A man steps out of the Bank of England carrying a leather satchel. It’s a bright May morning in 1990. He walks down the street, unaware that within minutes he’ll be on the ground, the satchel gone — and £292 million vanishing into history.
It was the biggest robbery Britain had ever seen. But that was only the story the public heard.
When I met Keith Cheeseman, the man later accused of fencing the bonds, he wasn’t hiding. He was pouring wine, telling stories about George Best, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. “The banks have been robbing us for years,” he said with a grin. “I just took my turn.”
Cheeseman wasn’t a thug. He was a wit, a charmer — the kind of man who could talk his way into a dinner with dukes and gangsters alike. But beneath the bravado lay a story that reached deep into the machinery of power. Scotland Yard announced £292 million had been stolen. Yet that night, when the gang counted the haul, there was £427 million in bonds — £135 million more than the world was told.
What happened to the missing fortune? Cheeseman claimed it went “up the line” — to men in suits, not masks. Then the killings began. The thief who snatched the bonds and a fixer in the United States were both found shot — two taps to the head, clean and professional. Someone was closing the circle.
The bonds turned up everywhere: in Miami, among Pablo Escobar’s dealers; in Swiss vaults; £77 million in the luggage of three IRA men. Eighty people were arrested. All were released – it was not in the public interest to prosecute – all except Keith Cheeseman, extradited to the United States and jailed as the convenient scapegoat.
How to Rob the Bank of England unravels the hidden history of that heist — a true story of audacity, greed, and betrayal at the heart of the British establishment. It is the story of a man who played the system like a symphony — and the system that played him back.
As Keith once told me, lighting a cigar with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes:
“In this world, the clever ones aren’t the thieves. They’re the ones who make the rules.”
How to Rob the Bank of England is out now in paperback (also hardback, digital, audio)