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'Priceless' jewels snatched from German state museum

American

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'''Priceless''' jewels snatched from German state museum

Berlin (AFP) - Robbers made off with three priceless diamond sets from a state museum in Dresden on Monday, police and museum directors said, in what German media have described as the biggest art heist since World War Two.
The thieves at dawn broke into the Green Vault at Dresden's Royal Palace -- home to around 4,000 precious objects of ivory, gold, silver and jewels -- after a power cut deactivated the alarm.
The stolen items included brilliant-cut diamonds that belonged to a collection of jewellery of 18th-century Saxony ruler Augustus the Strong.
"We are talking here about items of inestimable art-historical and cultural-historical value," the director of Dresden's state art collections Marion Ackermann told reporters at a press conference on Monday.
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What kind of clown show is this? Alarms fail when power is cut, really???? :3oops: No backup in a priceless jewelry museum? If the power is cut to my house, the alarm system still works on batteries. :doh
 
Bodhisattva said:
Maybe they should transfer all the valuable stuff to your house for safe keeping then/...
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Everybody's jewels become priceless when they're stolen. I know I was astonished - flabbergasted, really - when my zircon collection fetched $175,000. They were virtually worthless until they were stolen.
 
American said:
'''Priceless''' jewels snatched from German state museum


What kind of clown show is this? Alarms fail when power is cut, really???? :3oops: No backup in a priceless jewelry museum? If the power is cut to my house, the alarm system still works on batteries. :doh
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When high end jewelry or artwork is targeted by thieves, the thieves already have a buyer before acting. Therefore the jewelry in question is not priceless, but already priced. European museums and galleries are well known for poor security. Those here in the States, not much better. Often enough, to the disappointment of the thieves, they often find the goods they stole to be counterfeit. :doh
 
OldFatGuy said:
When high end jewelry or artwork is targeted by thieves, the thieves already have a buyer before acting. Therefore the jewelry in question is not priceless, but already priced. European museums and galleries are well known for poor security. Those here in the States, not much better. Often enough, to the disappointment of the thieves, they often find the goods they stole to be counterfeit. :doh
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Whatever you say... Danny Ocean.
 
An insurance underwriter somewhere is having as bad day. "When I said UPS, I did NOT mean United Parcel Service!"
 
American said:
'''Priceless''' jewels snatched from German state museum


What kind of clown show is this? Alarms fail when power is cut, really???? :3oops: No backup in a priceless jewelry museum? If the power is cut to my house, the alarm system still works on batteries. :doh
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Knowing what I know about how IT, video and alarms are wired in both residential and commercial applications, all I can say is that the thieves either had plenty of experience in that type of wiring or they got the blueprints from someone.

You can have even more than one backup but if someone cuts the last leg, it won't matter.
Is it possible for an alarm system to have a third internal backup battery? Yes, it certainly is.
Unfortunately it looks like the museum will insist on such an upgrade after the fact.

I guess I have to agree with you that it was a clown show grade security system if only because of the value of these pieces.
Most BANKS even have a dual redundancy backup power supply in their alarm systems, but the caveat there is, not all banks go to the time and trouble of ensuring that the third backup battery is healthy, so there have been instances where criminals have cut the mains, then cut the backup, and lo and behold the dual redundancy battery was flat, saving them from having to bother with it.
Such instances are rare but it happens.
And don't get me started on the monitoring companies.
There are regulations, but little to no enforcement and regulatory action consists more of civil litigation for criminal negligence when monitoring personnel are found to be "asleep at the switch" so to speak, rather than state, county or city oversight of these companies. In other words, many of these companies only clean up their act when something bad happens and they get investigated.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Knowing what I know about how IT, video and alarms are wired in both residential and commercial applications, all I can say is that the thieves either had plenty of experience in that type of wiring or they got the blueprints from someone.

You can have even more than one backup but if someone cuts the last leg, it won't matter.
Is it possible for an alarm system to have a third internal backup battery? Yes, it certainly is.
Unfortunately it looks like the museum will insist on such an upgrade after the fact.

I guess I have to agree with you that it was a clown show grade security system if only because of the value of these pieces.
Most BANKS even have a dual redundancy backup power supply in their alarm systems, but the caveat there is, not all banks go to the time and trouble of ensuring that the third backup battery is healthy, so there have been instances where criminals have cut the mains, then cut the backup, and lo and behold the dual redundancy battery was flat, saving them from having to bother with it.
Such instances are rare but it happens.
And don't get me started on the monitoring companies.
There are regulations, but little to no enforcement and regulatory action consists more of civil litigation for criminal negligence when monitoring personnel are found to be "asleep at the switch" so to speak, rather than state, county or city oversight of these companies. In other words, many of these companies only clean up their act when something bad happens and they get investigated.
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Plus banks keep the valuables behind a vault door, not museum glass. So they have extra protection. The museum's defense, I'm sure the buglars were pros.
 
OldFatGuy said:
When high end jewelry or artwork is targeted by thieves, the thieves already have a buyer before acting. Therefore the jewelry in question is not priceless, but already priced. European museums and galleries are well known for poor security. Those here in the States, not much better. Often enough, to the disappointment of the thieves, they often find the goods they stole to be counterfeit. :doh
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You think jewelry like that can be sold? You think it isn't identified, encoded, a hundred photos, etc....? You don't just run out and sell the Hope diamond. :lol: They probably cut it into smaller stuff or recut it or something unrecognizable. And then I'll bet every flaw in every stone is recorded already.
 
American said:
Plus banks keep the valuables behind a vault door, not museum glass. So they have extra protection. The museum's defense, I'm sure the buglars were pros.
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That sorta negates the entire idea of a museum.
So yes, it's a little bit easier to rob a museum.
 
American said:
You think jewelry like that can be sold? You think it isn't identified, encoded, a hundred photos, etc....? You don't just run out and sell the Hope diamond. :lol: They probably cut it into smaller stuff or recut it or something unrecognizable. And then I'll bet every flaw in every stone is recorded already.
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There are private collectors who do not care if the merchandise they desire is stolen. Museums tend to be incredibly lax. Remember when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, in broad daylight? Think about the stolen treasures from Iraq that have been discovered in European and American markets, including famous jewelry. There are markets for anything men value, regardless of the sources.

We worked on a case for an insurer. The two stones, star sapphires, in question never left the hands of the insured, an insurance scam. Unfortunately for him, the "pros" he hired were bumbling idiots and tried to fence the fakes a year later to the worst of buyers, a 48th Street jewel dealer who recognized glass for what it was, and with who we did other business, even tho the original "victim" had warned them to trash the booty. Of course they cut a deal and outed the "victim."

A few weeks ago I caught a blurb in the news how a thief had walked off with three paintings from a gallery in broad daylight on the upper east side of Manhattan. Cutting them out of their frames as they hung on a wall. "He" didn't know the works he stole were cheap prints, the originals stored safely elsewhere. The thief in full make up as a man, really a woman, was caught because facial recognition software saw through the makeup on security recordings from neighboring businesses. Not always possible, and she was a known repeat offender.
 
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