🌅 An Eight-Minute Jewel Heist in Paris

SOURCE

The New York Times

WHAT TO KNOW

• A quartet of thieves needed just eight minutes to steal $102 million worth of jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris on October 19, making off with a haul of historic tiaras, necklaces, earrings, and brooches. The raid started at 9:30 am when the thieves parked a ladder truck under the windows of the Apollo Gallery. By 9:38 am, they had scaled the ladder, cut through a window, smashed two display cases, exited the gallery, and departed on two high-powered scooters waiting for them outside.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Experts say this was a “commodity theft” not an art heist, despite the location of the robbery. The thieves targeted precious stones and metals that can be offloaded easily, and didn’t care about leaving other high-profile valuables behind that could be easy to identify and hard to resell.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The theft is the latest in a string of heists targeting French museums in the past year, including an “extremely professional” gold heist at the National Museum of Natural History on September 16. The thieves made off with several samples of rare native gold—gold discovered in its natural state without smelting or chemical separation—worth around $700,000, though experts say the samples also carry immeasurable scientific, artistic, and historical value.