Thieves have broken into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth $700,000 in the latest of a worrying series of robberies from cultural institutions, according to the museum.
Famed for its dinosaur skeletons and stuffed animals, the National Natural History Museum in the chic 5th district of the French capital also houses a geology and mineralogy gallery.
A break-in was detected on Tuesday morning, with the intruders reportedly using an angle grinder and a blow torch to force their way into the river-side complex that is popular with Parisians and tourists.
This happens right as the Museum is going through a crisis following a cyber-attack this summer… They are still recovering from this in terms of IT. I’m not sure how related it is, but it could be that their security got impacted, and the thiefs knew it.
Lupin ?
The fucked up part is that any historical or scientific value of the artifacts is going to be melted away so the thieves can sell the gold.
I wouldn’t bet on that. These objects are worth more in the current form to the right buyers. The wealthy love hoarding these trinkets in private collections.
There is some hope for that indeed, fingers crossed
Heists like this are often commissioned jobs. It would be easier to rob a shop. This is organised crime, regardless.
Or they are crimes of opportunity. Museum security is probably not what we see in movies, and smaller museums might leave the wrong person holding the right key at the right time.
But the fact that there have been similar robberies would support your theory.
Anyone got an eye on Hobby Lobby over this? Stealing precious artifacts from museums has been their MO in the past.
They got past the giant rolling boulder.
I’d look at the chair seats in the plowed over Rose garden at the Whitehouse.
