Thief Robs $53 Million in Jewels From Fancy Cannes Hotel

The second largest ever heist in France.

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The city of Cannes is famous for lavish red carpets and the A-list celebs that flock the French Riviera for the annual film festival. Recently though, it has been become the favorite target for jewelry thieves. Some of these robberies are far from what you would imagine happening. It’s not a crew of well-organized thieves dropping in during the middle of the night and smoothly getting away. Some are just brazen armed robberies.

This past weekend a man held up a jewelry exhibition at the Carlton Hotel and made off with 40m Euros (approximately $53m) of precious gems. And on top of that, this is the second time a high-profile heist took place at the same hotel. The first one was in 1994 when robbers took off with over $77m in jewels. For the hotel, the irony of these two unfortunate events is, this is the same place Alfred Hitchcock filmed his movie about a jewelry burglar To Catch A Thief.

This is the third heist that has been recorded this year, with the first two netting thieves millions in jewels. While this is certainly not the first high-profile heist of its kind, the value comes in as the second most ever netted by thieves in France. That record goes to a jewelry exhibition in Paris that was robbed of gems worth around $113m.

[BBC via Jezebel]

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