The FBI is now investigating a jewelry heist that involved thieves tunneling through multiple walls to break into a downtown Los Angeles jewelry store over the weekend.
Millions of dollars in gold and jewels were stolen from a downtown jeweler’s two enormous safes after burglars tunneled into the Broadway shop through multiple reinforced walls, police said.
In security video of the weekend break-in, a massive drill can be heard carving through the main castlelike wall, making a hole big enough for a person to slip through to enter Love Jewels, Reina de Oro at Broadway and 5th Street.
Los Angeles Police say the thieves on Sunday night cut through a room next to the gold merchant in the 500 block of Broadway. LAPD officials said the owners informed the department that the thieves took about $10 million worth of merchandise.
LAPD Capt. Raul Jovel, who oversees the department’s central division, said the thieves tunneled into the building through the Roxy, a small movie theater next door.
“They went for some really thick old walls. They went into one small room and then through a second wall,” Jovel said. “This was serious digging.”
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 major theft task force took over the investigation, according to LAPD communications director Jennifer Forkish.
In recent years, burglars have entered jewelry stores through rooftops, Joven said. Tunneling, while rare, isn’t unheard of. A business in the Fashion District was burglarized through tunneling thieves, Joven said. In Northern California, thieves last summer stole dozens of guns by tunneling into a store.
The jewelry store, which has heavy security, is known for being the source of bling for rappers, artists, and some gangsters. On social media, the store boasts images of personal necklace tributes, gold Rolex watch straps, diamond-encrusted miniature AK-47s, M-4 trinkets, and enormous 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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