Jewels worth 1.6 million euros recovered after fake princess heist: police

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Jewellery valued at 1.6 million euros stolen from a Paris jeweller by a woman pretending to be a UAE princess has been recovered at a hotel room on the outskirts of the city, police said Friday.

No one has been arrested yet over the heist in late July, which saw two women switch the contents of a box of jewels as they negotiated with a jeweller at a luxury boutique on the upmarket Rue Saint Honore in central Paris.

“The jewels were recovered on Thursday in a hotel room in Seine-Saint-Denis” by investigators from the organised crime squad, a police source said, adding that no-one had been apprehended so far.

Police traced the jewels with help from video surveillance footage.

The theft took place on July 31, when two women — one of whom was posing as a princess from the United Arab Emirates — were shown several pieces of jewellery at the store.

They said they would make a transfer of the funds the following day to buy the pieces, taking multiple telephone calls during the presentation.

The jewels were placed in a box and put away awaiting the transfer, but when the money did not appear the jeweller checked the chest again and found that the contexts had been replaced by what later turned out to be “stock cubes”.

An investigation into “theft by deception” has been opened.