Thieves With Discriminating Taste Steal Sable Furs From New York Shop

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/nyregion/thieves-steal-sable-furs-from-dennis-basso-store.html

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The first burglar heaved a large rock or paving stone through the glass door of a Manhattan boutique. It was before 5 a.m. on Christmas Eve at the Dennis Basso store on Madison Avenue, home to some of the world’s most expensive fur coats.

The thieves, three discriminating speed shoppers who skipped the merely pricey, got what they came for: They stole millions of dollars’ worth of sable coats, some valued as high as $200,000.

In a section of the East Side chockablock with jewelers and clothiers that cater to movie stars, socialites and other habitués of the retail stratosphere, shootings and stabbings may be exceedingly rare. But the area is not immune to audacious thievery: In 2014, smash-and-grab bandits stole $700,000 in watches from a Cartier shop on Fifth Avenue.

The police said they had not identified any suspects in the Basso break-in, but the men’s escapades were captured on surveillance video that should give investigators a good start.

At the shop, near the corner of 69th Street, the thieves’ headlong style seemed to offend nearly as much as the theft itself. “For someone to throw a square of granite and to run through, pushing his head through that hole in the glass, who would do that?” Achilleas Georgiades, an executive at the store, said Monday. “This is Madison Avenue. It’s civilized.”

The video shows the men rushing in as shards of glass shower them and a heavy metal beam tumbles down. One man, apparently hit by falling debris, holds his hand to his head.

The burglars leave mink scarves and jackets on racks. One drops an armful of coats on the floor, pulls a bag from his jacket and crams it full of loot.

“They took only the sable coats; they took nothing else,” Dennis Basso, the owner, said by phone from Aspen, Colo.

The fur of a sable, a small, minklike mammal native to Siberia and other cold places, fetches high prices, Mr. Basso said, adding, “It’s very lightweight and very warm and extremely luxurious, and that’s really the key.”

Mr. Georgiades said he did not recognize the men in the video, but he was sure of one thing: “They know a lot about furs.”

Detectives from the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side are leading the investigation, a police spokesman said.

More than 20 pieces were stolen, Mr. Georgiades said. The store is still tallying its losses.

Mr. Basso, 62, who has been a furrier to the famous for decades, said he had never been burglarized before. He moved his operation to its current four-story location in 2013 after diversifying into other merchandise, but fur remains his claim to fame.

Mr. Basso told The New York Post the theft “could be the largest fur heist in the City of New York.” While there was no way to confirm that, it certainly seems to be one of the bigger ones.

In 1991, charges were filed against a four-member team in the gunpoint robbery of hundreds of furs, worth at least $1 million, over the course of months. The thefts forced some underinsured Manhattan furriers out of business.

In 1950, when there was a fur-manufacturing section of the garment district, two fur-company executives and a driver for another company were charged in a scheme that diverted more than $1 million in furs, worth $10 million in today’s dollars, to the executives’ company.

At the Basso store, Mr. Georgiades said he had seen a suspicious character not too long ago and now wondered if the man had been looking over the store.

“I have an idea of a guy who came in and scoped the place,” he said.