If I owned the world’s largest public art museum, holding some of the most distinguished and loved art pieces in history, what would be my security password?
The Louvre museum in Paris, which was recently under fire after a security breach resulted in a jewelry heist costing a whopping $102 million. Get this: its video surveillance system password was set to “Louvre,” according to ABC News.
I can’t sit here and knock on someone for making their password something easy to remember; we’ve all done this. But this museum holds the Mona Lisa, which, according to NPR, was involved in a different art heist at that very museum? It’s insane.
With the internet taking over, you would think it unlikely to pull an “Ocean’s Eight” when one could simply hack into someone’s bank account if they really wanted money. So that is what makes this heist so intriguing to people all over the world — why do it?
According to the BBC, the four robbers will most likely sell the jewels separately, not as a package deal, making them virtually impossible to track down to the Oct. 19 robbery. If the robbers are successful in selling the priceless gems, they will likely walk away with over 13 million.
Is 13 million enough money for you to pull something off like this? The robbers must have to have practiced and prepared for the infamous heist. People all over are flooding the internet with memes, conspiracies and edits attempting to decipher what went through the minds of the four robbers.
In an interview with Law&Crime Sidebar, former FBI and CIA special agent Tracy Walder said the robbers were sloppy. According to Walder, seven minutes to get in and out with the jewels was a “really long time.”
The Louvre heist isn’t just going viral for its in-and-out shock value, but also because of the romanticising culture that Gen Z has come to love. TikToks under the #louvreheist call it the “heist of the century” while providing headcannons for what they think the thieves might look like. Others call the robbery a “recession indicator” – “Art heists are back!”
Not to jump on the bandwagon, but I have to agree with some of the points made by others online. Watching the heist go down, checking in for new updates and laughing at the insanity of the risky situation — it’s the same reason people love true crime. While the Louvre robbers might have to break up a few jewels, they definitely brought some people together.
