The brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was carried out by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organised crime, the Paris prosecutor has said, describing two of the suspects as a couple with children.
The assertion comes two weeks after thieves parked a stolen truck outside the world’s most-visited museum, used a furniture lift to reach the first floor, then smashed their way into one of the museum’s most ornate rooms. Less than seven minutes later, they escaped on scooters with crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m).
This is pretty much always the case with high profile heists like this. Organized criminals are usually smart enough to realize that selling incredibly famous stolen objects is basically impossible, and the people who steal them are too stupid to realize that.
I mean there is an entire black market of stolen paintings in private collections, so clearly not impossible.
So if this wasn’t organized crime, how they hell did they think they would fence priceless treasures?! Maybe they were cold-blooded enough to chop it all up into bits, get what they could, but FFS, no fence would touch that shit for years, if not a decade+.
You would have to have billionaire buyers lined up, kinda people who have the money to stash such goods in a private collection, and I doubt even the wealthiest would risk it. Who could they show it to?! I wouldn’t let my own wife know I had such a thing under our roof.
To paraphrase: If you’re going to steal the king’s shit, you better not fail selling it.
Who could they show it to?!
Their rich amoral friends on their private islands that don’t have law enforcement. But how random poor’s would ever get in touch with a billionaire to sell the jewels I don’t know.
Melt it down for raw value, I assume.
You can melt down jewels now?
A jeweler who won’t ask questions will cut them into smaller stones. Nobody’s checking their origins.
Yeah but it’s devastating to resale value. A gem twice the size can be worth orders of magnitude more than the other. Talking about reducing something worth probably a third or half billion dollars to maybe a few million in scrap value.
“Bro toss some more diamonds and emeralds in the crucible”
If they’re petty criminals, what does that say about Louvre security?
The Louvre employees raised warnings for years about the lack of funds leading to poor security for the employees, the visitors and the collections. https://globalnation.inquirer.net/295647/louvre-heist-lays-bare-museum-security-complaints
Yeah, exactly. This article seems to be trying to insult the criminals, but it just makes the Louvre look even worse.
That’s what I thought at first but the headline leaves out “from the world of organized crime.”
It sounds like they are making the distinction between organized crime and thieves operating on their own aka “petty criminals.” The word “petty” has many pejorative connotations but it can also just mean small in scale or scope, and that appears to be the meaning here.
You’re over analyzing this. They’re very likely was a “original headline“ written by the author of the article, then some copywriter or copy editor gotten involved, whose job is to increase clicks and engagement, and so the headline got walked into something more salacious.
You just added more analysis :D
I’m just pointing out the words actually used in the article and what they mean. I’m sure you’re right about how it got this way.
They were petty officers.
Petit officers
Is there a term for when a pun just winds up being etymology?
Maybe if they weren’t so petty they would have done their jobs ;)
I think it’s petty to call them petty criminals when they stole from the Louvre! No honor among journalists. At the bare minimum, you gotta give them cred for showing initiative and go outside their comfort zone. In any workplace these guys would be promotion material. They’re branching out, aiming higher.
Respect the ambition.
edit: would love to sit in on their meetings
Turns out hard work CAN get you recognized
The world has been BEGGING for a new class of criminal.
Maybe they were petty criminals… Seems like they got organized now haha
Imagine the street cred!
if this was their first job, then boy I can’t wait to see where their new art thief careers take them
So the Louvre is staffed exclusively by clowns.
What’s really odd is that France already pays Gendarmerie to stand around in public places, protect cultural assets etc.
If even one dude was standing in the corner of the gallery with a rifle slung up that day, that would likely have deterred the entire theft.
Museum protocol during active robbery is to escort visitors to the nearest exit first and only after take care of the criminals
Sure, but in my view a bunch of dudes standing around with rifles is enough of a visual deterrent that it should never escalate to the point of “active robbery”.
We need more guards with MP5s?
They’re French so I would think P90s instead of MP5s.
Famas, last time I was there
We need more French?
