In a carefully planned overnight heist, thieves cut through a safe and stole more than $1.3 million worth of jewelry from a store outside Chicago, the store owner said.
The burglars worked for nearly five hours during the night of May 9-10, 2025, disabling Internet service to the entire office complex where Rick Kleinvehn Diamond Brokers in South Barrington, Illinois, is located before breaking into the store, according to store owner Rick Kleinvehn.
South Barrington is about 45 minutes outside Chicago.
“They used a wet saw, and the interior where the safe was became all slushy, muddy, just kind of a goo on the floor from them cutting for hours and hours through that steel,” Kleinvehn told ABC News. “They had buckets, and they were filling buckets and pouring it on the hot metal.”
1.3 million in jewelry? So like 20,000 dollars resale?
disabling Internet service to the entire office complex Crappy alarm monitoring service to not have that checked out, unless they told the manager/owner and they dismissed it. Doesn’t say.
Definitely should have been an alarm call. Back when I had alarm access at an old job, one camera had power issues, which prompted a call from the alarm company at 3 am. For about a week straight until it got fixed.
Anyone else got the sudden itch to play payday 2?
If you look at the pic closely, you can see the subtle breach of the safe wall and door. Look at the irregularities at the corner of the safe.
It’s nice of them to appraise the value of their haul for them!
Assuming this isn’t insurance fraud, more than likely it’ll all be melted down for the precious metal content. Diamonds famously have no resale value, and gems in general are too easily tracked if there’s any lab grown used in any of the pieces.
My first thought: if you’re going to spend half the night sawing into a safe, why not rob a bank instead? Cash would be easier to launder than jewels. My second thought: How much cash do banks even keep on hand these days, with cashless payments becoming more and more common?
That was a relatively cheap, shitty little safe. Sawing through it took a relatively short time. A safe 3x thicker, with higher build quality, and better security would have required far more than one night to rob and far longer to plan.
Im no safe-cracker, but I feel like it might have been possible to open this one with fewer, more strategically placed cuts?
Like, wherever the latch(es) is/are?
They cut through a wall to reach the safe, sounds like some inside knowledge anyway.
So now just go donate half to the ultra corrupt Cheeto and get you a pardon. That’s how the “law” is working now, right?
