Israeli Diamond Mogul Robbed of $53M of Jewels and Watches in Cannes

Diamond Heist: $53 million of jewelry was stollen from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France. Image by Haaretz
A robber carrying an automatic pistol stole jewellery and watches owned by Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev worth millions of euros from the luxury Carlton Hotel in Cannes on Sunday, police and judicial sources said.
A man wearing gloves, with his face hidden by a scarf, burst into the hotel in the late morning and demanded to be handed several bags containing jewels and diamond-encrusted watches.
“Everything happened very quickly,” a judicial source said, adding that there was no violence.
The Carlton, located on the French Riviera resort’s famed Croisette waterfront promenade, has been housing a temporary exhibition of jewels from diamond specialist Leviev since July 20.
The hotel, celebrating its centenary this year, was also where Alfred Hitchcock filmed scenes from the 1955 film “To Catch a Thief”, starring Cary Grant as a one-time cat burglar and Grace Kelly as the beautiful Frances.
Nice-Matin newspaper said the stolen jewels were worth 40 million euros ($53 million), a figure that the Carlton’s management would not confirm. The prosecutor in Grasse, near Cannes, gave a figure of “several million euros”.
Police investigators are studying video surveillance footage in an effort to track down the thief.
The heist came two months after two smaller jewellery robberies hit the annual Cannes film festival, where many of the world’s top movie stars are lent gowns and gems to parade on the red carpets and at glamorous parties.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
News Rabbis revolt over LGBTQ club, exposing fight over queer acceptance at Yeshiva University
-
Opinion In Qatargate fiasco, Netanyahu’s ‘witch hunt’ narrative takes cues from Trump
-
Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
-
Opinion Marine Le Pen may be headed to prison — antisemitism and xenophobia still roam freely
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.