Waking up after a long evening, it seems no one had a better New Year’s Eve party than the four masked individuals who broke into the Apple Store at Opéra last night around 9:00PM. Having subdued a security guard, the four men spent forty minutes loading the entire store stock – estimated to be worth around €1 Million – into a van, while cops were nowhere to be seen, most of which on duty on the Champs Elysées.
UPDATE: The original figure of €1 Million has not been verified, and the Paris Apple Store manager is expected to speak this afternoon (cf. LeFigaro)
UPDATE: LeFigaro claims hat between 300-400K€ worth of goods and cash (here)
The first break-in in a French or even European Apple Store, this break-in far outweighs the previous string of US Apple Store robberies from 2011. In one New Jersey Apple Store, robbers broke in through the front windows, and “snatch-and-grabbed” everything on display in about 30 seconds and ran. The police here described the robbers as “very well prepared” and “meticulous” – they approached the store 3 hours after it closed, as a security officer was walking out, subdued him, and took their time cleaning out the store (the security officer sustained minor injuries).
The details of the robbery are not fully public, though LeParisien seemed to be the first to hear about the incident. It will now be up to Apple to determine how they would like to pursue the case; it’s worth noting that the robbers of the New Jersey store were never found.
This is the same Apple store which saw employee protests on the day the iPhone 5 came out earlier this year.
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