French police find jewels worth £15.4m ($25m) in Paris sewer

[Turborama]

Source: AP Via The Guardian

Wednesday March 09 2011 07.39 GMT

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The items were stolen during a 2008 heist from luxury jeweller Harry Winston's boutique in the capital.

Nineteen rings and three sets of earrings, including one pair valued at £14m, were dug up from a drain at a house in the working-class suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, according to police. The house belonged to one of the nine people charged over the robbery. The jewels were hidden in a plastic container set in a cement mould inside the sewer.

The robbery netted the thieves, some of whom were dressed as women, bejewelled watches worth about £61m.

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A guard at the Harry Winston boutique put police on the trail of the suspects. When investigators learned that an Israeli man was arriving in Paris to buy some of the stolen jewels, police moved in to make the arrests.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/french-police-jewels-paris-sewer

[Turborama]

1. Here's the original story of the robbery: Gunmen in drag steal £70m jewellery from Paris boutique

Armed gang escapes with rings, necklaces and watches in what is thought to be France's biggest jewellery heist

Peter Walker and agencies, guardian.co.uk | Friday December 05 2008 12.53 GMT

Armed raiders dressed in drag have stolen jewellery worth almost £70m from a Paris boutique, in what is believed to be France's biggest such robbery.

The four thieves, two of them disguised in women's clothes, swooped on the Harry Winston store on the Avenue Montaigne, near the Champs-Elysées, yesterday afternoon at about 5.30pm (4.30pm GMT), police said.

They threatened staff and customers with guns and herded them into a corner of the boutique before taking rings, necklaces and watches worth an estimated €80m (£69m) from display cases.

Police officials, quoted anonymously by the AFP news agency, said the robbers appeared to have been well briefed, knowing the names of staff in the store and the whereabouts of hidden storage cases. This suggested they had inside information, the officials said.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/05/paris-jewellery-heist?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

[alp227]

2. Gems From 2008 Paris Theft Found in Drainpipe

Source: The New York Times

PARIS — More than two years after men dressed in wigs and scarves struck the Harry Winston jewelry store in Paris’s golden triangle of upscale shops, the police this week discovered a cache of sparkling diamonds from the theft in a far less glamorous place: a drainpipe in the northern suburbs of the city.

They found one diamond ring the size of a child’s marble, along with 18 other rings and 3 earrings, in a plastic container inside a concrete mold at the home of the man suspected as the mastermind in Seine-Saint-Denis.

The police were saying little about Monday’s discovery of jewelry valued at $20.6 million other than dryly describing the inventory. “We are saying nothing, nothing,” a police spokeswoman said Tuesday. “The judge is not happy that the information came out.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/europe/10iht-paris10.html

[JCMach1]

3. Didn't I see this movie already... ???

[Thor_MN]

4. Zhey where found in a peep?

Does your dog bite?