Everything comes together very quickly around recent thefts in museums, particularly that of the Louvre. But if the latter occupies the majority of media space, good news has just been announced on October 21, 2025 by the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau: the possible person responsible for the theft of gold nuggets from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris was arrested on September 30, 2025 in Spain and returned to France the same day.
The thief, a 24-year-old Chinese woman, had fled to Spain on September 16 with the intention of then returning to China, according to telephone investigations. She was found while trying to board a plane, in possession of a kilogram of melted gold. She tried to get rid of the package but was first arrested by the Spanish police. She has since been in pre-trial detention and was indicted on October 13. “The investigation continues, in particular to analyze this gold, to find out what happened to the stolen objects and possible accomplices”specified Laure Beccuau. She is currently charged with organized theft of six gold nuggets and criminal conspiracy.
This arrest provides new details on how the heist was carried out. The young woman has been compared to “a circus artist” by the police. Around one o’clock in the morning, she entered the building, then made a hole with a grinder on several doors, through which she slipped to reach the window which she broke using a blowtorch. Video surveillance showed that it was a female figure, dressed in black and visibly alone at the time of the incident. She left around four in the morning “after having monitored the surroundings for a long time”leaving behind gas canisters, a screwdriver and saws. A version far removed from the first information given by the police the day after the burglary, which mentioned three presumed perpetrators.
As a reminder, on the night of September 15 to 16, the National Museum of Natural History was the target of a burglary in its mineralogy and geology gallery, where six kilograms of gold nuggets were stolen. Among them: nuggets from Bolivia bequeathed to the Academy of Sciences in the 18th century; from the Urals, donated by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in 1833 to the Museum; from California, discovered during the gold rush in the second half of the 19th century and a gold nugget weighing more than 5 kg from Australia, discovered in 1990, said the public prosecutor. A heavy loss whose estimates reach 1.5 million euros for the value of the native gold, as well as €50,000 for the damage caused to the building, without forgetting the inestimable heritage and scientific value.
The theft follows a cyberattack that occurred at the end of July. According to information available to the police, the thief was aware of the malfunctions in the alarm and video surveillance systems following this cyberattack. Moreover, “the thieves, obviously very experienced and well informed, exploited a security flaw which had not been identified during the last audit carried out in 2024”specified the museum spokesperson at Figaro.
