High-stakes capers are staples in the cinematic canon, from The Asphalt Jungle, Ocean’s Eleven and The Thomas Crown Affair to The Italian Job, The Usual Suspects and Inception. Now, Arun Lakra brings that suspense to the stage in his surprise-filled theatrical thrill ride, Heist. 

The play promises a twisty tale complete with lasers, aerial stunts and projections. But though its story is larger than life, these five heists prove that reality can be every bit as strange as, if not stranger than, fiction. 

The missing crown jewels 

As they do in Heist, prized gems feature prominently in many notorious burglaries. The most audacious example occurred last year at Paris’ Louvre Museum. On Oct. 19, 2025, four thieves smashed a balcony window in broad daylight and during visiting hours. They cut through several cases in the museum’s Apollo Gallery, grabbing nine historic items valued at $102 million. The pieces included 19th century royal tiaras, necklaces, earrings and brooches composed of more than 7,300 diamonds, 30 emeralds and 200 pearls.  

Though the job took roughly seven minutes, its fallout continues. As crooks raced from the scene, they dropped the diamond and gold crown of France’s Empress Eugénie, badly damaging it. The theft publicly exposed known vulnerabilities in the Louvre’s security defenses (including an outdated system that didn’t allow guards to view all live cameras simultaneously) and led to the museum director’s resignation.  

The criminals were identified thanks to traces of DNA evidence and video footage from the garage they fled to, but the gems have yet to be found. The Louvre’s empty gallery reopened this July minus its remaining crown jewel collection, which will be reinstalled later in a fortified location. 

An inside job? 

Potentially the largest cash grab on U.S. soil took place in a nondescript building in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar on Easter Sunday 2024. Thieves infiltrated a storage facility operated by Canadian-owned GardaWorld, walking away with as much as $30 million. The company processes money collected by armored trucks from area supermarkets, convenience stores and ATMs. The crime went undiscovered until Monday morning, when employees opened the vault and noticed the missing currency. 

Authorities believe criminals breached the building’s roof or side before cracking the vault. However, they activated no triggers, and video footage showed no suspicious activity, leading experts to speculate burglars had inside help. Because the bills in question were circulating, they cannot be traced easily, unlike money with sequential serial numbers taken directly from a bank or the U.S. Treasury. The LAPD and FBI continue to investigate. 

No place like home  

The Wizard of Oz’s ruby slippers rank among Hollywood’s most iconic costumes. Only four pairs survived the 1939 film shoot, and one disappeared for 13 years.  

Collector Michael Shaw lent the shoes to Minnesota’s Judy Garland Museum for its annual festival in 2005. On Aug. 28, a thief broke into the Grand Rapids building, leaving behind no fingerprints and just a solitary red sequin. Detectives followed clues for more than a decade until 2017, when an informant offered new information in exchange for a reward. An FBI sting ensued, and the shoes were recovered the following year. 

But it wasn’t until 2023 that investigators used phone records to charge Terry Jon Martin, a local career criminal, with the theft. Martin said he’d been seduced by the idea of one final score, assuming the slippers must be covered in real rubies to justify their million-dollar insurance policy. Upon realizing his mistake, he discarded them with his associate, later identified as Jerry Hal Saliterman, who ultimately buried the shoes in a plastic container in his backyard. Martin, by then in poor health, was sentenced in 2024 to time served, one year’s supervision and a $23,500 fine. Saliterman also was indicted that year but died before his trial. 

Ruby Red Handed: Stealing America’s Most Famous Pair of Shoes chronicles the slippers’ full story. In 2024, they were reunited with Shaw, who sold them that year for $28 million, far surpassing the $5.52 million paid for Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress in The Seven Year Itch, which held the previous auction record for entertainment memorabilia. 

Data as currency 

Not every haul is measured in gemstones or dollars. In December 2007, a Verizon Business data center in North London was dubbed by British press the site of an “Ocean’s Eleven heist.” That’s because criminals didn’t exploit physical flaws to penetrate the facility’s multilayered security system. Instead, they talked their way inside, posing as a K-9 police unit. 

Terry Ellis orchestrated the job, alleging he’d been hired for £1.5 million by someone representing American bankers keen to retrieve 80 servers with incriminating evidence about their role in the subprime mortgage crisis. After convincing guards to buzz him into the building, Ellis told them he was investigating a trespasser dressed as a security guard on the center’s roof. For the safety of his “officers,” he handcuffed guards in a stairwell. Upon cutting the live security feed, he thwarted a phone call from the center’s external surveillance firm by blaming the loss on a mainframe surge, saying technicians would restore the cameras within 40 minutes.  

With that clock ticking, the group removed $4 million in hardware, though Ellis said the true value was 20 times that amount given the stolen data. Those claims are unsubstantiated but are detailed in his memoir, The Art of Robbery. Only two of the 10 thieves were brought to justice, with Ellis serving eight-and-a-half years in prison. None of the missing motherboards and servers was recovered. 

The heist of the century 

The largest art heist ever is also the largest case of property theft in U.S. history. On March 18, 1990, two thieves dressed as police rang the intercom at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum saying they were investigating reports of a disturbance. The guards admitted them before being restrained in the basement. As explored in This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, the thieves then spent 81 minutes inside targeting several masterpieces, many from the museum’s Dutch collection. 

Among the 13 stolen works were three paintings by Rembrandt, including Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, the artist’s only seascape; The Concert, one of just 36 paintings attributed to Vermeer; five Degas drawings; Manet’s Chez Tortoni; and a Napoleonic bronze finial. Today, they’re valued at more than $500 million. 

Geoffrey Kelly, the FBI agent who worked the case for two decades before authoring the 2026 book Thirteen Perfect Fugitives about his experience, believes the crime likely was committed by Dorchester mobsters, who may have hoped to use the paintings as leverage against future sentences. However, investigators lacked enough evidence to make any arrests. In the subsequent 36 years, all potential suspects died, and the statute of limitations expired, leaving officials hopeful someone finally will return the art now that the threat of punishment has passed. Until then, empty frames hang on the gallery’s walls as reminders of the crime, and the $10 million reward goes unclaimed.