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It's the heist that shocked the world.
It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.LT
It's an absolute travesty.
These guys pulled off the job of the century.
The French crown jewels...
Gold, diamonds.
...worth $100 million...
They took the bling-bling jewels.
...stolen in broad daylight.
We were scared. We were terrified.
From the world's most famous museum.
Your balls better be pretty big, especially going
into the Louvre.
This is the inside, minute-by-minute story
of how they did it.
Nobody had a gun.
It was a real slap in the face.
And may have gotten away with it.
The French police, they're like bloodhounds.
$102-million question--
Where's the jewels?
The Louvre is the biggest museum in the world,
covering over 750,000 square feet.
Once a royal palace, it houses artworks worth billions.
1,300 security cameras monitor 403 galleries.
Around 9 million visitors a year pass through
the museum's turnstiles.
My name is Elaine Sciolino.
I'm a lifelong journalist.
I always tell people who are coming to Paris, "Never go to
"the Louvre on an empty stomach and with a full bladder because
"you won't find anything good to eat and you will walk for miles
before you find a toilet." You've got 400 rooms.
If you were to walk through every single room,
it would be nine miles.
So you have to go geared for battle.
At 9 AM, the Louvre opens its doors to the public.
I'm Frederic Serrier.
I'm a security agent in the Louvre.
At 9:00 I was welcoming people.
I was checking the tickets.
I love working on Sundays. Everything is quiet.
Yes, I was not "very happy" to work, but I was OK.
- I was OK. - I'm Jake Barker.
I'm Holly Barker, and I am from Indianapolis, Indiana.
It was a perfect day for visiting a museum.
It was rainy, overcast.
I wanted to be, you know, one of the first people
in line.
We were third in line with about 100 other people.
We started with the Mona Lisa.
So the third thing on our list was the Apollo Room.
An overlooked exhibit.
It was a miniature hall of mirrors sort of
mimicking Versailles. - It was built by Louis XIV.
He wanted to build a wonderful, gold room to Apollo.
It's the most beautiful jewelry box in the world.
For over a century, the Apollo gallery
has been home to France's remaining crown jewels.
I'm Carol Woolton, I'm a jewelry expert.
The jewels, they're a connection to the nation's identity,
culture, history, and monarchy.
So, they're incredibly important artifacts.
What are they worth?
To me, they're worth the diamonds that are in them.
To France, they're worth a lot more.
I'm Larry Lawton, the biggest jewel thief
in the United States.
I robbed over $18 million in diamonds.
At 9:32, I remember taking a picture of the Apollo Room.
It's a gorgeous room.
It's these deep colors, red, blue, paintings,
and then these gorgeous glass cases in the middle of the room
filled with precious, royal artifacts.
Outside the gallery window, a truck has pulled up.
Four men disguised as construction workers
set cones up on the sidewalk.
The Louvre always has workers inside the Louvre
and outside the Louvre.
I think they tried to blend in to the construction
that was taking place at the Louvre at the time.
Obviously, they had construction vests.
You got four guys, the truck.
Nobody thinks a thing on the--
People are oblivious.
The truck has a mechanical ladder, which the men extend to
the second story balcony, unseen by anyone inside.
The one CCTV camera
that was available at the scene was
pointed in another direction, not at the balcony.
The heist has begun...
in broad daylight.
Once it starts, it starts.
You can't stop.
What's going through their mind?
"I'm doing it." It's an adrenaline rush.
Every thought in my head is not about getting caught.
It's not about the money itself.
My thoughts are the guys. How are they gonna do?
The people you have on your team,
will they perform under pressure?
While two men head up to the balcony, the other two
hold their position below on getaway scooters.
There's nothing unusual to see people climbing up
on the outside of the Louvre.
The men on the balcony prepare to break through the window.
No one in the gallery has any idea what's coming.
I specifically remember looking at
that emerald necklace that was Napoleon's second wife's,
and I just thought it was absolutely gorgeous.
So at 9:32 and we enter, two minutes later, I am
halfway down, maybe a little more down that long corridor,
and Jake's, you know, the first case in,
still in the middle.
I did take a photo of the unicorn mermaid teapot.
I took that photo at 9:33.
We heard several loud bangs coming from the furthest window
from the entrance.
Everyone froze and looked at the balcony window.
Someone is trying to get in.
You could feel the walls vibrating.
I've never been in, like, a home invasion situation,
but I imagine it's like that.
What got the hairs on everyone's neck to stand up was
that distinct sound of a metal circular blade
making its way through glass.
Zzzzzzz.
So all they're concerned is get through that glass,
and they are frantic because they knew they were on a timer.
When a person does a robbery, you have in your head
how much time you got to get in and out by.
The second the blade touches the glass,
an alarm is triggered.
Inside the Apollo gallery,
panic breaks out.
As a teacher, we have these active shooter drills.
The attendant is yelling for everyone to run or get out.
I feel like I was in an active shooter situation
and kept wondering, "But where is the gunshots?"
Like, that was what was going through my mind.
We were scared. We were terrified.
We thought that our lives were in danger.
We grabbed each other by the arm and ran back
through the entrance.
We just didn't know what was about to come through
that window, but we didn't want to stick around to find out.
Barely 30 minutes after opening, the world's largest
museum, the Louvre, has been breached by two masked men
wielding disc cutters.
Captured on dramatic phone footage, terrified tourists
flee from the scene of the second-floor break-in.
We were told to run, we did, we grabbed
each other's hand and get out of that room.
Back in the Apollo Gallery,
the intruders used their high-powered tools
as weapons to threaten the guards.
Louvre security people are not armed, and it's not their job
to confront another person.
They-- they have not been trained to stop a crime.
We cannot fight anyone
because we are not police, police officers.
It's not our job to confront gangsters.
There's no armed guards.
I mean, it blows me away that nobody had any kind of weapon.
I saw one of the Louvre staff members shut what looked like
iron gates to the entrance of the Apollo room.
I remember him looking panicked.
An alert goes out over the radios to all of
the Louvre's security guards.
I heard a stressed voice.
It was something like, "We have intruders,
people entering the museum from the window."
A lot of people thought, is it a terrorist attack?
Hearing that was terrifying.
Inside the Apollo Gallery, the thieves' every move is
captured on surveillance cameras.
Only a select few outside of law enforcement have seen
this CCTV material, including journalist
Jean-Michel Decugis.
The thieves turn both disc cutters on the display cases.
Inside lie the French crown jewels, including two
diamond necklaces, a pearl tiara,
and a 170-year-old crown
encrusted with over a thousand diamonds.
Their value? Over $100 million.
They'd definitely done their homework.
They knew which showcases to target.
The thieves are cutting through reinforced glass
specially designed to protect against bullets.
The plexiglass or glass that covers these cases can
withstand hundreds of hits from a hammer and are bulletproof.
Yet this glass is designed with one deliberate weakness.
In the Louvre, there is a manual which states that
the only way to get into those cases in the event of
an emergency is to use a disc cutter.
That would give someone probably an idea that maybe
there was some type of insider influence in this case.
How did they know that the glass could be cut
with those grinders?
I mean, that's an important question.
Yet something unexpected happens.
The thieves have been attacking the cases
for around a minute when Louvre HQ alerts
the Paris Police Department.
The gang are now racing against the clock
to smash, grab, and run.
With no power to intervene, the guards capture evidence
by covertly filming them.
It's now almost two minutes
since the robbers broke in to the gallery...
but they still haven't broken through the glass
protecting the jewels.
At that point, they might have thought they were in there
for too long, so therefore they went into a hurry-up mode,
which could have been a bit of a panic mode for them.
Panicking and losing what you know is the worst thing
that can happen in a robbery. It is not easy to do.
With the nearest police station only half a mile away,
law enforcement are rapidly closing in,
and the robbers become more and more frantic.
After more than two minutes,
brute force finally pays off.
But the job's not over.
Of course, one thing you never do
is lump jewelry together
because diamonds can cut other diamonds.
They were just chucking it in there.
It's been a breakneck three minutes to get into the cases
and snatch the jewels.
But with the police now only seconds away,
the thieves face the riskiest part of the whole operation,
the escape.
Somebody set the robbery up very well, but where they made
their mistake was getting away.
Why did these guys panic after, somewhat panic after
they got the jewels?
Because they were so excited, they probably didn't even think
they were gonna get that far.
Their dramatic escape is captured on a witness's phone.
They were panicking.
They were looking in all directions trying to see
which direction they'd have to make their getaway in.
On the street, roughly 20 feet below, two accomplices are
ready to flee on high-powered scooters.
Finally, the thieves jump down and tear away through
the morning traffic.
In eight minutes, four brazen thieves broke into and hijacked
the nation's most prized treasures.
A heist that will go down in history.
As far as we can tell, Holly may have been
the last person to see them.
I didn't think they would have left with so many pieces
of jewelry. It's an absolute travesty.
And now what? You know, now what?
That's the thing. Now what?
Just four minutes after breaking into the Louvre,
the criminals speed off.
They needed to get out as quickly as possible
from the entire scene.
Amid the growing chaos, security raced to the scene.
But among the debris, a glimmer of hope.
Just under the balcony, I found something shiny.
The crown was made for Empress Eugénie.
It had more than a thousand diamonds and probably
50-some emeralds.
It was unique and a piece of French history.
To find the crown of Eugénie was heartwarming.
The race was then on, so, of course, panic sets in.
I did 25 jewelry stores and never dropped an earring
or a ring, no less a crown that could fit on my head.
But even without the crown, thieves still got away with
eight pieces of priceless jewelry in just eight minutes.
They basically emptied out the two showcases that
they could get into.
They just beat the government of France
out of their crown jewels.
Just moments behind them, police raced to the scene.
The police got word of the theft from a cyclist.
Within minutes, we're watching armed, national police
ascend the stairs of the Louvre.
I think that's when it first really sank into me,
like, "This is a big deal."
But the crown is not the only thing the thieves
have left behind.
If there's one thing the French do well, it's DNA.
French investigators have found 150 samples connected
with this crime.
All that DNA, and you think you're gonna
get away with it?
That's why they're not professionals.
To burn that lift would have been so easy.
I've done it.
Just moments after the alarm goes off, a team of experts
mobilize to find the perpetrators.
They are not going to recover the jewelry without first
arresting the criminals.
The French police are taking this very seriously.
They've got over 100 officers working on
the investigative process. They've contacted Interpol.
The investigation itself in Paris would have been led
by the BRB, which is an elite group of investigators.
They're like bloodhounds.
They go out and they fan out and they can smell out
all of the criminals.
Once they have the DNA, it's just a matter of time
before they pick up the suspects.
I honestly believe that the police knew
within 48 hours, they knew who those people were.
As hours turn to days, investigators work
around the clock to monitor and identify
the suspected perpetrators.
They're gonna follow them, they're gonna monitor them,
and they're gonna know more about their lives
than they know.
And every passing minute means increased risk.
You don't want to let the individual out of the country
because you don't want them coming out of
the area where you have control.
If that was me, my crew and I and the whole jewels would have
been out of that country within 12 hours or less than that.
Six days into the search, surveillance leads
investigators right to the airport.
To put yourself through the scrutiny at an airport is
a amateurish mistake.
Six days and one guy's trying to board a plane?
Call it what it is.
Stupid idiots. Such a shame.
I wish they knew me. Boy...
if I had that jewelry.
40 minutes later,
police move in on a suspect in a Paris suburb.
They didn't live in some, you know, fancy neighborhood.
They were kind of street guys like I was.
Those neighborhoods are often referred to
as troubled suburbs of Paris.
And it seems as if those who have been arrested were
considered petit voyous, small thieves
or small gangsters. - They're not professionals.
They're thieves, and they got big cojones, they have
big balls, but they're not professionals.
They were somewhat amateurish, but they did get away
with the jewels, which was their ultimate goal,
and thus far, they have succeeded.
With the clock ticking,
the two suspects are brought in for questioning.
They're brought in for interrogation,
and they partially confessed.
With the evidence mounting, police close in on
their next suspects.
Four days after the first arrests, police carry out
a series of raids and arrest four more suspects
at a soccer match.
The fact that the suspects were arrested at a match shows
me they felt confident
that they were gonna get away with this crime.
And I think it shows that the suspects simply do not fear
French law enforcement.
So out of the five people that were arrested
in the second go around, two of them have been charged
with criminal conspiracy and theft.
And in fact, they have a relationship together.
You had a team of individuals who knew each other.
It's pure and simple. Stones equal money.
Criminals will steal anything of value with no regard for
its cultural significance or its importance to
the French people or to the world.
You're not there to say, "Oh, let's not rob this one
because this is the crown that, you know, Napoleon's wife."
Well, I can't give a about Napoleon's wife.
You're there for the diamond.
Three out of the four alleged main perpetrators are now
in custody, and one woman suspected of aiding the crime
has been released under judicial supervision.
But if the suspects are telling the truth that they were hired
guns, one key question remains.
The $102 million question--
Where's the mastermind?
Thieves pulled off a heist at one of the most important
museums in the world, but the ringleader behind
the operation could still be at large.
Right now, he or she is feeling pretty confident that
they've gotten away with this crime.
As police hunt relentlessly for the perpetrators,
one suspect in custody is unmasked to the world
by Jean-Michel Decugis.
When you're talking about somebody who likes to flex
and show off on social media, it doesn't surprise me that
they could have the audacity to take on the Louvre.
Whether that was by ego or bravado, it might land them
in a very nice egoistic jail.
Pieces of the puzzle are coming together,
but police still grapple with the ultimate question.
The one criminal they haven't arrested yet could be the one
that holds the jewelry.
Hello? Hello?
Where's the jewels?
The police need to persuade the suspected thieves
to rat out their boss.
The first one in is gonna get the benefit, so that's why
right now probably the police are playing each one against
the other to see who's gonna be the first one to work
with them. - You couldn't have got my boss.
No way in hell.
You gotta prosecute me and let me do my time.
French police can only hold suspects in custody
for 96 hours.
And they're running out of time.
I'm convinced that Parisian authorities will catch
the people responsible for this crime, but will they do it
in time to recover the jewelry? I don't think so.
French authorities know this heist is about more than
the value of the gems.
This was an attack on the soul of the nation.
These are pieces of history. They're very symbolic.
They're cultural threads of France.
200 years after the end of the French monarchy,
the last remaining pieces of its memory have been stolen.
In 1887, the French sold off 77,000 crown jewels,
and Charles Tiffany bought a third of them and sold most
of them to rich American women.
And the Louvre has been trying to buy back the crown jewels
ever since.
The crown jewels are hot property and can't just be sold
on the black market.
I believe they targeted the most valuable jewels
that they were able to sell.
The real art in an art heist, it isn't the stealing,
it's the selling.
And what are you gonna do with it once you have it?
Most people get rid of the jewelry through a fence.
Who knows something is stolen, buys it at a very cut-low
price, and then gets rid of it himself.
They took the bling-bling jewels easier to grab and steal
and maybe sell because a lot of the diamonds were smaller.
Every one of these criminals better think,
"Can you get rid of it?"
Where you gonna sell it? You can't.
No one with a good reputation is going to touch them.
Anyone would raise the alarm.
You could bury them anywhere for 25-30 years.
You could dig them up.
And then go back when the heat's off them a few
months or years later. - You can't do that to money.
Money will get rot.
Investigators race against the clock to prevent
a worst-case scenario.
When it comes to jewelry, breaking the stones up does
two things for a criminal-- it hides the evidence of
their crime, and it allows them to monetize the theft
as quickly as possible.
They'll pop the diamonds out of the settings and sell those
separately, melt down the precious metals into
a smelter and just sell that as gold weight.
But cutting these unique pieces up
requires real criminal underworld expertise.
The most impeccable Ceylon blue sapphires.
There are nearly 3,000 diamonds in that one.
It's not that hard, once you get these jewels out
of France, to go to places like Tel Aviv or Antwerp or even
India, where there are jewelry specialists and people
who recut stones.
If people are skilled and they're good jewelers,
they can remove stones from settings
very easily and quickly.
There's always going to be some dodgy jeweler out there
that isn't gonna ask any questions, unfortunately.
There's another theory--
They kept them,
they're hidden, and they're gonna use them
as a bargaining chip.
If they steal these things, then they don't have
a place to sell them. They hold on to them,
and if they get in trouble,
they can use them as negotiation chips to try to get
their charges dropped.
These jewels would be a good bargaining chip.
But don't forget, they don't want to be caught
with the jewels.
They want to get away with them, and they want to
break them up.
The Louvre heist sends a wave of panic around the world
as investigators ask how the audacious plan was
pulled off. - They came up with a good plan.
How did they think of it? How did it happen?
What were they trying to get away with?
Five days after the heist, under a secret police escort,
the Louvre transports its remaining jewels to
an underground vault.
The central bank of France would be like Fort Knox.
It's like the most secure place in the entire French government.
I think the thieves targeted the Louvre Museum
because they could get in.
This is a great robbery for an opportunist.
You found a weakness, you exploited it.
And when the opportunity presents, there are six things
on the checklist to pull off a heist.
Number one, location.
Within the sprawling Louvre complex, the Apollo Gallery is
on a corner overlooking a busy road.
I was very surprised that you can take a truck like that
and go right up to that window and not have a little distance,
maybe a fence or something you have to go through.
I'm not talking about Spider-Man going up
the side of a building.
A lift went right to that one level, jumped over the thing
and getting in a window. That's a vulnerability.
Number two, access.
The crown jewels are displayed near a window.
Former thief David Desclos discovered this weakness
five years ago when he was invited to the Apollo Gallery.
for a podcast.
Number three, it helps to have insider information
My theory how this could've went down--
One guy has a girlfriend who works there.
Talk about the Louvre, how easy it is.
Oh, there's really no security.
Hey, there was a window with a balcony, and he's talking to
his friends, and now they come up with a plan, say,
"Let's do this." Come on, they're criminals.
When you're a criminal, you're a criminal.
A suspected crew member is rumored to have had
insider knowledge
from working at a nearby museum.
Working in the museum to know how it works,
it's basic, you know, it's basic knowledge.
The guys who did this robbery knew
what the protocols for security were, too.
Number four, the crew.
Once the opportunity is confirmed, they recruit a team
to cover every skill set.
But you're going over with your crew-- your job,
your job, your job. You make them repeat it,
you make them talk back till they're going,
"I know, I know, I got it." No, you don't.
Number five,
the plan.
Once the crew is assembled, they case the joint to
formulate the plan.
To criminals, cultural heritage means nothing.
This only is jewels, gold, diamonds, cash.
They had to go to the Louvre multiple times, at least,
you know, as casing the place.
And you know what's interesting?
They didn't touch the crown of Louis XV.
The thieves must have known the jewels in that crown
are fake.
Number six, the gear.
There's no heist without the right equipment.
You could buy it at Home Depot or Lowe's you know, it's not
like it's a big tool.
Now, all they need is to find a way up to the balcony.
And they thought, "Well, maybe we could sell this to make some money."
And then all of a sudden, they had a bright idea.
This will get us up to that balcony we were looking at
to get into the crown jewels.
And all of a sudden, the light bulb goes off,
and here we go.
With the location, insider information,
access, a crew, gear, and a plan, the greatest heist
in modern times is set in motion.
It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
I mean, not mastermind material, but a brilliant plan.
Planning was good. Execution was terrible.
It was very sloppily done.
So these guys had their plan to get in.
Getting out was a little bit different.
This can't be well organized in the beginning,
and this [bleep] up in the end.
The heist didn't go exactly as planned.
Suspects are in custody, but the jewels,
they're still out there.
If there is a criminal looking at this documentary,
I have a message for him. Give them back.
For the criminals to take on the Louvre, it was a real
slap in the face.
It should be a wake up call to museums everywhere.
If you can get into the Louvre,
they can get into your museum as well.
As far as we can tell, Holly may have been
the last person to see them.
I just think it's incredibly sad, you know, that something
so historic was taken.
It's our property, not my property,
but the property of the nation.
That is something far, far more precious than 88 million euros.
Where's the mastermind? He's gone.
He's got the jewels, and I respect the guy a lot.
I might move to Europe.