More than 1,000 objects vanished from the Oakland Museum of California’s off-site storage, making the theft one of the state’s largest cultural losses in decades. “This is not just a loss for the museum, but a loss for the public and the community,” said executive director and CEO Lori Fogarty, according to the Associated Press. She urged residents to keep an eye on flea markets, pawn shops, and online listings for items that look as though they belong in a museum.
The break-in occurred around 3:30 a.m. on 15 October, when one or more intruders slipped into the museum’s 9,000-square-meter warehouse outside downtown Oakland. Workers discovered the burglary the next morning, The New York Times reported. Investigators did not disclose how the thieves entered but confirmed they avoided the main door and encountered no guards.
Four days later, on 19 October, thieves stole jewels worth an estimated $102 million from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in Paris, a second crime that heightened global concerns over museum security.
Museum officials kept the Oakland theft quiet until 29 October to give detectives room to work. Fogarty said the delay followed a 2013 strategy that helped recover an $800,000 Gold Rush jewelry box taken by repeat thief Andre Tari Franklin, who later received a four-year sentence.
The missing trove spans California history from Indigenous culture to 20th-century civic life. It includes six Native American baskets, 19th-century daguerreotype photographs, and walrus scrimshaw tusks.
Curators said most items were donations, making them hard to insure and impossible to replace. The museum is working with insurers to determine a monetary value.
“We believe this was a crime of opportunity, and that the thieves did not necessarily even know they were breaking into a museum storage facility,” said Fogarty, according to the Guardian. “We think they found a way to enter the building and grabbed whatever they could.”
“The goal is not to sell the artifacts at full value; it’s to get quick cash … They have probably changed hands in a short time,” said former Los Angeles Police Department captain John Romero, according to Sky News. Detectives are monitoring Craigslist, eBay, and other resale platforms.
The Oakland Police Department is working with the FBI Art Crime Team, a 20-agent unit that specializes in cultural-property theft. Authorities released photographs of selected objects and asked anyone with information to call the Oakland Police Burglary Section.
The warehouse raid is the museum’s third major theft in 15 years. Franklin broke into the Gold Rush exhibit in 2012 and 2013, once entering through a skylight before stealing gold nuggets and a Victorian jewelry box later recovered through a pawn-shop tip.
While Oakland investigators seek suspects—police said four people are wanted, though the exact number remains unclear—French authorities continue to hunt for eight crown jewels stolen from the Louvre on 19 October. Five arrests were made in Paris on 29 October, but the gems remain missing, prosecutors said.
“Stealing from a museum is a federal offense,” Fogarty told reporters, adding that the museum will review its security without creating a fortress-like atmosphere. “If people are at swap meets, auctions, pawn shops, or antiques stores and something looks off, please let us know,” she said, according to CBS News.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.