Victims of the Easter Hatton Garden heist had their lives "ruined", with many left struggling to recover losses, it has been claimed.
Police are offering a £20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the gang who drilled into a vault in London's jewellery district to steal a giant haul of gems and cash from 56 safe deposit boxes.Rick Marchant, a loss adjuster at Marchant and Marchant Limited, said he was dealing with seven clients who had lost items worth up to £2m.He said many of the victims were "small businesses" that were not making huge profits. "These aren't extremely wealthy people, for a lot of them their livelihoods have gone. All of us might be forgiven for thinking how audacious, how clever, but what [the gang has] done is ruin the lives of many people within the Hatton Garden jewellery quarter," he told the BBC.Hardened dealers were said to be "in sobs" after the heist, with some having no insurance at all."Their view was it is in a safety deposit box – the key word is safety – it should be OK and of course they have lost everything," said Marchant.The chances of uninsured victims recovering their losses is now "pretty remote", he added. Their only hope might be if there is any evidence of negligence.Scotland Yard is reviewing why its officers were not sent to investigate the intruder alarm that went off shortly after midnight on Friday 3 April. CCTV suggests the gang was inside the building on the night of 2 April and then returned to the scene on Saturday night.The burglary was not discovered until the Tuesday when staff returned to the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit after the long weekend.
The Evening Standard says the Metropolitan Police's Computer Aided Despatch system received a call from the security company at the vault but no police response was deemed necessary.
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