Some Guy Stole a Record Amount of Jewels from the 'To Catch A Thief' Hotel

There’s a lot to recommend the jewel heist.

The victims are usually rich and insured. A good heist can be done without any injuries. To pull one off usually requires a team working with expertise and precision. More than anything though, jewel heists are so damn cinematic. Just like in movies, real-life jewel thieves have suave accents, cool code names like the “King of Keys,” and work in ritzy locales. Yesterday, though, life took imitating art to a whole new level.

A lone gunman robbed the jewelry store in the Carton Hotel in Cannes, France, where Alfred Hitchcock shot the 1955 film To Catch a Thief, a movie where Cary Grant plays the retired jewel burglar called “The Cat” and he has to track down another thief who has stolen Gracy Kelly’s character’s jewelry.

Around noon Sunday, the lone man in a cap and gloves, with his face hidden with a scarf, broke in through French doors and held up a diamond show, before escaping on foot into the crowds. In just the minute-long, violence-free robbery, he managed to make off with an estimated $136 million worth of loot.

“The raid took place in broad daylight at a time when hundreds of tourists were enjoying the sunshine.” a police officer told the newspaper Nice Matin. “It could not have been more daring.”

Initial estimates said the haul was around $53 million worth of jewels and watches, but upon reassessment—of the lost assets, although maybe also the insurance policy—the show’s organizer, Leviev Diamond raised the amount. This makes it the largest jewel heist in French history, passing the December 2008 robbery of Harry Winston’s jewelry store in Paris, perpetrated by men disguised as women in long, blonde wigs who took $107 million worth.

To add to the intrigue, the Cannes heist took place just one day after a member of the famed Pink Panthers jewel-heisting gang escaped from prison in Switzerland. Interpol estimates that the Pink Panther gang is responsible for stealing more than $436 million worth of jewels across the world since 1999. The gang is also more than proficient at breaking its members out of prison. In May of this year, two other members of the gang escaped from yet another Swiss prison.

The police haven’t linked the latest jewel heist in Cannes to any gangs, but Jonathan Sazonoff, U.S. editor for the Museum Security Network website, told the AP that it wouldn’t be a surprise. “"The theft of high value diamonds is exactly what they do, so it's not a great leap to assume they are on the warpath again,” Sazonoff said, adding tantalizingly, “They are a crime wave waiting to happen."

In addition to the Hitchcock film, the Cannes Carlton has been the site of other famous jewel heists. In 1994, three machine gun-wielding men burst into the Carlton’s jewelry store, spraying machine gun fire, and made off with $60 million worth of jewels. It’s far from an elegant heist, but I find the criminal allure is somewhat restored by the knowledge that the police couldn’t find any bullet holes from the robbery—they burst in firing blanks, and have never been caught.

We live in something of a golden age of jewel heists—in February $50 million worth of gems was filched from a waiting airplane on the tarmac at the Brussels Airport by an expert organization that didn’t need to fire a shot. This latest heist, as part of or in addition to, the reemergence of the Pink Panther gang, means that armchair heist fans will have a lot to look forward to.

To wit: the jewel thief from the Carlton is still at large.