Brink's-Mat robbery deposit burglary in April 2015. The Brink's-Mat robbery occurred early on 26 November 1983 when six robbers broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse, Unit 7 of the Heathrow International Trading Estate near Heathrow Airport in the west of Greater London. It was described as "the crime of the century". The gang gained entry to the warehouse from security guard Anthony Black. Once inside, they poured petrol over staff and threatened them with a lit match if they did not reveal the combination numbers of the vault. The robbers thought that they were going to steal £3.2 million in cash, but they
Brink's-Mat robbery never been recovered and the other four robbers were never convicted. In 1996 about half of the gold, the portion which had been smelted, was thought to have found its way back into the legitimate gold market, including the reserves of the true owners, Johnson Matthey. According to the BBC, some have claimed that anyone wearing gold jewellery bought in the UK after 1983 is probably wearing Brink's-Mat. On 21 December 1983, less than four weeks after the robbery, police in Austria arrested five men – four Italians and an Austrian – at a Vienna hotel. Police also recovered ten