Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief (April 2010) | Hacker News Reader

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief (April 2010)

wired.com

95 pointsCaptainZapp22 comments

I have a hard time believing this. Do you know how loud it is crawling through an AC vent? How loud a parachute landing on a roof is? How likely the fake from the store weighs the same as the real? Maybe he did steal what he claims to have stolen, but I'm finding it difficult to believe he did it the way he did.

To their credit, they never said the place with an AC vent was heavily monitored. And the parachute on the roof was at a Vianese Castle (a rather hefty palace of a castle at that). Also, the fake probably didn't weigh exactly the same, but I doubt that the spring mechanism was designed to measure relatively minor fluctuations in weight. More like the absence of weight.

However, I tend to agree with you. The details (especially the "wow!" ones) are highly suspect.

According to police and the courts, he absolutely stole what the article says he did. The souvenir shop replica story has also been repeated by police and has never been disputed by the jewel's owners as far as I can tell. (I remember the police statements from the time of his initial arrest - I don't have time to hunt for them now but if you really want to you would probably have some luck at cbc.ca.)

Thanks, I'll try to hunt those down. The police statements would be far more convincing for me.

I wish the writer had had even a modicum of scepticism while penning this guy's story...

EDIT: Oh wait, I already said that when this article was posted 9 months ago.

What is there to be skeptic about? Do you mean that you think the author is glorifying Blanchard's escapades (which are pretty impressive by most standards) or that some aspect of the story isn't true? I share a hometown with the guy - his story fascinates me.

Much like a Ben Mezerich book, many aspects of it do sound a little too perfectly movie-like to be true. The hot female accomplice. The mysterious phone calls to bring him to Cairo. The dogged policemen pursuing him relentlessly despite skepticism from their superiors. And ahem the heist which involves skydiving onto the roof of a castle in order to move slowly past the motion detectors to steal a diamond.

The most fantastical aspects of the story seem to be coming from (the imagination of) the interviewed thief/con man, without further corroboration. The author seems quite pleased to have a movie scenario thrown in his lap, and doesn't place any question marks. Most other articles on the net relating to this person seem to take this article as their source.

It's been a long time since I read this story, but there is a lot in there which has the feeling of being a tall tale. Like parachuting onto a roof in the dead of night, when he may just as well have bought a ticket and hidden behind a curtain somewhere in those 1000 rooms.

Yeah, I was also quite skeptical of that part - he was somehow able to track down a parachute, a perfect replica of the jewels, and an outlaw pilot all in the space of 24 hours? All this when he was on vacation in a foreign country with his girlfriend and her family?

Parachutes are pretty easy to come by if you know any skydivers.

The replica didn't need to be perfect, just look similar. They don't take jewels out of their box every day to take a close look at hem unless they need to. He got that from the gift store.

You could find a pilot willing to drop you at night at the same place you find a parachute. Skydivers & and their friends are weird thrillseekers. They would do a night drop for someone because they thought it was cool. Blanchart didn't have to tell them the truth as to why he wanted dropping.

As for the vacation... that seemed to come first, and the robbery on a whim. He didn't go there planning to steal the star.

Alright, I see what you mean. Some strong exaggerations with unsupported claims. The author could have done more to distance himself from Blanchard's unsubstantiated claims, but he does not lie about them - merely presents a story from the criminal's point of view. And even if you subtract the skydiving and the hot mysterious accomplice it is still an extremely interesting story.

Please note that while high in retail value, diamonds are a marketing creation. A large diamond really can't be sold due to its notoriety, while a mid-sized or smaller would net pennies on the dollar (compared to purchase prices).

Considering artificial diamonds can already be made of a better quality and cheaper, diamonds are going to be reserved as a high-fashion rather than a consumer item. In other words, your grandma's wedding-ring diamond may be worth actual pennies if you ever want to sell it.

I wouldn't say pennies on the dollar - I've never seen a used diamond on Craigslist for even $50 - but the sentiment is of course true.

Eighty-five pennies on the dollar is still pennies on the dollar.

But you can break a large diamond into one or more smaller diamonds. It's very likely that the Hope Diamond was originally part of a truly enormous diamond stolen in France and pared down.

That particular diamond wasn't valuable because of it's (theoretical) retail value, but because of it's historical value to the austrian people. Which makes the heist even more unsympathetic: the thing he stole had some value to the people he stole it from, but no value to himself. He could easily have dropped it somewhere undetected, but he just didn't care enough to do it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215138

I was hoping this post was about the Barnes Collection documentary movie with the same title http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326733/

Every wo/man should master something. You must be the best (or least one of the best) at something. These types of thieves are great at what they do.

I have seen several episodes of "Master Mind" where detectives/judges would describe professional thieves with admiration.

As reported by the CBC in 2007 http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/11/07/blanchard...

If you liked this, you may also enjoy the professional exploits of "The Silver Thief"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1020547

he clearly had a hacker's mindset, in the original sense of the word.

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