Sunday night having turned into the wee hours of a Monday in April 2003, three ex-cons furtively gain access through an alley into a vacant, out-of-business restaurant in San Francisco's upscale Union Square shopping district. Once inside, they smash a hole in the common wall to a high-end jewelry shop next door, where they hide in a bathroom until employees arrive that morning. At gunpoint, the robbers force the surprised staff to open the safes, from which they dump nearly 1,300 elegant pieces — mostly antique rings, bracelets, and gems — into inelegant plastic trash bags. Escaping the way they'd entered, the thieves make off with a $4.5 million haul, the biggest heist in Bay Area history.
Given the perps' icy professionalism, police immediately suspect their longtime nemeses, the Smith Brothers — Troy and Dino (aka Trade and Mark) — and their accomplice George Turner. In due course, two of these three suspects are apprehended. Pleading guilty, Turner gets 13 years. Dino Smith is tried, convicted, and sentenced to 23 years. Finally, after a protracted manhunt, Troy Smith turns himself in and eventually receives a 26-year sentence. On appeal, Troy argues that what he'd done was technically not robbery, since the store's owner had put them up to it in a scheme to defraud his insurer. Said owner, however, scoffs at Troy's claim, passes a polygraph exam asserting his innocence, and is never charged in connection with this case. Moreover, in October 2009, the First District Court of Appeal rules that Troy committed robbery regardless of whether or not the store owner had set it up. The shop's employees, reasons the Court, were unaware of any alleged agreement and opened the safes only because the Smith Brothers and George Turner were pointing guns at them.
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