Multiple people have now been arrested over a jewellery heist at Paris’s famed Louvre Museum.
However, the lavish jewels that once adorned France’s royals are still missing.
In the days after the heist, experts warned that the jewels – which are valued at more than €88 million (£77.5 million) – could be melted down or broken into parts. If that is done successfully, the smaller pieces could go up for sale as part of a new necklace or earrings without turning too many heads, some say.
“You don’t even have to put them on a black market, you just put them in a jewellery store,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“It could be sold down the street from the Louvre.”
Ms Thompson and others said that this has become increasingly common with stolen jewels and metal goods, and is a way that thieves can try to cover their tracks.
The step would be crucial, as “everyone and their sister” has seen photos of the stolen artefacts over the past week – so finding a market to sell them intact would be incredibly difficult, said Christopher Marinello, a lawyer and founder of Art Recovery International.
French prosecutor Laure Beccuau made a plea on Wednesday to whoever has the jewels.
“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she warned.
“There’s still time to give them back.”
The jewels may be hard to monetise
“By breaking them apart, they will hide their theft,” Mr Marinello said, adding that these items could become even more “traceless” if they are taken out of France and through jewel cutters and robust supply chains in other countries.
Still, such pieces are often sold for a fraction of the value of what was stolen, partly due to their smaller size, but also because melting or breaking down high-profile items removes the historical worth.
It isn’t a simple process.
“The real art in an art heist isn’t the stealing, it’s the selling,” explained Robert Wittman, former senior investigator of the FBI’s art crime team.
Mr Wittman, who has since formed his own private practice, said that the individuals behind such heists are typically “better criminals or thieves than they are businessmen”.
Unlike others, Mr Wittman is skeptical about the thieves successfully monetising the artifacts they stole from the Louvre – which include an emerald necklace and earrings, two crowns, two brooches, a sapphire necklace and a single earring worn by 19th-century royals.
He said that the gems may still be identifiable by their clarity, for example, and gold that was refined when the pieces were made hundreds of years ago is not as pure as what is typically in demand today.
“Because of what they are, there’s really no point destroying them,” Mr Wittman said, while pointing to the risks of selling such high-profile stolen goods.
Scott Guginsky, executive vice president of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance, a nonprofit trade association focused on preventing jewellery crime, also notes the age and quality of the artifacts’ diamonds. He suspects they’re probably not graded.
“It’s not something that you can move on the open market. It’s nothing that can go through an auction house,” said Mr Guginsky, who used to run the New York Police Department’s organised theft squad.
Given the amount of preparation that the thieves likely put into this, Mr Guginsky believes they have a plan for selling the jewels, even if they might first decide to “sit on” the artefacts and wait out suspicion.
“I can’t see them stealing it without having an idea what they want to do,” he said. “There’s always a person willing to buy stolen jewellery. No matter what it is, somebody will buy it.”
Sara Yood, CEO and general counsel of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, notes that most jewellery businesses implement anti-money laundering programs and look out for red flags, such as unusual orders, repeated purchases and requests for secrecy.
Still, she and others say the age of some jewels, if broken down effectively, could actually make them harder to track. Newer gemstones, for example, sometimes carry a laser inscription inside that can be evaluated in a lab.
But “because these are historical pieces, it’s rather unlikely that it has those identifying features”.
Experts like Ms Thompson say that bigger gems can be recut to a point that they are unrecognisable. A challenge is finding people who have the skill to do that and don’t ask too many questions — but it’s possible, she said.
Whether the people behind the heist had those contacts or certain buyers lined up is unknown. But it’s important to also note that “the guys who actually enter the museums are usually all hired hands, and they’re almost always caught in these cases”, Ms Thompson added.
Chances of recovery look slim
She and others say that museums have increasingly faced a rash of similar thefts over recent years. Ms Thompson notes that stealing from storage can go undetected for longer: the British Museum in London, which has accused a former curator of stealing artefacts and selling them online, is still trying to recover some of the 2,000 items stolen.
Some past thieves have made ransom demands for stolen artwork overall, or wait for a potential “no questions asked” reward from an insurance company — which can amount to about a 10 per cent cut for some insured pieces in Europe, Ms Thompson says. The jewels stolen from the Louvre, however, were not privately insured.
Sometimes government offers of a reward for information about a high-profile heist can also quicken the investigation, although the French government has yet to publicise such an incentive. If that changes, or promising leads are uncovered from the evidence left behind at the Louvre, experts like Mr Wittman note it could increase the chances of recovering the artifacts.
Still, as more time passes, others feel that the fate of finding the historic jewels looks dim.
“I think they’re going to catch the criminals,” Mr Marinello said.
“But I don’t think they’ll find them with the jewels intact.”
