Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The alarm was reportedly triggered, but the security company allegedly failed to intervene.
A gang of masked thieves forced their way into the Lalique Museum in Wingen-sur-Moder early Sunday morning, several outlets report.
According to AFP, the burglars targeted the jewelry room at around 5:30 a.m., and once inside, they smashed six display cases.
They quickly snatched roughly 20 pieces of high-end jewelry, and investigators told AFP that the total losses could reach nearly four million euros.
Interestingly, the stolen items consisted of crystal instead of precious gems. This means the pieces cannot be melted down.
Because of this, they will be incredibly hard to sell quietly on the black market.
The thieves vanished before anyone could stop them. Ultimately, it was a cleaning lady arriving for work at 6 a.m. who discovered the wreckage and alerted the local gendarmerie.
Security breakdown
The local mayor expressed deep anger over how the situation was handled. Christian Dorschner told the local newspaper Les Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace (DNA) that the museum alarms functioned exactly as they were supposed to.
However, the external private security firm allegedly failed to act quickly.
“All the alarms went off, just as they should. And then with the security company, apparently, there was a major failure on their part: they didn’t intervene right away, they didn’t inform the gendarmes,” Dorschner told the paper.
The mayor suspects the raid was a highly professional operation. “They were surely well-informed to carry out this job in that way; they must be … specialists,” the mayor also told DNA.
This facility had recently been designated a sensitive site after a stunning heist at the Louvre in Paris last October, where thieves stole over 80 million euros worth of jewelry in under eight minutes.
Currently, the Bas-Rhin gendarmerie group is reviewing surveillance footage to track down the masked crew while the museum remains temporarily closed.
