According to authorities and the store’s owner, thieves who may be associated with an organised crime ring broke into a celebrity jeweller in Florida on Saturday, using a jammer to turn off the alarm system and steal about $500,000 worth of jewellery.
“They cut a hole in the roof and attached the ladder to an AC unit with a rope and climbed down from the roof,” Chris Petrillo of Mint Jewelers by Boodaddy Diamonds told Fox News Digital. “They walked along the beams inside the attic and put this big jammer in there, and it stopped the signal of the alarm system.”
The group is probably a member of a sophisticated crime organisation that has targeted at least six establishments in South Florida during the past week, an investigator told Petrillo.
In his Hollywood shop, Petrillo, who has sold pricy jewellery to Billie Eilish, Flo Rida, T-Pain, and Pete Davidson, claimed the robbers overlooked an important element.
They were unaware of a hidden Ring camera in a corner that had taken a clear picture of one suspect’s face.
“You can see the guy was very surprised,” Petrillo said of the footage showing the suspect wearing a mask over his mouth, spotting the small camera and pointing to it. “His friend had his flashlight in his mouth, and when he turned his face toward his friend, he flashed him in the face. And that’s how we were able to get a good picture of him.”
The clear image of a portion of one suspect’s face may assist authorities in solving the case even though the suspects have not yet been found.
The males are shown in the video creeping through the shop carefully removing jewellery from glass cabinets and drawers and placing it in a rucksack while wearing all-black clothing and holding flashlights. They hauled in more than just priceless stones.
According to Petrillo, they allegedly stole a rare orange Chanel handbag worth $5,000 and a $4,300 bottle of Louis XIII spirits.
The owner expressed his surprise that the three intruders, who entered and exited the property in less than four minutes, were able to use a jammer to get through his state-of-the-art security system.
He claimed that the device has 15 protruding antennae and resembles a bomb. “It was plugged into my alarm system, and then they cut all the wires,” he claimed. They can do that? I had no idea. My system has a UL certificate and is UL-rated.
When Petrillo received an alert from ADT Security Services at around five in the morning informing him that his system had lost signal, he was sound sleeping.
He checked his Ring camera five hours later and watched the men robbing his store.
The damage was severe.
“I’m still listing everything, but it’s close to about half a million dollars,” he told Fox News Digital.
An investigation is still being conducted, according to a Hollywood Police Department public relations officer.
