FRENCH JEWEL HEIST: THEY WANT MORE THAN JUST MODER
mylatency
10,475 Posts
I guess they're after more than just modern soul chargebacks:b, 21b, 21b, 21a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/audacious-jewel-robbery-in-paris/?ref=world" target="_blank"1http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/audacious-jewel-robbery-in-paris/?ref=world/a1b, 21b, 21WOWb, 21b, 21/font1
font class="post"1b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/snowman.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/balla-22.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-trickdaddy.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-gangsta.gif" alt="" 21 img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-koolaid.gif" alt="" 21font class="small"1Quote:/font1h, 21b, 21Audacious Jewel Robbery in Parisb, 21By Graham Bowleyb, 21b, 21Update | 11:31 a.m. This update on the heist at Harry Winston from Doreen Carvajal of our sister newspaper The International Herald Tribune, who is following the news on the streets of Paris:b, 21b, 21 The golden doors of Harry Winston were closed to the public late this afternoon, although women in furs still picked their way around a growing knot of television cameras arrayed outside.b, 21b, 21 Doron L??vy, a spokesman for the Union of French Jewelers, said that there was a meeting planned today to discuss security and the jeweler???s public statements about the robbery. The elegant street of Avenue Montaigne was crowded with luxury brand names like Dior, Chanel and Gucci. The Christmas season is the peak time for jewelers when they have most of their stock.b, 21b, 21 Mr. Levi described the thieves as professional and extremely imaginative, exploiting a weakness of jewelers by posing as women since store employees are more likely to open the doors to women.b, 21b, 21 Harry Winston, he said, ???is very sensitive to the question of security, but when you are exposed to a very motivated team who know your style of functioning and working, it???s much more complicated.???b, 21b, 21Original post:b, 21b, 21Armed thieves have carried out another brazen and meticulously planned robbery of the Harry Winston store in central Paris, making off with an estimated $102 million in jewelry.b, 21b, 21According to the French press and other reports, as many as four robbers, three of them men disguised as women, entered the boutique near Paris???s best-known avenue, the Champs-??lys??es, at around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, in plain sight of about 10 customers and 15 employees in the store.b, 21b, 21The thieves confronted the staff with guns drawn, overturned display cases and escaped with nearly all the jewelry in the place, according to the BBC.b, 21b, 21The store was the target of another robbery just over a year ago, when other unknown thieves took about $28.4 million in merchandise, ranging from a platinum ring priced at $2,800 (the cheapest item they stole) up to a $5 million diamond-studded bracelet.b, 21b, 21Just a coincidence?b, 21b, 21This time around, according to the BBC, the police said the thieves seemed ???well informed and knew the names of some of the shop???s staff.??? They ???appeared to know their way around - addressing some of the staff by their names and identifying where stock not on display was being stored,??? according to the BBC report.b, 21b, 21No details were immediately available on the specific items of jewelry the thieves stuffed in their bags in the latest robbery, though The Associated Press said the ???three or four thieves swiped rings, necklaces and luxury watches,??? citing an unnamed police official.b, 21b, 21According to the Guardian ??? inevitable headline, ???Gunmen ???in drag??? steal jewelry??? ??? watches available from Harry Winston???s online store ???start at more than ??14,000, while the most modest necklace costs ??52,000.??? (A pound these days is equivalent to about $1.46.)b, 21b, 21Harry Winston is one of the world???s best-known luxury jewelers, and one of its most publicity-minded as well, lending expensive pieces to film stars and celebrities to wear at red-carpet events and creating spectacular one-of-a-kind showpieces for the ultra-rich. According to Deutsche Welle, the firm ???designed the famous tiara worn by Empress Farah Diba for her wedding to Shah Mohammed Reza of Iran. The tiara???s centrepiece was the 60-carat Nur-ul-Ain pink diamond. Harry Winston also cut the famous 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond the late actor Richard Burton bought for his wife Elizabeth Taylor???s 40th birthday.???b, 21b, 21Accordingly, some hype may have crept into the value estimates for the stolen goods: Le Figaro says the actual retail value is probably between $60 million and $80 million, and the thieves would probably not be able to fence the stuff for anything remotely close to retail value.b, 21b, 21Still, the audacity of the robbers is clear: the store, on Avenue Montaigne, is just around the corner from a police station, and mere footsteps from the tourist hordes of the Champs-??lys??es.b, 21b, 21Last year???s attack, carried out by four or five masked thieves who all appeared to be men, was described at the time by Katrin Bennhold of The New York Times as ???one of the largest jewelry thefts ever.??? And this year???s swoop by the thieves dwarfs even that.b, 21b, 21Paris seems to be the place of choice for really big jewel heists. In September 2004, two diamonds said to be worth $18.5 million were taken from an antiques fair; the police never found the perpetrators. In 1994, armed robbers stole about $21 million in gems from the jeweler Alexandre Reza in central Paris.b, 21b, 21But the Belgian city of Antwerp, a center of the diamond trade, has seen it done on a more industrial scale: According to Agence France-Presse, in February, 2003, a team of thieves took diamonds and cash from more than 120 vaults at a heavily guarded diamond exchange in the city, making off with gems that may have been worth more than 100 million euros ($128 million).b, 21b, 21h, 21
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