Act 1 The Story
Three masked gunmen walk into a luxury hotel and start blasting machine guns.
As the smoke clears, the victims rise back to their feet.Is anyone dead?
Except… there are no bullet holes.
Credit: Photolibrary / Getty Images Plus; Everett Collection; Lionel Cironneau/AP/REX/Shutterstock
The walls, light fixtures, and columns were unmarked.
Like so many who flock to Cannes, flaunting their jewels and themselves, it was all for show.
The robbers had been firing blanks.
Police outside the Carlton Hotel in Cannes after the 2013 raid. Leviev’s pink banners are draped on the building.
This violent episode in the Carlton’s otherwise elegant past has become part of its legend.
Even the hoax aspect of fake gunfire added to the ironic allure.
There are no articles or TV reports with photos of police at the hotel.
No quotes from investigators or witnesses.
No descriptions of suspects or the purloined gems.
Apparently, it never did.
Local police say they aren’t aware of the case.
It was pulled off in less than one minute.
Most memorably, the now-108-year-old grand palace was the setting of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 classicTo Catch a Thief.
Reality and fantasy often intermingle at the Carlton in beguiling ways.
There has been an undeniable aura of mystique around the Carlton since it first opened its doors.
What Stephen King’s fictional Overlook Hotel is to terror, the Carlton is to romance.
For years, the penthouse restaurant in the hotel was named for her:La Belle Otero.
(This year’s festival kicks off May 14.)
“He knew that people would dream of going to Cannes, dream of that life.
Police outside the Carlton Hotel in Cannes after the 2013 raid. Leviev’s pink banners are draped on the building.
The Carlton is somewhere that, at least culturally, still has its barbed wire and barricades up.
Still, interlopers find a way to slip through.
That can create as much resentment as admiration.
No one goes hungry in the Carlton.
It’s a place of decadence, opulence, and appetites.
That’s what also makes it a prime location for crooks, both small-time and grandiose.
That’s where you go to really get the buzz.
Selby invokes the Depression-era American stickup hoodlum Willie Sutton to explain why Cannes was so vulnerable to earth-shattering smash-and-grabs.
By the way, Selby adds, Sutton never really said that.
The robber always claimedthe quote was made up by the newspapers.
Act 3 The Action
The most shocking theft in Cannes history took approximately 30 seconds.
It was a late Sunday morning in 2013.
The exterior terrace of the Carlton flapped with pink vinyl banners.
“Leviev,” they read.
“Extraordinary Diamonds.”
(It’s Luh-VY-ev.)
Associates, was hired by Lloyd’s of London to investigate the claim.
The thief strides quickly around the center display boxes with the gun extended rigidly.
An open white satchel, perhaps where he hid the gun, sways at his side.
When they see the gunman, the man drops to his knees, arms in the air.
The robber hefts a black duffel bag from behind the counter and hurries away.
He scoops those up with his gun hand and fast-walks out of view of the camera.
“It was very good timing,” says Shaw.
“He went out a small window at the back.
There’s a small service area going to a side street, so he jumped out of that.”
The robber’s commands were terse.
“He must have said something, but it was pretty restricted,” Shaw says.
“I don’t think we got any accents.”
“We’re instructed as agents for the insurance company,” says the adjuster.
Recommendations and security recommendations respected?
And if we pay, how much do we pay?'”
“You’re insured for the replacement cost,” Shaw notes, not the full $136 million.
“That’s the retail value that people get carried away with.”
But you’d be wrong.
There’s actually less.
Act 4 The Chase
Shaw can’t say everything he learned.
Even six years later, the investigation remains open.
Does he think a lot of mistakes were made?
“I don’t know ifmistakesis the right word.
It was all too clockwork, all too easy.
Another: “The thief [was an outsider] who benefited from internal complicity at the hotel.”
“It takes more sophistication to sell something for that high value.
The theft itself is what it is.
Most of these individuals are very good thieves.
They’re not good businessmen.
It’s difficult for them to monetize their swag.
They had a French connection in Nice, and the material went back to the Balkans.”
Wittman says he trusts the source because the source was so…untrustworthy.
“He was a jewel thief,” Wittman says.
“A Hungarian national.
Still, the 2013 heist doesn’t match precisely with the Panthers' MO.
Shaw, the Lloyd’s of London adjuster, says he explored this possibility too.
“Yes, yup.
What can I say to that?
Lev Leviev is a very experienced man.
I don’t think it’s his first legal case.
The wheels of justice grind very slowly.
So getting different jurisdictions to speak to each other takes a long time.”
Leviev has denied any wrongdoing, but has alsorefused to return to Israel for questioningin the case.
Or never happened at all.
