Four armed men, some wearing wigs, held up the exclusive Harry Winston store in Paris and made off with a reported US $108 million worth of diamonds and jewelry.  The robbery was the largest jewelry theft in French history.

The four gunmen approached the exclusive diamond store on the upscale Avenue Montaigne – home to other high-end shops like Dior, Gucci and Chanel – at 5:30 pm,  just before the store was about to close.  According to Doron Levy, a spokesman for the Union of French Jewelers, at least two of the men wore wigs and women’s clothing and addressed some of the staff by name. 

The gunmen threatened the store’s fifteen employees, overturned display cases, and assaulted several employees.  They stuffed all the display-case jewelry into large bags.  Then, they identified additional storage locations, and forced employees to hand over even more of the valuable gems.

The brazen robbery wasn’t the first for the Paris Harry Winston shop.  In October 2007, several masked gunmen robbed the store of $28.4 million in merchandise, ranging in price from $3,000 platinum rings to a $5 million diamond-studded bracelet.

The largest jewelry heist in history took place in 2003 in Antwerp, Belgium, the world’s diamond trading center.  A team of thieves broke into over 120 security vaults at the heavily-guarded diamond market and made off with a reported $128 million in valuable gems.

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