The FBI is now investigating a jewelry attack that involved thieves tunneling through many walls to split into a downtown Los Angeles jewellery shop over the weekend.
Millions of dollars in gold and jewels were stolen from a city jeweler’s two huge vaults after thieves tunneled into the Broadway shop through many reinforced walls, authorities said.
In surveillance video of the weekend break-in, a large drill can be heard carving through the major castlelike wall, making a hole large enough for a person to pass through to provide Love Jewels, Reina de Oro at Broadway and 5th Street.
Los Angeles Police say the bandits on Sunday evening cut through a chamber next to the golden trader in the 500 wall of Broadway. Police officials said the users informed the department that the criminals took about$ 10 million worth of merchandise.
LAPD Capt. Raul Jovel, who oversees the department’s key division, said the bandits tunneled into the tower through the Roxy, a little movie theater second door.
“They went for some really thick old windows. They went into one smaller area and then through a second wall, ” Jovel said. “This was significant cutting. ”
Jovel said initially it was thought only about$ 5 million in jewelry was stolen, but officials now believe north of$ 10 million was taken.
On Tuesday, the FBI’s key theft work force took over the research, according to LAPD communications director Jennifer Forkish.
In recent years, criminals have entered jewelry shops through buildings, Joven said. Tunneling, while unusual, is n’t unheard of. A company in the Fashion District was burglarized through routing thieves, Joven said. In Northern California, criminals last summer stole lots of artillery by tunneling into a business.
The jewelry store, which has large stability, is known for being the cause of glitter for performers, artists, and some gangs. On social media, the business boasts images of individual collar tributes, gold Rolex watch straps, diamond-encrusted miniature AK-47s, M-4 trinkets, and huge racks of gold chains.
The theft is the latest in a series of cinema-style high-profile capers that have seen millions in cash, gold, or diamonds stolen while the suspects avoid detection. In 2022, as much as$ 100 million in jewels was stolen from a Brinks big rig. As one guard and another went into a gas station , a gang of thieves made off with the massive haul within a 27-minute window.
Then, in March of last year, thieves stole as much as $ 30 million from GardaWorld’s Sylmar cash storage facility. Los Angeles police responded to three alarms at the facility during the biggest heist in the city ’s history on Easter weekend, but the criminals remained undetected.
In the latest downtown tunnel caper, LAPD investigators say the burglars, after entering, cut the security camera feed, and there are no images of them inside the business. However, LAPD forensic experts are examining the scene for fingerprints and DNA.
LAPD investigators examined recordings and determined the heist began about 9:30 p. m. Sunday, but the burglar crew could have begun cutting into adjacent properties earlier. The jewelers discovered the theft Monday morning when they arrived at their shop.
Investigators believe the likely high-level professional burglars spent several hours inside the business. The modus operandi of such a crime has already helped narrow the potential participants in the heist.
Burglars have taken to digging their way into vaults since at least the 1980s. Back then, there was a crew known as the Hole in the Ground Gang that tunneled under three L. A. -area banks, zipping around underground in all-terrain vehicles. They broke into two of the banks, making off with about$ 270,000 and the contents of safe-deposit boxes worth potentially millions.
Last March, thieves tried to tunnel into a jeweler at the Topanga Canyon Plaza in Chatsworth. According to the LAPD, the owner was working and triggered the robbery alarm despite it being the middle of the night. The thieves had broken through multiple walls in a neighboring salon and another business to reach the jeweler’s interior wall.
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