Steal episode 1 begins with a gang of gunmen, wearing realistic prosthetics to hide their faces, storming the offices of Lochmill Capital, a high-end London pension investment firm. The staffs are immediately taken hostage, but a hero employee attempts to call their bluff, arguing that they won’t dare fire their weapons because the noise would bring the police in minutes. The thieves quickly disabuse him of this notion by brutally beating him, proving they don’t need bullets to inflict serious damage.
Once the room is secured, the gunmen demand the trade processing team. Zara steps up to protect a terrified new hire, leading the thieves to the highest-ranking member, Luke. They are whisked away to the trading floor and handed flash drives containing six specific accounts. The goal is to move over £4 billion in pension funds into a series of offshore accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.
The heist requires a two-step verification process. First, the investment committee who conveniently happen to be meeting in the building is forced at gunpoint to sign off on the trade. Second, and more difficult, they must convince the custodian bank to authorize the suspicious movement of funds.
Luke begins to freak out but Zara takes the lead and expertly manipulates the custodian bank representative, smoothing over the strange nature of the trade and ensuring the billions are cleared. Even after the bank agrees, the thieves refuse to leave, insisting on staying until they receive confirmation that the money has landed in their offshore accounts.
During the tense wait, another staff member tries to signal a nearby building for help, but he is caught and neutralized.
As the thieves contemplate leaving, they get confirmation that the money has been received, and they vanish into the London streets, leaving the hostages behind.
The police arrive shortly after, led by DCI Rhys, who begins the grueling process of interviewing the survivors. Zara is one of the first to be questioned, and during her brief interview, she suffers a nosebleed.
She excuses herself to the bathroom to clean up, where we see her smiling. It becomes clear that she wasn’t just a brave employee—she was the inside woman who facilitated the entire £4 billion theft.
We get more confirmation of Zara’s involvement in the heist as she receives £5 million in crypto the next morning, which she immediately moves into a cold wallet and hides behind her fridge.
But the conversation she and Luke later have at work suggests they didn’t know it was going to be a heist.
She and Luke provided the gunmen with their login credentials under the impression that it was going to be a simple bank hack, not a violent, full-blown heist. Also they were promised £100k, not £5m.
This links them directly to the heist, and Luke isn’t really a mentally strong guy.
He didn’t even have the sense to move his payout from his public account, and his jittery behavior is practically screaming guilty to everyone in the office.
He doesn’t even hold up when the DCI interviews him. They question how the thieves thought to attack on the exact day of a committee meeting and how they knew exactly when £4 billion was sitting in Luke’s management account.
Luke crumbles, offering no tangible defense, which confirms the cops’ suspicions. However, the DCI is smart enough to realize that a sophisticated gang wouldn’t bet a multi-billion pound heist on a guy who can’t hold eye contact, he knows there must be a more competent backup inside the firm.
With Luke knowing the cops are definitely unto him his mental state officially hits rock bottom. He follows Zara’s advice to take some time off, but instead of resting, he locks himself in his wardrobe, convinced he is being watched. He isn’t wrong though both the police and the thieves have him under surveillance. In a state of pure panic, he calls Zara—who is busy trying to stash her own cold wallet at her estranged mother’s house—claiming he is bugged and being followed.
The thieves, watching Luke spiral from the shadows, decide that he is a liability they can no longer afford. They move in to “eliminate” the problem, and unfortunately, Zara arrives at Luke’s house just in time to witness the abduction.
Before the thieves grabbed him, Luke managed to make a desperate call to DCI Rhys to meet him at the house. Only, he arrives too late and finds Zara jumping over Luke’s fence.
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