Thieves steal $700k worth of fine wine in California break-in

Thieves grabbed US$700,000 worth of wine from a Los Angeles store during the weekend by cutting a hole in the ceiling above its cellar, with some of the stolen bottles costing over $5,000 a piece.

CCTV footage has revealed video of thieves breaking into LA shop Lincoln Fine Wines over the weekend, taking more than 600 bottles of rare fine wine from the store’s cellar.

The culprits cut a hole in the ceiling of the store above its wine cellar before dropping down to grab its contents.

Fine wines from France and Italy were the main target. Nazmul Haque Helal, Lincoln Fine Wines owner, said the shop has nothing left on the Burgundy and Bordeaux side. “They cleaned it out,” he said.

Thieves stole 75% of the store’s high-end items, according to Helal. He believes that multiple people were involved and that the thieves knew exactly what they were looking for in this “extremely large and planned burglary”.

“I don’t know how long it will take to recover. It’s not only financial, it’s emotional,” he told ABC 7. Some of the ‘blue-chip’ bottles stolen by the group cost $5,000 a piece.

“My collection started 16, 17 years [ago],” he said. “I have a lot of French Burgundy that’s just hard to get.”

The break-in began just after midnight on 30 June at the Lincoln Boulevard store, and lasted until nearly 4am.

Lincoln Fine Wines is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capturing the thieves. Owner Nazmul Haque Helal has also said he plans to send a list of the stolen wines to local stores and auction houses to be on the lookout for the missing bottles.

In other news, earlier this year two people who seemed to have pulled off the wine “theft of the century” were jailed by a court in Spain. Read more on that wine heist here.