Cannes Jewel Heist Estimated at $136M

The Cannes jewelry heist is even bigger than originally thought, netting the burglar $136 million in jewels and diamond-encrusted watches. Yesterday a thief entered the ritzy Carlton InterContinental Hotel in Cannes, along the French Riviera, with a gun in his hand and a bandanna over his face, and walked out with a briefcase full of jewels. The jewels were part of an exhibition by a jewelry house owned by Lev Leviev, an Israeli billionaire. Incidentally, just days earlier, a member of the infamous Pink Panther jewel thief gang reportedly escaped from a Swiss prison. The Cannes heist rivals the world's biggest jewel robbery, a 2003 haul of 100 million euros worth of gems in Belgium.