum, she's quite old.

Has it been hard to get your life back on track with a criminal record?

Well because it's been over a certain number of years, I don't really have to declare it anymore. Also because it was a non-violent crime I'm not on any registers or anything. Obviously if I went for a job with credit cards then I'd probably have to declare it then but funnily enough, after we were arrested we were actually approached by American Express to be an employee on the fraud prevention side [laughs].

Are you ever tempted to go back to conning?

No. I've got children now. My children aren't really aware about what happened in the past but that's it, it's in the past, it was all a long time ago. I've never been in trouble with the police again and I wouldn't. When you're doing these things you never think you're going to get caught but when I went to prison it was horrendous. The suffering my family went through was awful - my father had worked all his life and had never been in trouble with the police so it was just a major shock for him. They had had no idea. You pretty much don't exist when you're in prison - say if my mum was ill, there was nothing I could do. The time I missed with my first born child [she was born whilst Saq was on remand before serving his time] is irreplaceable. I've never held down a relationship with my kid's mums and that's probably due to the lifestyle I had. I just wish I was a normal nine-to-five guy.

Will you come clean about your past with your children?

Yeah I would just to prevent them from doing something like that themselves. At the moment I do some mentoring with young kids and anyone that I speak to at a younger age I try to deter them because a lot of people glorify what I did. The first thing I say to them is to get their education and the rest will follow. Money can come and go but no one can take your education away from you.

Do you feel remorse?

Yeah I have remorse for what I did, definitely. In some ways I felt a bit like a Robin Hood from the area that I was, I mean not everything I did was for myself you know, there were a few things I did for charity to try and even it up. It wasn't my money but I transferred £10,000 over to Band Aid. My parents are from a poor area in Pakistan and I donated stuff for a girls school, so I did help a bit. But you know, I shouldn't really boast about the charity I do, you should just do it and keep quiet but because it's been brought up, I've talked about it. I also helped friends out that couldn't even buy clothes that middle class kids could. The only thing I'd say is if the credit card companies concentrated more on prevention on profit at that time then maybe we wouldn't have done what we did.

What do you think you would have done with your life had you not fallen into crime?

I think that's the unfortunate thing, obviously I had this fake life but my biggest regret was that I pulled out of university because we had places at university to do economics and I didn't follow it through.

Have you held down a long term job since coming out of prison?

Yeah, I ran a supermarket for ten years which I actually really enjoyed - it's only since my father passed away that I've been caring for my mother.

Do you miss the lifestyle?

Yes, yes of course. How can you say you don't? I'm glad I got to meet these people as it would have been just stuff of dreams from where I was.

Plastic is out on Blu-ray and DVD now.

Follow Alice Howarth on Twitter: @alicejrhowarth

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