
Thieves escape by motorboat after royal jewels heist in Sweden - amarant
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/swedish-royal-jewels-stolen-from-cathedral
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scrumper
So logically there is a market. This scheme wasn't opportunistic, it was
planned and involved some investment. The perpetrators therefore aren't
complete morons; they have surely thought about what they'd do after making
their getaway. I would like to know something about this market for stolen
unique treasures.

~~~
nemetroid
Not really. The only planning apparent is "had an escape vehicle", which does
not meet the requirements for "not morons".

> In 2013, a crown and sceptre used in the funeral of Sweden’s 16th-century
> King Johan III were stolen from Västerås, another city on the shore of Lake
> Mälaren. They turned up a few days later in two large rubbish bags at the
> side of a highway after a tip-off to police.

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zipwitch
Obviously the thieves weren't after them for any _mundane_ value they
possessed. <insert story about occult conspiracy theory here> (Back when I ran
tabletop RPGs, this is exactly the sort of thing the PCs would have done.)

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labster
I toured Castle Edinburgh a couple of days ago, and I had this exact thought
when looking at a wand amongst the Scottish Crown Jewels.

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chatmasta
This reminds me of the opening scene of _The Italian Job_ (one of my favorite
movies), when they drop the safe through the floor into a Venice canal, where
they crack it under-water while a decoy motorboat above-water leads police on
a wild goose chase.

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arnarbi
I know it's an oldish movie, but that's really an unnecessary spoiler.

~~~
pathseeker
_the opening scene_

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slazaro
I won't complain about it being a spoiler since the sentence begins by saying
that it's from a movie so anybody could stop reading before reaching the
description, but it is a spoiler, it's a twist that happens that is spoiled by
knowing what happens.

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locrelite
George Clooney doesn't exactly phone it in, but we've seen this Act 1 before,
and the plot eventually, and mercifully, ends on an unlikely emotional beat
that neither satisfies nor offends his uncritical fans. 4/10.

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mongol
There was a similar heist of Renoir and Rembrandt paintings from
Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, where the thieves fled by boat too. Eventually
they were found because they bought the boat the day before and the seller
could lead the police to the suspects!

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dokem
I hope they get away with it. Knowing that the royal jewels were successfully
stolen is more interesting than looking at them behind some glass for 15
seconds.

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marmshallow
This mentality does not scale

~~~
rafael859
Unrelated, but I think that this short phrase is a very good summary of
Kantian ethics :)

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johnohara
_The perpetrators of Tuesday’s heist risk up to six years in prison for
aggravated theft._

Nobody hurt. No weapons seen. One witness describing a white motor boat --
which narrows it down dramatically.

I guess all you can do is wait for a mistake of some kind.

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kevin_b_er
They will be sold to a rich "private collector" who will keep them for a few
generations then they'll be returned. The "private collector" will likely not
have any issues with their moral turpitude.

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r00fus
Returned or sold back ?

~~~
steve19
Melted down and sold

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acjohnson55
If the goal is to convert these artifacts to liquid wealth, the smash-and-grab
and getaway are probably the easiest parts.

~~~
Retric
It's easy enough to melt them down to revive some value. It's only hard to
sell them for their historic vs material value.

So, hopefully they already have a buyer lined up.

~~~
GFischer
I hope. Some valuable historical artifacts have been sadly melted, like the
original Jules Rimet trophy.

~~~
cies
Or destroyed. The Iraq national museum comes to mind.

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pvaldes
Hum... I'm wondering if the police could trace a motorboat path, at least
partially, studying the dislodged sediment, If you scan the bottom and find a
fresh groove you could try to build a vector at least. If the trace is missing
in some shallower canals, maybe they could refine the search.

~~~
kpil
Uh, lake Mälaren is 440 sq mi and up to 200 ft deep.

It's one of the largest lakes in Europe. 5th if ignoring Russia. They get so
much news anyway.

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kypro
Unrelated, but eye witness here has a really interesting YT channel covering
European history, it's worth a watch:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasRowsell](https://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasRowsell)

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TaylorAlexander
What’s amazing to me is that the thieves face up to six years in prison for
this. I feel like in the US it would be 30 years! Note that I don’t actually
know, six years just struck me as short.

~~~
kpil
The general idea in Sweden used to be that en criminals should become
rehabilitated, rather than punished.

The crime rate is much lower than US, but I doubt it's related to the
relatively lenient sentences. Right now it seems to attract burglars from our
eastern neighbours more than anything else, since they risk 3-4 month in jail
compared to up to 10 years...

I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons -
probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that you
either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either die or
get old.

Because of that, I would personally like to see much harsher punishments for
crimes that involves physical violence (or threats thereof) and especially
repeated offences - which is more or less not considered at all in Sweden,
just to get rid of the criminals from the streets for longer periods, and also
stop the recruiting into the growing number of criminal gangs.

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vidarh
> I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons -
> probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that
> you either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either
> die or get old.

Re-offending rates in Sweden have consistently been among the lowest in Europe
by a huge margin. As of 2014 it was around the 40% mark, which is
exceptionally low.

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kpil
I'm far from an expert but the first google hit seems to indicate that the re-
offending rate is higher in Sweden than in US, and on par with the rest of EU,
except the other Nordic countries that have half the rate.

The paper looks legit. The numbers are not directly comparable, so they are
probably just indicative. You might be an expert, so please correct me if
that's the case.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/)

Except for Singapore, the countries at the top have a strong welfare state.
Singapore might have a strong judicial system (and good education) instead.
The countries are also all quite small.

Here are the reported 2-year reconviction rates.

    
    
      Norway        20%
      Iceland       27%
      Singapore     27%
      Denmark       29%
      Finland       36%
      US            36%
      Canada        41%
      Sweden        43%
      Scotland(1yr) 46%
      N.Ireland     47%
      Germany       48%
      Netherlands   48%
      Ireland       51%
      France        59%
      England/Wales 59%
    
    

Why Sweden comes out exceptionally bad compared to it closest neighbors is
unfortunately not studied, and the authors are intrigued by this fact.

I'm not though; If there is an actual difference, I would guess it's related
to difference in crime rate in general, which is basically caused by the much
higher immigration.

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mongol
I want to know under whose responsibility they were when this happened.
Because it should not be as easy as just smashing some glass to get to them,
this feels like negligence.

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coldtea
Like when one's watching the eponymous genre of movies, I always want people
that made some (non violent) heist to make it uncaught.

Doubly so if they stole from royalty...

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c3534l
They didn't steal from royalty, they stole from a church that had them
displayed.

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jnurmine
Bold but stupid. They have no way to sell these objects. Unless it was made-
to-order, the thieves are out of luck with monetization.

While the objects will likely be found, the saddest thing is that they will
also likely be damaged when handled by a bunch of careless people. The objects
are several hundreds of years old and are not made to be handled roughly. For
example the Västerås objects were apparently dumped from a car and this left
its marks. I'm hoping these will be returned.

I also hope the Svenska kyrkan starts to take better pre-emptive care of
storing these culturally important objects.

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saagarjha
> The objects are several hundreds of years old and are not made to be handled
> roughly.

They're jewels, as in pieces of rock. What's the worst that could happen to
them?

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dragonwriter
The “crown jewels” stolen are actually jewelry, not simple jewels. They
include two crowns and a royal orb; they are intricately worked and include
soft metals (and, of course, settings with stones). Rough handling can damage
the decorative the working, break the metal parts, knock jewels out if their
settings, etc.

Damaging the jewels proper is not the main concern.

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LinuxBender
Imagine being that small town jeweler that these are brought in to for
repairs.

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ape4
Why does that guy with perfect English have subtitles?

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notadoc
There's a curious habit in US media to put subtitles on anyone with an accent.

I would like to think it's to make video easier to watch without sound, or for
the deaf, but I don't think that's the reason.

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mjevans
It's for people like my parents who have a difficult time with some accents.
It's just easier to subtitle it if there's any risk of it being unclear.

