Yunice Abbas, the burglar, went home the morning after the crime to get some rest.
His wife was glued to the television when he woke up. The day’s biggest storyline was that 35-year-old American reality TV star Kim Kardashian had been robbed and bound at gunpoint in a lavish Parisian flat.
Her engagement ring, which was given to her by her then-husband and musician Kanye West and was valued at $4 million (£3 million), was among the approximately $10 million (£7.5 million) worth of jewelry that had been stolen. The wife of Yunice Abbas gave him a scowl. Her complaint was, “This has you written all over it,” He later said in a memoir that the Kardashian robbery would be his final task before retiring.
She was right. The 62-year-old had dabbled in crime his whole life, from petty offences to bank heists.
The Kardashian robbery, he later wrote in a memoir, was going to be his last job before retirement.
But a series of blunders meant the heist was doomed from the start and in early 2017 – three months after the robbery – Abbas and several of his alleged accomplices were arrested.
Now, ten of them will appear in court in Paris for a trial that will take place in less than three weeks. Six of individuals are suspected of being accessories to the crime, while five are accused of participating in the heist.
The French media dubbed them the “grandpa robbers” because the majority of them were born in the 1950s. The others have not confessed, but Abbas and Aomar Ait Khedache, a 68-year-old male, have.
One has now died, and the other, who is 81 years old, will be excused due to advanced dementia. Nearly nine years will have passed since the heist by the time the trial begins.