The damage is colossal for a simple fric-frac in a store. A million euros worth of jewelry was stolen on Sunday morning during the burglary of a jewelry store in Chesnay (Yvelines). Around 1:25 p.m., the police received a call from security at the Parly 2 shopping center reporting that the shop had been robbed. It was a passerby who discovered the theft a few minutes earlier. The police go to the scene and find that the iron curtain of the Marc Orian sign has been cut with a grinder and that the premises have been completely searched.
The scene was captured by commercial area CCTV cameras. “We see two hooded and gloved men arriving shortly after 6 a.m. in a white Renault Master van,” explains a source close to the case. The criminals cut through the iron curtain before taking 12,000 pieces of jewelry for a loss of around one million euros. The operation lasted nearly thirty minutes.
The police are following all leads
The investigators of the police station carried out the first findings before the prosecution seized their colleagues from the regional direction of the judicial police of Versailles. The police will try to find fingerprints at the scene of the theft. They will also try to reconstruct the route of the burglars’ vehicle and activate their contacts to try to identify a receiver. But they have little chance of finding the loot. The gold is often melted down and the beautiful pieces are bought in Antwerp (Belgium) and in Dubai where the jewelers are very careless.
In Île-de-France, organized groups of burglars particularly target businesses. Tobacconists, opticians and jewelers are their preferred targets. Jewelers are sensitive businesses because they remain the only ones that keep high-value items. Most protect themselves by putting them in a safe when closing. They are all equipped with an alarm system. At Chesnay, the device was triggered on the phone of the manager but the latter did not give the alert.