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Comment by leipert | Hacker News Reader

Crazy how simple and efficient these heists are in their execution. All the heist movies are way too complex and clever. It‘s just smash and run.

Compare also this robbery from 2019 in Dresden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Green_Vault_burglary

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Even if it was relatively simple and security was lax you have to question why they targeted the Louvre.

You can’t fence these items because of how high-profile they are. You can melt them down and sell the gold, but you’d destroy a lot of the value by doing that. Because it’s such a high-profile target you know a lot of resources will be allocated to track you down. You’d think that there be much safer targets to rob that wouldn’t draw as much attention and would provide similar returns.

1) It’s always possible a rich person hired them ahead of time to steal specific items (that’s why you sometimes see way more “expensive” in theory items that are completely ignored in these heists — without a buyer ahead of time they’re worthless) Though in this particular case I think it was a crime of opportunity, but idk

2) You could potentially sell it to someone overseas who doesn’t care. There are rumors of a Gardner Heist (Boston) painting hung up on MBS’ yacht

Usually these items are used as bargaining chips by organized crime. The state agrees to drop the multiple homicides and RICO charges (or whatever the French equivalent of that is), they return the Crown Jewels.

Citation needed: "usually".

Generally speaking: The simpler something appears on the surface, the more work it requires behind the scenes. Think of designing 'simple' software, from the user perspective.

I disagree. Many times things that appear simple are really just simple.

They are indeed simple, they are not necessary easy.

How do you break the window glass, how do you get into the display cases, how and when do you do it so that you're not stopped by the security, how do you carry the items away, how do you get away from the crime scene without being caught... And I'm sure I am forgetting other details. So I can see how it would take some work to make everything look so simple.

Yeah, I’m not saying this robbery was simple at all. Just disagreeing with it being a general rule that things that appear simple are usually hard.

They were also movie-level clever, in that they set exact the right power junction on fire, got in at the exact right time, at exact the right place. Then they also set their own car on fire. I don't think it was too different, than what you would see in a movie.

They apparently used an angle grinder to open one of the glass boxes that the items were on display in. So not exactly smash and run...

Swedish has a word for heists where the thieves go in through the ceiling, it's called a "rififikupp", named after the french novel "Du rififi chez les hommes". The latest one became a Netflix mini series (The Helicopter Heist), the most famous one before that was at the modern museum where some Picassos where stolen.

If they would be efficient, they would not have been caught.

(But maybe they were caught because they were careless afterwards? Selling stolen art is not risk free either)

They weren’t caught. (Yet.)

I meant the Dresden Heist thieves and they were caught.

Only the henchmen.

The Hatton Garden heist was fairly elaborate.

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