Thieves escape by motorboat after royal jewels heist in Sweden | Hacker News Reader

Thieves escape by motorboat after royal jewels heist in Sweden

theguardian.com

120 pointsamarant127 comments

So logically there is a market. This scheme wasn't opportunistic, it was planned and involved some investment. The perpetrators therefore aren't complete morons; they have surely thought about what they'd do after making their getaway. I would like to know something about this market for stolen unique treasures.

Its not hard to imagine some Russian oligarch, Saudi prince, or American billionaire getting off on having these in their private collection.

Once they have 'm they can copy it very well several times and then catapult their profits!

I always assume there's a buyer lined up before these things ever happen.

But then, when they stole The Scream a while back they clearly had no exit strategy, so who knows?

How do they know they got the original back?

Assuming there are copies, "the original" is the one everything believes to be the original. If the one actually created by Munch is a different one, it's not worth a whole lot if people don't generally believe that to be the case.

Nitpick: it is a bit weird to talk of the original or even of the Scream. Munch created four versions, two paintings and two pastels (in addition, about 45 prints of a lithograph were made, a few of which were hand-colored by Munch)

It seems we don’t know for sure which is the oldest. One of the paintings and one of the pastels both are from 1893. It’s natural to assume the pastel was a study for the painting, but we don’t know for sure.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream)

I saw an article on here a few days ago that suggested you could detect isotopes present in "more recent" forgeries that came about as the result of the nuclear testing age that would not be present on the originals.

You can test the pigments in the paint to see if period-correct materials were used. A lot of forgeries use pigments that wouldn't have been invented or otherwise available at the time.

The last time The Scream was stolen, it was meant to create a diversion; Norway had recently had a Heat-style armed robbery in which a police officer was shot dead; The Scream was stolen in an effort to divert resources from the robbery investigation. (IIRC)

Exactly. In 2012 seven priceless paintings (Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet) were stolen from Kunsthal museum, Rotterdam. Speculation about 'the art theft of the century' all over the place..

Appeared they were extreme amateurs that just smashed a window, carried away the paintings in the back of their car to Romania. Didn't know what to do with them, and when one of the robbers was caught, his mother burnt them all in the fireplace.

read: https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/

At least, I guess, these guys here could meld the gold and sell the stones individually on the black market.

Wow, I hope she went to jail too

It appears she did indeed go to jail, but is probably now out.

> Olga Dogaru was convicted of transporting and hiding stolen property (two years).

http://www.criminalelement.com/the-romanian-connection-the-k...

Ya.. that was really hard to read and I'm not even an art fan.

If anyone can find a good book about this (heavy on detail, not just a single anecdotal heist story), I'd love to hear about it. In fact, I'd love even more something super academical and theoretical. Sounds like an interesting change of pace.

I read about a Canadian thief, who was exceptionally good (can't remember his name now). He stole some priceless stuff, and just kept them in his basement. He did it for the thrill (one of the details I remember - he parachuted into a heavily guarded museum). He only got caught because of his arrogance.

Not saying these guys are thrill seekers, but apparently there are people who do it just for "fun" and don't care about selling their loot.

Gerald Blanchard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Blanchard

https://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/

> "On March 22, 2017, Blanchard was arrested in Burlington, Ontario for stealing electronics from a local Best Buy. [5]"

You can't make this stuff up..

2004 break leading to original conviction: "Seeing a dolly and other odd equipment inside, he took down the license plate number. Police ran it. The vehicle had been rented from Avis by one Gerald Daniel Blanchard."

2017 arrest: "[O]fficers used video surveillance footage of the parking lot and traced the suspect’s licence plate to a car rented in Blanchard’s name."

Being a successful, repeat criminal must be so exhausting. Before the 2004 incident the guy already had several fake identities he presumably could have used. I guess there's no end to how much effort you can put into covering your tracks and eventually you just have to roll the dice.

> he parachuted into a heavily guarded museum

Totally made up story uncritically relayed by the interviewing ‘journalist’, mind you.

Authorities found a parachute on the palace grounds hours after the heist. Perhaps subterfuge, but not unbelievable given how he undertook other heists--e.g. installing false ductwork in banks.

Not really. The only planning apparent is "had an escape vehicle", which does not meet the requirements for "not morons".

> In 2013, a crown and sceptre used in the funeral of Sweden’s 16th-century King Johan III were stolen from Västerås, another city on the shore of Lake Mälaren. They turned up a few days later in two large rubbish bags at the side of a highway after a tip-off to police.

Obviously the thieves weren't after them for any mundane value they possessed. <insert story about occult conspiracy theory here> (Back when I ran tabletop RPGs, this is exactly the sort of thing the PCs would have done.)

I toured Castle Edinburgh a couple of days ago, and I had this exact thought when looking at a wand amongst the Scottish Crown Jewels.

Somebody really sucks at their job of protecting Swedish crowns.

Just because that's the only part of their planning that we know of doesn't mean that it's the only planning that they actually did.

Since they successfully absconded with the jewels I'm going to guess they had more of a plan than simply "have an escape vehicle."

Swedish journalist Anders Rydell wrote a book called 'Plundrarna: Hur nazisterna stal Europas konstskatter' a few years ago; with any luck it has been translated into a language you're comfortable with. It deals with how the nazis looted art prior to and during the war, but also devotes a few chapters to what happened after the war - dealing in artworks of dubious provenance, legal issues when heirs to the original owners wanted the looted art back &c.

Perhaps not quite what you had in mind, but most interesting and well researched.

They arent going to sell it. These things have uses to criminals. For example, if ever caught for something else, knowing the location of a missing cultural treasure is a great chip during plea bargaining.

Did not think of this. Big insight...

How did you get to this train of thought if I may ask? :)

It is common knowledge in law enforcement. In Europe, the larger crime families have traditionally kept caches of valuable art. These jewels will be under someone's floorboards, perhaps for generations.

Something similar happened with lower-ranking German officers towards the end of the war. Art, like gold, transcends boarders and language.

I highly doubt this. Not the type of planning typical criminals in Sweden are good at.

Also, there is no plea bargaining in Sweden.

It isnt staying in sweeden.

Maybe there is a market, maybe not. Other possible goals could be also to attack the swedish crown distroying a symbol of their power, to humiliate the police, to seed insecurity and fear in the population and blame foreigners. Maybe the thieves where paid in advance... Is not easy to guess the real motivation currently.

>Other possible goals could be also to attack the swedish crown distroying a symbol of their power, to humiliate the police, to seed insecurity and fear in the population and blame foreigners.

That goes a little too deep into conspiracy theory territory. There are much easier ways for all of those things than making a heist, but even more importantly, more direct ways to send those messages.

To be fair it was well couched with words like “maybe” and “possible... could be...” which are normally well understood as up front markers that the ideas presented are mere speculation. It is a bit out there but it’s an interesting line of inquiry.

How deep into conspiracy theory territory is positing an entire secret market of buyers and sellers of stolen artifacts? Because that seems much deeper than simply stealing jewels to make a political statement.

Not much conspiracy there, as it's well known that such a market exists and that it has enough people who don't care about the source of aquiration. Such heists happen every some years.

If it's known a black market exists, but the participants are not known, then things are ripe for conspiracy theories.

Not if Occam's razor (plus centuries of actual experience with catching fences -"professional" buyers of stolen goods- in such the black markets) simply puts the profit motive as the most possible explanation.

It's as if people never heard of art and jewellery heists before...

Are you saying the buyers and sellers don't cooperate?

Are we expected to believe that high-value buyers wouldn't authenticate the art they buy?

I'm saying that cooperation between buyers and sellers is something that goes on since time immemorial not some big conspiracy with unknown motivations...

>How deep into conspiracy theory territory is positing an entire secret market of buyers and sellers of stolen artifacts?

Well, we do know (1) that fences' [1] are a thing and have existed since time immemorial, (2) all kinds of stolen jewlery and art pieces found buyers all the time, and (3) the majority of heists and burglaries (as opposed to symbolic or terrorist acts) are simply motivated by the money. Very few thieves ever proceeded to made some political statement (e.g. the Bonnot gang).

If it's intended as a "political statement", then they chose a very roundabout and ineffective way to go about it, not to mention one that could land them in jail. They could just as well storm the palace or the place where the goods were kept and put out some banners or make some (non felonious) noise without stealing anything (much less covertly). The "happening" statement in such cases has been done lots of times (has happened in the Luvre, in Notre Dam, in various palaces, in Italian museums, in official conferences, etc. Pussy Riot are a good late example).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_(criminal)

> Very few thieves ever proceeded to made some political statement (e.g. the Bonnot gang).

How do you view acts such as statue toppling/removal/theft[0][1][2]?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firdos_Square_statue_destructi...

[1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/8-now-charged-in-toppling-of-du...

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/controversial-statu...

That's not theft.

For things like this and high end art it's normally stolen to order.

>The perpetrators therefore aren't complete morons; they have surely thought about what they'd do after making their getaway.

Why would they be "complete morons"? They successfully completed a quite difficult heist.

Even if they don't have a buyer lined up, this takes a lot of skill and smarts.

It was hardly a quite difficult heist. As an example of such check the helicopter robbery in Västberga in 2009 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stberga_helicopter_ro...).

This was a smash and grab of a church with some thought used for finding a quiet spot for the smashing part and to make a faster escape with bicycles.

It was admittedly clever to have a boat ready, since it's easy to vanish to Mälaren, make a landfall, dump the boat and switch to a getaway car.

Svenska kyrkan really needs to do a risk assessment and take this seriously, since it is not the first time and won't be the last either and relying on the good will of people is not a strategy for preventing theft of historical artefacts.

The simplest plan now is to wait a week, then send an anonymous email to every newspaper in the country with a picture of the items over the day's newspaper and say "X bitcoins to this address for this item, Y bitcoins for this one". Reasonable prices, mind you. Aim for a year or two's salary for each thief maybe.

The police and government would know that the investigation will cost more than that amount. They'll look stupid to pay the money, but they'll not even bother trying to recover even one of them.

Don't you know? Once you've paid the danegeld, you'll never get rid of the dane.

Yeah, the insurance companies that "mysteriously" find the missing jewelry for cheaper than the insured price.

This reminds me of the opening scene of The Italian Job (one of my favorite movies), when they drop the safe through the floor into a Venice canal, where they crack it under-water while a decoy motorboat above-water leads police on a wild goose chase.

I know it's an oldish movie, but that's really an unnecessary spoiler.

the opening scene

I won't complain about it being a spoiler since the sentence begins by saying that it's from a movie so anybody could stop reading before reaching the description, but it is a spoiler, it's a twist that happens that is spoiled by knowing what happens.

Yes, it spoils the opening scene. It's a deliberate twist that isn't revealed until several minutes in.

Anyways, it doesn't matter and my comment didn't contribute to good HN discussion. Apologies to all.

You should look out for the original Italian Job as well (if you haven't seen it). The mini driving is great (when the mini was in its heydey, winning rallies, left foot braking...)

George Clooney doesn't exactly phone it in, but we've seen this Act 1 before, and the plot eventually, and mercifully, ends on an unlikely emotional beat that neither satisfies nor offends his uncritical fans. 4/10.

There was a similar heist of Renoir and Rembrandt paintings from Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, where the thieves fled by boat too. Eventually they were found because they bought the boat the day before and the seller could lead the police to the suspects!

I hope they get away with it. Knowing that the royal jewels were successfully stolen is more interesting than looking at them behind some glass for 15 seconds.

This mentality does not scale

Unrelated, but I think that this short phrase is a very good summary of Kantian ethics :)

That seems... short-sighted.

There's a huge amount of 'interesting' things one can do which are illegal, immoral, depraved and worse. (I'd argue that stealing is generally at the very least illegal and immoral, but opinion may vary depending on who the 'injured' party is.)

So instead hidden away in some private stash, where no one will ever see them.

Agreed. Its interesting and hilarious.

Is "interesting" your #1 measure for the value of an action? That seems problematic. 9/11 was interesting as hell--we're still talking about it and retelling the stories.

Did you just equate the theft of "royal" property with 9/11?

I was exaggerating to make a point, obviously. I'm saying there are some clear problems with the idea that crime is OK as long as it's entertaining enough.

Except that's not what they said, there's plenty of context in both their statement and this entire thread you're willfully ignoring to make that leap.

Which context is that? Dokem thinks that getting to read about a heist is more "interesting" than having historical objects available for public viewing. The only other person who agrees with him offers no reason except that it's "hilarious."

Do you think the historical value doesn't count because it was on public display at a church instead of a museum? Or because it was on loan from a private (royal) collection? Or just that it's okay to rob historical displays as long as it entertains you? I don't understand your argument.

I don't understand yours. You're turning Dokem's specific comment about a museum heist into some kind of general attitude towards all crime being ok provided it's interesting.

The article clearly states nobody was hurt in the heist, there's no violence in this particular situation whatsoever and you're pulling in terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers.

Did you miss that Dokem's comment started "I hope they get away with it", or are you endorsing that part too?

I haven't endorsed anything, you're being ridiculous.

Yes. I WOULD say that a crazy heist is more "interesting" than having them on public display.

And yes, it IS "hilarious".

Our modern entertainment is filled will movies, ect about crazy heists.

Crazy crimes can also be funny an entertaining. And nobody's feelings are being hurt because people think it is interesting.

Okay, so you're actually doubling down on "robbery is awesome as long as it entertains me, like the movies."

Sounds like we understand each other, then!

Please don't take HN threads into pointless flamewars, like the below, regardless of how wrong some other comment is.

So cultural artifacts have no place in society then? Because they will only be looked at for 15 seconds?

The perpetrators of Tuesday’s heist risk up to six years in prison for aggravated theft.

Nobody hurt. No weapons seen. One witness describing a white motor boat -- which narrows it down dramatically.

I guess all you can do is wait for a mistake of some kind.

They will be sold to a rich "private collector" who will keep them for a few generations then they'll be returned. The "private collector" will likely not have any issues with their moral turpitude.

Returned or sold back ?

Melted down and sold

If the goal is to convert these artifacts to liquid wealth, the smash-and-grab and getaway are probably the easiest parts.

It's easy enough to melt them down to revive some value. It's only hard to sell them for their historic vs material value.

So, hopefully they already have a buyer lined up.

I hope. Some valuable historical artifacts have been sadly melted, like the original Jules Rimet trophy.

Or destroyed. The Iraq national museum comes to mind.

"Hey guys, Cody here, today we're going to extract some gold from these royal jewels."

If they melt it, I demand the process to be uploaded on youtube to satisfy my curiosity.

Hum... I'm wondering if the police could trace a motorboat path, at least partially, studying the dislodged sediment, If you scan the bottom and find a fresh groove you could try to build a vector at least. If the trace is missing in some shallower canals, maybe they could refine the search.

Uh, lake Mälaren is 440 sq mi and up to 200 ft deep.

It's one of the largest lakes in Europe. 5th if ignoring Russia. They get so much news anyway.

Unrelated, but eye witness here has a really interesting YT channel covering European history, it's worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasRowsell

What’s amazing to me is that the thieves face up to six years in prison for this. I feel like in the US it would be 30 years! Note that I don’t actually know, six years just struck me as short.

Stealing the crown jewels probably counts as lese majeste. That used to be a death penalty offense.

It's not the crown jewels. It's a set of "royal jewels" that were crown jewels for a past king. They're not the crown jewels that are in use by the current royal family.

> I feel like in the US it would be 30 years!

Assuming the SWAT team does not accidentally shoot them down.

The general idea in Sweden used to be that en criminals should become rehabilitated, rather than punished.

The crime rate is much lower than US, but I doubt it's related to the relatively lenient sentences. Right now it seems to attract burglars from our eastern neighbours more than anything else, since they risk 3-4 month in jail compared to up to 10 years...

I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons - probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that you either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either die or get old.

Because of that, I would personally like to see much harsher punishments for crimes that involves physical violence (or threats thereof) and especially repeated offences - which is more or less not considered at all in Sweden, just to get rid of the criminals from the streets for longer periods, and also stop the recruiting into the growing number of criminal gangs.

> I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons - probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that you either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either die or get old.

Re-offending rates in Sweden have consistently been among the lowest in Europe by a huge margin. As of 2014 it was around the 40% mark, which is exceptionally low.

I'm far from an expert but the first google hit seems to indicate that the re-offending rate is higher in Sweden than in US, and on par with the rest of EU, except the other Nordic countries that have half the rate.

The paper looks legit. The numbers are not directly comparable, so they are probably just indicative. You might be an expert, so please correct me if that's the case.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/

Except for Singapore, the countries at the top have a strong welfare state. Singapore might have a strong judicial system (and good education) instead. The countries are also all quite small.

Here are the reported 2-year reconviction rates.

  Norway        20%
  Iceland       27%
  Singapore     27%
  Denmark       29%
  Finland       36%
  US            36%
  Canada        41%
  Sweden        43%
  Scotland(1yr) 46%
  N.Ireland     47%
  Germany       48%
  Netherlands   48%
  Ireland       51%
  France        59%
  England/Wales 59%

Why Sweden comes out exceptionally bad compared to it closest neighbors is unfortunately not studied, and the authors are intrigued by this fact.

I'm not though; If there is an actual difference, I would guess it's related to difference in crime rate in general, which is basically caused by the much higher immigration.

I want to know under whose responsibility they were when this happened. Because it should not be as easy as just smashing some glass to get to them, this feels like negligence.

Like when one's watching the eponymous genre of movies, I always want people that made some (non violent) heist to make it uncaught.

Doubly so if they stole from royalty...

They didn't steal from royalty, they stole from a church that had them displayed.

Bold but stupid. They have no way to sell these objects. Unless it was made-to-order, the thieves are out of luck with monetization.

While the objects will likely be found, the saddest thing is that they will also likely be damaged when handled by a bunch of careless people. The objects are several hundreds of years old and are not made to be handled roughly. For example the Västerås objects were apparently dumped from a car and this left its marks. I'm hoping these will be returned.

I also hope the Svenska kyrkan starts to take better pre-emptive care of storing these culturally important objects.

Why sell when you could just return them for a 'finders fee'? Send a demand into the authorities(with proof of possession of the artefacts) for $Xm in some crypto currency with good anonymity like monero or zcash. Once you receive the transaction, go leave the artefacts in the woods some where and then give the authorities the GPS coordinates.

>go leave the artefacts in the woods some where and then give the authorities the GPS coordinates.

Or don't. Who's going to stop you after you get the money? You still have the jewels you can still sell them, or put them in your own private collection.

That's why police don't usually comply with criminal demands for ransom; criminals don't obey the law in the first place, why would they be expected to hold up their end of a deal?

Or sell bit-by-bit. With 50% before and 50% after the good are "delivered". Thereby building some level of trust and allowing the buyer not to take too much risk at once.

If there really isn't a market, then keeping them could only bring trouble if you're ever found with them. Maybe you really do care about the cultural value of them, but also want to get rich in the meanwhile.

You clearly have a new innovative business model for crypto!

Which blockchain would you use for the proof of possession?

A simple photo of the items, and maybe a proof of recency(newspaper) should be sufficient.

> The objects are several hundreds of years old and are not made to be handled roughly.

They're jewels, as in pieces of rock. What's the worst that could happen to them?

The “crown jewels” stolen are actually jewelry, not simple jewels. They include two crowns and a royal orb; they are intricately worked and include soft metals (and, of course, settings with stones). Rough handling can damage the decorative the working, break the metal parts, knock jewels out if their settings, etc.

Damaging the jewels proper is not the main concern.

Imagine being that small town jeweler that these are brought in to for repairs.

The stolen objects could be bent, pierced, scratched, etc. or pieces (like the jewels) broken off. It is not a bunch of diamonds or such.

Even in bad shape they are still valuable, intrinsicly.

Of course, but these are historical artefacts (the crown jewels are kept in Stockholm) and their cultural value is way higher than the monetary value, and part of this value is that they are well preserved and have a traceable history.

So if the stolen objects are damaged it is just sad. Like someone snapping a finger off an old statue, or ripping pages off an old and culturally valuable book.

Why does that guy with perfect English have subtitles?

There's a curious habit in US media to put subtitles on anyone with an accent.

I would like to think it's to make video easier to watch without sound, or for the deaf, but I don't think that's the reason.

It's for people like my parents who have a difficult time with some accents. It's just easier to subtitle it if there's any risk of it being unclear.

>There's a curious habit in US media to put subtitles on anyone with an accent.

Which is ironic because there are plenty of Americans with undecipherable accents!

This is not US media.

So that the video is accessible to people who are hard of hearing?

For the hard of hearing, non-native speakers who are used to subtitles from non-dubbed movies, etc. etc. I suppose.

I do know that, as a non-native English speaker, I've always appreciated having English subtitles for English-speaking films. It helps immensely if you miss a word, there's a little too much mumbling, or whatever. One of the best (in both ways) examples being the movie Snatch.

closed caption

ha like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN666q3ptAU

Subtitles is good so that you can speed up the video beyond the point where you can no longer hear what someone is saying. You can also watch without sound.

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