High-stakes crime: speculating about possibilities

- Answer me this, how would you go about selling these?

These are the priceless royal jewels that were stolen

from Paris's Louvre in a recent audacious heist.

- This case was done by professional thieves.

It's not like that you wake up on Sunday morning thinking

I become a burglar, and let's start with the Louvre.

- The French culture minister said

that these jewels have immeasurable value,

but unfortunately immeasurable doesn't pay the bills.

- If they are going to sell this on the market,

then the thieves will get like 30% of that.

- So here are the decisions the thieves may face

if they're looking to profit from the heist,

and what fingerprints could be left behind.

The first and arguably the simplest option

would be to shift these jewels wholesale, completely intact.

Authorities value the complete pieces

at around $102 million, but getting full value

for these would be almost impossible

because if someone were to buy these pieces intact,

they're not just acquiring the jewels,

they're also implicit in the crime.

- If you touch these items and you get caught,

you're gonna be behind bars for many, many years.

- One theory is that the pieces were stolen to order

for a buyer to keep intact.

However, Arthur doesn't think that's likely.

- That the idea of somebody, some commissioner,

some kind of Dr No, a villain from the James Bond movies,

they don't exist.

They only exist in Hollywood movies.

- So if the thieves are going to try and extract any value

from their heists, their likely route

is sadly going to be breaking down these priceless pieces

into many smaller priceable pieces.

You're gonna have to give me a minute here.

The thieves would now be left with this,

and these are just some of the stones.

There's absolutely no way I'm cutting all of this out.

It's a mix of precious metals, pearls, emeralds,

sapphires, and diamonds, all of different sizes and cuts.

- We are talking here about objects that can transform

into something else with no link whatsoever

to the original theft.

- But some of these would be harder to shift than others.

The precious metals would be relatively easy to move,

just melt them down and they're pretty much untraceable,

but they're also not worth very much.

- The downset piece quite often was set with silver

on the top and a thin layer of gold behind,

the metal value in something like that would be negligible.

- [George] When it comes to the smaller stones.

- You couldn't identify them.

Old jewelry is being broken up all the time.

So those sort of diamonds are coming into the market.

- The challenge comes when trying

to sell some of these bigger, far more identifiable stones,

because this is very obviously this

and because these stones are old cut fashioned years ago,

using more rudimentary techniques,

they're potentially dateable,

which could also link them back to the stolen jewels.

- Those would be very hard, I think,

to sell on the open market these fancy cuts

because they're so unique to this piece.

- So in order to hide where this has come from,

you may have to cut it down to a new cut,

reducing the size of the stone by about 20 to 30%,

but making it far harder to trace.

- Could you recut one? No.

It's a very skilled task to recut a stone,

and takes years and years, and years of experience.

- [George] But there may be a way

that these stones could be identified

even if they've been cut

and it lies deep within the stone itself.

- Typically, stones can have a variety

of different conclusions.

They can have little crystals

of a different mineral trapped inside them.

You can have what are called healed cracks,

and feathers inside stones

and some of those cracks might have had fluid in them,

so you get what's called a fingerprint like effect.

If you were that familiar with them.

If you were a curator say,

and you'd lived with these pieces for years,

you certainly might recognize

some of the internal features in them.

There's not much you can do

to change the look of the pearls.

They're all unique shapes and you could, I think,

identify the pearls even once it's been dismantled.

- So is all hope lost?

Is there any chance of the jewels being recovered?

Well, there's one final option we haven't mentioned yet,

and that's that the thieves could get cold feet.

- I think they are scared now.

You know, we are talking about it,

the prime minister in France,

the president is talking about it.

Everybody is talking about this heist.

The ideal ending of the story

that these guys look at each other thinking,

maybe we should leave it on some corner in Paris, run away,

and hopefully the police will start looking

for other things.