By some guys with a ladder truck, some scooters, and angle grinder and a blowtorch. In broad daylight.
Quote:
The Louvre Museum in Paris remained closed on Monday as police continue to investigate a brazen daylight heist that lasted less than eight minutes in total a day earlier inside the world’s most visited museum.
On Sunday, thieves rode a basket lift (or cherry picker) up the Louvre’s facade and smashed an upstairs window and display cases before fleeing with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said.
The heist took place about 30 minutes after the museum opened, with visitors already inside, and unfolded just 250 metres from the Mona Lisa.
At around 9:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, masked thieves used an electric ladder and grinders to break into the second-floor Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo’s Gallery), which is a large room where the Crown Diamonds are displayed, including the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia.
The thieves smashed two display cases and fled on motorbikes, Nunez said. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the theft was already done.
Darmanin also acknowledged security failures on Monday.
“One can wonder about the fact that, for example, the windows hadn’t been secured, about the fact that a basket lift was on a public road,” he said. “Having (previously) been interior minister, I know that we cannot completely secure all places, but what is certain is that we have failed.”
In their haste to leave, the robbers dropped a ninth item, which the authorities recovered later: Empress Eugénie’s crown, which features 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. [nytimes]
Something about heists. I tend to love the stories when they inevitably get caught from opening their mouth to a spouse who they later break up with and the spouse goes to the police.
Something about heists. I tend to love the stories when they inevitably get caught from opening their mouth to a spouse who they later break up with and the spouse goes to the police.
Rule #1 - never kiss a John.
Highly recommend Heist podcast to anyone who loves heists. Couple Canadian guys put together a couple hundred episodes of heists from history.
Their first 20 or so were pretty unpolished but they got a lot better and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire series.
You melt the Gold, cut the Diamonds and make them into something else.
Or sell them to some Sheikh? Whats France gonna do about it? Stamp their feet and throw a tantrum?
I also read that for some jewel thieves there is a strategy where the Insurance company sometimes offers a reward.
"Return the jewels, anonymously, and we'll pay $X Millions. No Cops. No Questions asked. Case closed."
I also understand that since the Gold and Gems are so old they dont have any ID stamps or laser-engraved ID numbers so they'd be untraceable...in obviously a different setting, if its still some French Queen's Tiara or whatever even the dimmest of Frenchmen would pause and ask questions.
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You melt the Gold, cut the Diamonds and make them into something else.
Or sell them to some Sheikh? Whats France gonna do about it? Stamp their feet and throw a tantrum?
I also read that for some jewel thieves there is a strategy where the Insurance company sometimes offers a reward.
"Return the jewels, anonymously, and we'll pay $X Millions. No Cops. No Questions asked. Case closed."
I also understand that since the Gold and Gems are so old they dont have any ID stamps or laser-engraved ID numbers so they'd be untraceable...in obviously a different setting, if its still some French Queen's Tiara or whatever even the dimmest of Frenchmen would pause and ask questions.
Going through all that trouble to melt gold seems incredibly F-ing stupid. Surely there are easier places to rob?
There is a fairly large stolen art market. A lot of drug dealers, and other high end criminals, need untraceable palces to park their cash, as eventually they have so much it becomes diffifcult to store as physical cash. Art like this goes up in value, is inflation proof, and can be easily stored in a safe.
I've also read stories about criminals using it as currency amongst themselves. Easier to carry over a piece of art worth 10 million than wire transfer or carry the cash.
These guys did seem kind of dumb though.....so maybe melting down tens of millions of dollars of jewelry into tens of thousands of dollars of gold?
I dunno, they figured out they could steal the French Crown Jewels in the middle of the day, they can't be that dumb.
FWIW the expert CBC talked to said they'd mostly likely be parted out. He also said they could be self insured, which is fine, if you bother to protect them.
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Going through all that trouble to melt gold seems incredibly F-ing stupid. Surely there are easier places to rob?
There is a fairly large stolen art market. A lot of drug dealers, and other high end criminals, need untraceable palces to park their cash, as eventually they have so much it becomes diffifcult to store as physical cash. Art like this goes up in value, is inflation proof, and can be easily stored in a safe.
I've also read stories about criminals using it as currency amongst themselves. Easier to carry over a piece of art worth 10 million than wire transfer or carry the cash.
These guys did seem kind of dumb though.....so maybe melting down tens of millions of dollars of jewelry into tens of thousands of dollars of gold?
I dunno, I'm no fancy French Cat-Burglar or nuthin' but it seems to me that Gold is Gold...its valued by weight and Gems are Gems, they are valued by Cut, Clarity and Carat?
So they'd be selling the same things that they stole, they'd just look different.
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Anyone watch Lupin? That plan was more complicated!
A dumb question, even if you 'melt down' gold, how do you sell it? Who would buy it in what form?
Would you have to make it into a coin?
You can grade in melted down gold anywhere. There are half a dozen places within a short walk of my office in downtown Vancouver that buy gold. Lots of people have gold in various forms (jewelry, bar, coins) that these guys will buy.
No, you can't trace the gold once its been melted down, and I doubt the gold merchants would care to do that. Seems more like a don't ask don't tell policy with these guys.
There's some good youtube videos on gold melting. People prospect for gold in rivers and other areas then melt down the flakes into bars. Jewelry stores and gold merchants will melt down jewelry people bring them too.
Once again, I think this would be an insanely stupid thing to do. Melting down 10s of millions of dollars of priceless art into a few hundred thousand dollars of gold. These guys did seem somewhat dumb though. Just robbing a regular jewelry store would have been easier and far more productive.
Edit: You likely could easily trace some of the jewels if they tried to resell those. I'm guessing that they stole some pretty unique jewels that used obsolete cutting techniques.
Last edited by blankall; 10-24-2025 at 10:57 AM.
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A dumb question, even if you 'melt down' gold, how do you sell it? Who would buy it in what form?
Would you have to make it into a coin?
There's a famous 1983 robbery in the UK (Brinks Mat) where three tonnes of gold was stolen. In this documentary, they provide details on how they laundered it.
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The Louvre Robbed of French Royal Jewels
