HUNTED down by the FBI for robbing the Bank of England, Keith Cheeseman ponders whether a life of crime really does pay. Labelled an “old-fashioned villain” by London gangland associates, he did time alongside the US Mafia’s most feared godfathers for his part in Britain’s biggest-ever heist. Today Keith, 82, insists in an exclusive interview with The Sun: “In a way, crime does pay.
“I was having a hell of a life, driving a Lamborghini, the chairman of a football club. I was a bit of a celebrity. “I could stay at the best hotels, have the best suits.
I could have whatever I wanted.” For five-times married Millwall fan Keith, that meant vats of champagne and constantly chomping Montecristo cigars. Between wives, he dated glamour model Fiona Richmond.
The international conman and fraudster was recruited to help launder £292million of bonds stolen from the Bank of England in 1990. Such was the enormity of the crime, it drew in the world’s most ruthless crime groups, including the Mafia, the IRA and Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar . Yet the robbery seemed to have been compromised by a “grass” inside the operation from day one.
Two of the gangland figures embroiled in the heist were “whacked” — both shot twice in the head, execution-style. The identity of the mastermind behind the robbery remains a mystery to this day. Now Cheeseman has told his remarkable story for the first time in the book How To Rob The Bank Of England.
Laced with Keith�.