Criminal Thinking

Suspects arrested over theft of jewels at Louvre museum in Paris

There is much that I don’t understand about the way that criminals don't think.

Brilliant Maps offers an image showing major airports in Europe, where "major" is defined as "over a million passengers". I did search for "How many airports in the Schengen Area" but could not find a figure, so in this essay I am working using a figure of 300; I obtained this by loading the map image into MS Paint, dividing it into 16 portions, and tallying at least 20 airports in one portion. 16x20 yields 320, so I'm going with 300 airports from which you could fly to another airport.

Another airport outside France (where The Louvre jewels were lifted), possibly another airport outside The Schengen Area, or even outside Europe. But probably to a country that has no extradition treaty with France.

Or perhaps even a one-stop trip to a country far, far away. Maybe Perth, the most isolated capital city in the world, with a million square miles in the state of Western Australia, and a chance to sit and breath for a year or so. Or dig a hole and bury the jewels.

Instead " … one of the men had been taken into custody as he was preparing to take a flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport".

I am ignorant of Best Practices as a criminal, but even so, I would have thought that CDG would have received photographs or descriptions of the crooks. And yes, the airport handles around 70,000,000 per year (divide that by 350 to get an idea of how many people per day), so it is busy, but it has plenty of gates and inspectors who could be told to "watch out for this guy", maybe with a bonus doughnut for the clever border inspector?

France is in the Schengen Area so you can chill out by boarding a train from a mainline station in Paris (Gare du Nord, Gare de l'Est, Montparnasse, Gare de Lyon etc.) with a ticket purchased by a friend, and doze off and let your panicky mind settle as you eat crisps and drink soda pop on your way to (say) Italy, where you can be a tourist, or any country where you have a "Tourist-plus" command of the language, and after a few weeks of laziness, hop on a plane to Perth (or wherever).

Why choose to go through the most alerted airport in the world to escape?

P.S. for a read on how to confuse government agencies read " NI parents caught in UK crackdown lose child benefit after travelling via Dublin " for an account of how the UK government has problems tracking legal movements of its citizens. (The article is about alleged fraud, but read it as transit-savvy moves by a local member of parliament!)

P.P.S. It will soon be easier to steal from The Louvre. " Plan to cut journey times between major cities ".

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