Sounds familiar. Wasn’t that one of the sub-plots in the Three Musketeers? Consulting Wikipedia:
Although Milady stole two of the diamond studs, Buckingham provides replacements while delaying the thief’s return to Paris. D’Artagnan thus returns a complete set of jewels to Queen Anne in time to save her honor.
Yeah, close enough.
Someone could give trump a copy of those jewels just to piss Macron off. Wait and see which one of the usual brownnoses does it.
CBC Radio mentioned the theft of a pair of bejeweled slippers from the Bata Shoe Museum in 2006. The thief got caught when he asked someone to take a picture of the slippers for a potential buyer in – you guessed it – Saudi Arabia.
This. In 2002 I and a few others blagged our way into the corporate hospitality section at the 24 Hour of Le Mans, Once in nobody questioned us even as we were walking around with just the armco bewteen us and the track.
Now that I think of it… during the Olympics opening show they had a clip of the Minions breaching the Louvre. So, added fictional suspects!
Oh, pshaw. The trick is to never let them know you were there.
I don’t recall seeing these jewels when I was there last year (the place is HUGE!). But at one point - I believe in a sculpture gallery heading towards Wined Victory, I was surprised to see windows open to the outdoors without even screens. Don’t recall having seen such a thing in any other art museum.
I heard on news radio that:
Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful!
Guard: People kept robbing it.
Butch: That’s a small price to pay for beauty.
In many ways you’ve got to admire that attitude, from behind your reinforced glass.
Didn’t the French replace the actual gems in the Crown Jewels with colored glass when the Third Republic was founded?
Anyone check the British Museum yet?
Yes, but, of the items stolen, only the tiara of Empress Eugénie was in the hands of the French government when the Crown Jewels were broken up and/or sold in 1885. That tiara was sold intact. Eugénie’s crown (the one that has been recovered) had previously been returned to her by the Third Republic. All the stolen items were acquired by the Louvre only in the twentieth century.
As I said in a similar thread, these guys have to have very high-skilled, clandestine gem cutters in their gang. Every gemstone - even those that are - as these have been described - “flawless” have internal “signatures” if you will. Flawless means all is good to 10X magnification - and that is really great - yet higher magnification than that there are things visible that can lead to matching the stone to another, even after cutting. Much depends on The Louvre having this information and gemstone buyers asking questions about provenance.
You can’t cut & move this kind of stuff in Europe. Maybe somewhere like Bangkok, they don’t care. Yet I reckon the amount of caring is tied in with the cash payout.
The silver and gold alone would be safe to melt and sell and already you may be in the millions. I’ve seen at least one Tiara in the loot that has really big pearls. There’s almost nothing you can do to a pearl of this size and quality: “I was snorkeling in Tahiti and the water was so clear I could easily see a dozen really big pearls.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.
And finally, like any heist, everyone involved has to STFU pretty much forever. You start telling some of them that these quail-egg sized pearls are too hot to move, the might say “let’s split them up anyways…”
The French Police can say all they want that it’s a hopeless cause, yet they are definitely actively looking. And somebody might know somebody…
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the Louvre will have that information. A stone-by-stone survey of the British Crown Jewels wasn’t undertaken until the early 1990s and was only done then because there was a period when they weren’t on display during building work on the Jewel House. There is also the fact that such collections in major museums tend to be looked after by curators who are not trained jewellers.
I’d have thought it would be somewhat simple to use a scanning machine yet there’s no way every buyer of gems could run a scan on everything.
If the gems are already cut, the gold and silver melted there’s probably no chance at conviction. Big, unique pearls will probably never be fungible so toss them, probably go to another country and sell the gems in batches. Probably the worst conviction then might be tax evasion or something.
Hard hat, orange vest and a clipboard and you are golden.
And cargo pants stuffed with all the tools you need for the break-in. Perfect.
A 1972 Montreal major art museum robbery remains unsolved. Thieves entered via a skylight, which - due to ongoing repairs - had its alarm turned off. A report from 2022: 50 years after major Montreal art theft, trail has gone cold and nobody’s talking | CBC News
Today in McSweeney’s:
I can tell you from personal experience that you can get anywhere where a multilingual meeting is being held if you dress correctly (suit and tie, moderately expensive, well ironed shirt, with clean shoes) and calmly say “I am the interpreter” while holding a paper notebook and a ball-pen in your hand.
I always had my credentials with me, but nobody ever asked.