In a carefully planned overnight heist, thieves cut through a safe and stole more than $1.3 million worth of jewelry from a store outside Chicago, the store owner said.
The burglars worked for nearly five hours during the night of May 9-10, 2025, disabling Internet service to the entire office complex where Rick Kleinvehn Diamond Brokers in South Barrington, Illinois, is located before breaking into the store, according to store owner Rick Kleinvehn.
South Barrington is about 45 minutes outside Chicago.
“They used a wet saw, and the interior where the safe was became all slushy, muddy, just kind of a goo on the floor from them cutting for hours and hours through that steel,” Kleinvehn told ABC News. “They had buckets, and they were filling buckets and pouring it on the hot metal.”
My first thought: if you’re going to spend half the night sawing into a safe, why not rob a bank instead? Cash would be easier to launder than jewels. My second thought: How much cash do banks even keep on hand these days, with cashless payments becoming more and more common?
That was a relatively cheap, shitty little safe. Sawing through it took a relatively short time. A safe 3x thicker, with higher build quality, and better security would have required far more than one night to rob and far longer to plan.