Rosa Lyster

Advance-fee scams – sometimes called ‘Nigerian prince scams’, although they mostly originate in other countries – have become a hackneyed example of online fraud. But Blay-Miezah and his varyingly complicit associates managed to keep the con going for almost twenty years, extracting hundreds of millions from investors, despite warnings from a number of prominent people, including Henry Kissinger and Shirley Temple.

A thief and her three accomplices forced their way into the library of a country house, where a rich, elderly couple were listening to music on the gramophone. Waving their assault rifles, they screamed at Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit to lie face down on the floor. The leader, who spoke with a strong French accent, instructed her accomplices to start with the Goya above the mantelpiece, a portrait of a beautiful young actress looking out from beneath slightly worried brows.

Diederik De Beers took full control of the distribution channels, setting prices and constraining supply to ensure that diamonds remained aspirationally expensive even as the astonishing output of the South African mines showed that they were not particularly rare. It would be a perfect story for explaining the concept of monopoly to a child. 

They are condensed versions of wealth, in the same way that an actual egg is a condensed version of food. They are objects to be stolen in heist films, fitting easily into a pocket and requiring no exposition, because even children can see that these things are worth enormous amounts of money.