The value rarely is in the jewelry, but rather in the jewels themselves. So, if you had stolen, for example, a gold ring with a big diamond, you’d take out the diamond and either sell it as-is, or chop it into smaller diamonds and sell them, and probably have the gold smelted back into raw material again.
How do people get rid of or sell stolen jewelry? I ask cause the news says the the Louve thieves can never sell it because it so known?
Submitted 1 day ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 hour ago
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Melted down and gems re cut.
It’s a bad deal for everyone.
Aeao@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
That’s what I’m afraid of. Because you can’t exactly wear that around town if you’re the buyer.
gigachad@piefed.social 19 hours ago
I can imagine there are some people who love to dress like a king with jewelry and stuff in their private rooms
AmericanEconomicThinkTank@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
For normally stolen pieces, melted down and the gems refit.
This? Probably sitting in some 1%'ers private collection so they can play dress-up.
AnitaAmandaHuginskis@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
You could steal much easier and less risky from lesser known places. If you wanted to steal gold and gems to melt down and reassemble why create so much public and international attention?
My bet is on a private purchaser that specifically wanted these items for his collection.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There was another heist earlier this year where some gold artifacts were stolen and then sold to jewelery makers who melted them down.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
Either that, or it also goes through a chop shop and they’ll sell the individual materials for much less than it would be worth
Likely though, I imagine this was a custom order job for some 0.1% asshole
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Small ones go to pawn shops.
Large ones like the french heist will likely have been paid by someone to get it.
Mac@mander.xyz 19 hours ago
Billionaires operate outside of the same society we do. Those kinds of awful people would appreciate such items regardless of legality.
Need i remind you of the global human trafficking and underage sex ring they ALL participated in?
nocturne@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
The news says a lot of shit, that does not make it true.
Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
Its almost certain that a heist like this had a buyer. You dont steal something like this with no way of getting rid of it.
bluGill@fedia.io 1 day ago
There are lots of options. Honest jeweler buyers (likely including your local jewelry store and pawn shows - which might be dishonest in other ways but not that) are notified by the local police when jewelry is stolen and they consult the latest description list when buying and inform the police if anything is on that list.
So as a criminal your options are: use it yourself (either wear it, or as gifts to friends); sell in a different city where hopefully it isn't on the list; sell it to someone who doesn't care that it is stolen; sell to a fence (who will in turn sell it to someone); melt it down for the metals (gold and silver) and jewels.
Note that buyers of metals are also on the list of those watching for stolen goods. If you bring "a lot" of something to anyone buying metals expect questions. Metals are easy to melt and hard to trace, but if you are selling more than the average person is likely the police will be told to check you out. Often the point of a "fence" is to mix your illegal gold with legal gold and sell to locals jewelers who think everything is legal.
As other have said jewels are cut.
You lose a lot of value in all of the above. Jewelry is already way overpriced in general (that is the value is much less than you pay), and hiding your tracks is hard. It is really hard to make this type of crime pay because the police are good at their job.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 1 day ago
I could imagine a deranged billionaire, like imagine a son of emerald miners who used his inherited wealth to buy EV or space companies, somebody who is quite short and self conscious about it, with a small penis feeling he needs to have children in triple figures before he flies to Mars. Anyways, a filthy rich guy like that who has everything and now wants a memento of Napoleon. He’ll keep it in a secret basement and that’s where he will go to masturbate looking at it.
It seems weirdly specific but I’m really just making it up.
I think this will stay in somebody’s basement. Even if you took it apart, experts will be able to recognize parts of the jewelry even if they chopped it up, say, the gemstones that were part of it. There are probably easier ways to get the same amount of valuable materials that won’t raise as many eyebrows when you try to fence them. So either these thieves are learning that lesson right now or a mad billionaire is masturbating next to it in his basement.
scarabic@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
In short: there’s a black market of people who don’t care whether it’s stolen and for whom that might even be an added glamorous thrill.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m sure you’ve seen how twitchy and coked up he looks in some of the video clips. It’s all too easy to imagine this scenario as real.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 22 hours ago
…somebody who is quite short and self conscious about it…
Hmm, you’re not mixing up the robotic-looking guy who has a ‘face,’ with the deranged lunatic who made things ‘more efficient,’ are you? First row, second column:
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 19 hours ago
As I said, I’m really just making it up.
Valmond@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I imagine the group of wankers waking up with the biggest hangover ever, trying to figure out what the fuck happened yesterday.
A_A@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Joke : Should stay in a British museum cuz obviously the French can’t take care of those
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
I ask cause the news says the the Louve thieves can never sell it because it so known?
Rich people buy expensive stolen artifacts all the time.
Bergwookie@feddit.org 1 day ago
Either it’s a “steal to order” or they’ll melt the precious metals down (like they did with the Manching gold) and sell the stones to a corrupt stonecutter who will cut them in a different way to hide their origin .
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
They either already have a buyer set up before the heist (seems unlikely, things that probably just happen in movies) or far more likely, cut it up into unrecognizable gemstones then sell it
frankenswine@lemmy.world 1 day ago
why should this be unlikely? billionaire goes
i want his
not to show off in public, just for the feel of power? then hires adequate personnel for the task
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Third option: the thief wanted it for themselves and has no plan to sell.
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I was going to mention this as well. I doubt it’s the case with this theft given how it was done, but my wife recently finished reading a book about Stéphane Breitwieser who admitted to stealing over 200 works of art from smaller museums throughout Europe in the late 90s. He kept pretty much everything he stole for his personal collection.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 21 hours ago
[off topic?]
https://thrillingdetective.com/2018/10/30/philip-st-ives/
Philip [Raymond in the movie] St. Ives is an ex-newspaperman who has become a professional go-between, acting as a middle man between the police and the underworld. Insurance companies would rather pay half the value of a policy to the crooks than all the money to the victims, and the victims [usually] want what was stolen back.
The movie is pretty good, and the stories are ecellent.
anas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nice try, you can’t bait me that easily!
dumples@midwest.social 1 day ago
I don’t know if this is 100% true or not, but I in The Goldfinch stolen art is used as collateral for criminals. The items are known to be worth money and can be used as collateral for various criminal activies. So it can be passed around. Not sure how true that plot point is.
greenbit@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
What’s the artifact origin? Maybe they weren’t stolen but returned?
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
They probably already had someone who wanted to buy them.
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
The Louvre heist was done in broad daylight and nobody stopped them. If it hasn’t occurred to anyone that this was orchestrated by people of the highest authority who are far above the law, I don’t know what else to tell you. The value of those jewels can now be recirculated back into the economy instead of sitting uselessly in a glass case for eternity.