The Polite Pink Panther

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Speaker 2 On this episode of the Commercial Break.

Speaker 2 We're too dumb to know. We're too dumb to care.
We don't care because, you know,

Speaker 2 Patty Cake11707 just put out another reel that I like about kitty cats.

Speaker 2 Or my favorite streamers getting arrested for, you know, the little pot in his pocket. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Well, listen, it's, you know, I don't have the answers. I wish I had the answers.
I don't have the answers. Chrissy has the answers, but she won't tell me.
Jeff's been giving her the secrets.

Speaker 2 Jeff's in the one person.

Speaker 2 The next episode of the Commercial Break starts now.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, Cats and Kittens. Welcome back to the Commercial Break.
I'm Brian Green. This This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show, Chris and Joy Holy.
Best to you, Chrissy.

Speaker 2 Best to you, Brian. And best to you out there in the podcast universe.
I had just me. I wanted to bring you into the group too on the camera.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't like you. So I'm taking you out.
Goodbye, Chrissy. Hi, Chrissy.

Speaker 2 There you are. Hi.

Speaker 2 I have been fascinated by this Louvre thievery that happened. The Louvre, if you don't mind.
The battleground of good and evil when Tom Hanks did it.

Speaker 2 Remember when Tom Hanks did that movie and it all ended at the Louvre?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was

Speaker 3 the treasure or what was that? Dan Brown?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the Dan Brown novel. Yes.
The

Speaker 2 God, the Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code.
Yes. I wanted to say the

Speaker 2 Darjeeling Limited Adventures, which is a title that I completely made up, all cloth. That's fun.
But this Louvre thievery is very interesting.

Speaker 2 I mean, you had to have been sleeping under a rock not to hear about this, but it happened in broad daylight back in August.

Speaker 2 It was so bold. Very bold.
And they broke into what they understood to be one of the lesser secure areas of the Louvre. The Louvre is

Speaker 2 two city blocks. It's not like one building.

Speaker 3 We were talking about that. Yeah, you enlightened me on that because I didn't realize how huge it was.

Speaker 2 It's gigantic. I mean, you can go look on Google Earth or Google Maps and you can see just how big it is.
The courtyard in and of itself is, you know, the size of a small city park. It really is.

Speaker 3 Well, it's a former palace, right?

Speaker 2 It's a former palace, but then it's been glommed onto.

Speaker 2 When you enter the Louvre, you enter through the pyramid, you go down an escalator, very long escalator, and you go into a central lobby that, in and of itself, is very large.

Speaker 2 And then you pick which small section of one of the five wings of the building you're going to visit in the next 24 hours because it's impossible to see even

Speaker 2 5% of it in a day. It is so incredibly large.
There is so many things to see there.

Speaker 2 So much art. The Egyptian wing, of course, is probably one of the more popular ones.
That's where I spend a good majority of my time. You can see the Mona Lisa there.

Speaker 2 There is so much art, billions of dollars.

Speaker 2 Maybe even like... I don't know.
Maybe it's priceless. Maybe the amount of art in there is priceless.
It rivals the Vatican, though I imagine the Vatican has a lot more art that's much more valuable.

Speaker 2 I've been there too. That's incredible also.
That's also very large. It's the smallest country in the world.
But in and of itself, the Vatican is crazy.

Speaker 2 The amount of wealth that's just dripping off of that place is insane. I know.

Speaker 2 And then you think about the immense power that the Pope and the Catholic Church have had on this earth for so many years. And you start to feel...
You start to feel like you're in a Dan Brown novel.

Speaker 2 You're like, holy shit.

Speaker 2 This is not a conspiracy theory. This is real shit.
That's pretty crazy.

Speaker 3 I remember the part two that I enjoyed because I'd been twice, once with my sister, and then the last time when Jeff and I.

Speaker 2 To the Louvre?

Speaker 3 No, to the Vatican. To the Vatican.
And then the part, too, that I really remember was like going down under and seeing those tombs. They've got the tombs of the like old popes down there.

Speaker 2 They have some real live, dead. Real live, dead popes.
Yeah. I've been to Spain where they have, in churches, they have one of the saints.
There's like a famous church north of Madrid

Speaker 2 in the north countryside where they have every town has a church. The church, church,

Speaker 2 the cathedral-style church, you know, that's probably older than anything in the United States. Beautiful, stained glass, everything original or, you know, updated, retouched, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 They take care of them. The Catholic Church, the church in general, takes care of them preciously because that's their real estate.
And often it's very valuable because it is the town.

Speaker 2 It's the center of town. It's the focus of the town.
They get millions of visitors at some of these churches every year, like in Barcelona and Madrid and all throughout the countryside in Spain.

Speaker 2 But one of these churches, and so every time I go to Spain and we end up visiting some, the next town, you know, the next village, the next whatever, and I've been all around Spain, it is a point is made by the family that we have to go to the cathedral.

Speaker 2 You have to go to the church. That's what you do because itself is a history lesson.
It is.

Speaker 2 In and of itself, it is a living, breathing testament to human achievement, human corruption, human distrust.

Speaker 2 It's just history in general. And we went into one.

Speaker 2 And if you've ever been to one of these older cathedrals, you'll see that and it's left in its kind of original state.

Speaker 2 You'll see, and I think Notre Dame is like this too. You'll see that they have the pews where people will sit, but then the bishops will sit in essentially a box.
in the middle of the church

Speaker 2 that's closed off really to the rest of the church. And they have these huge, like, I don't know, I don't even know, I don't know how to describe them, wood seats that box off the rest.

Speaker 2 Well, so we're walking around this, and I knew this is a famous church. I didn't understand, very rarely do I understand why when I walk in there, I'm not a historian.

Speaker 2 But we walk into one of these churches, there's hundreds of people that are there.

Speaker 2 We're taking, we're kind of walking around the perimeter of the church, and then you walk down these stairs next to this box, these very old stone stairs, and you walk down, and there is a glass piece of like long glass, like a transom.

Speaker 2 And you look in that transom, and no shit, one of the saints, a saint is entombed. And if I'm not mistaken, it's one of the apostles, I believe, is entombed in this fucking church.

Speaker 2 Now, the question is, is that really, is that really his old bones? Like roller old bones on down here?

Speaker 2 I don't know if those are really the old bones or they're sitting in the Vatican somewhere and they've put something else there to pretend that it is because it's so valuable.

Speaker 2 You know, this wasn't like a heavily guarded church. They had security, of course.
But then we've we've also been to the church in Valencia, where the Last Cup of Christ is supposedly.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 2 that was a weird experience also. So the Louvre is another one of these priceless, invaluable

Speaker 2 testaments to human art, human achievement, and quite frankly, the riches that are amassed on behalf of some people, the Louvre.

Speaker 2 These guys take a cherry picker in the middle of the day, right as the, not in the middle of the day, right as the Louvre is opening.

Speaker 2 They take a cherry picker, they ride that cherry picker to a glass window, they jump in, they steal some extraordinarily valuable jewels, crowns.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Napoleon, right? It was all related to Napoleon.

Speaker 2 You might be right about that. That might be the Napoleon wing of the building, so to speak, or the Napoleon Hall, whatever you call it.

Speaker 2 And so they take all of this stuff. They're in, they're out, seven minutes.
Let me give you a little synopsis. October 19th four thieves carried out a bold daylight raid in the museum's uh galerie des

Speaker 2 uh apollon which is the houses of the french crown jewel jewels they arrived at 9 30 a.m they used a truck with a lifting platform what we know is a cherry picker parked it outside raised a few floors into a balcony broke a window two perpetrators used power tools to break through the uh glass window they smashed the display cases inside grabbed eight pieces of historically significant jewelry, tiara's necklaces and earrings.

Speaker 2 They once belonged to French royalty, Queen Marie Amelie, Queen Hortenson.

Speaker 2 One of those stolen items was a crown worn by Empress Eugene that was later recovered outside the museum, but it was damaged.

Speaker 2 And the thieves fled on scooter and exited via the scene side of the facade,

Speaker 2 onto the motorway. Within four minutes, they were in and out.
Within eight minutes, they were on the highway.

Speaker 3 Audacity and the fact that they got away with it, that they actually were able to do it.

Speaker 2 They did it. Well, two of them were arrested recently on the 19th of October, so like a month ago.
They were arrested trying to get out of the country at Charles de Gaulle. So

Speaker 2 they didn't get arrested. And then the third one was arrested.
So there's a fourth one that's out there.

Speaker 2 But, you know, the French police, first of all, you have to understand something about Paris if you've never been there. And I've driven into Paris, from outside Paris to inside Paris.

Speaker 2 Like I've driven to Paris. When you go to Paris, doesn't matter how you get into Paris, you're being videotaped.
Your picture is being taken.

Speaker 2 It's being taken by cameras on the roadways in multiple different places. Paris is high security.
Like

Speaker 2 they are really a police state at the end of the day. And I don't mean that.

Speaker 2 I'm trying not to mean that in a bad way, right?

Speaker 2 But it does feel a little creepy when you realize when there's flash, when you're driving down the highway and then there's multiple flashes in multiple different places, and you realize they're not taking a picture of your license plate like a lot of places do now, they're taking a picture of you and the people inside of the car.

Speaker 2 And I imagine there's facial recognition software that's then identifying whether or not you mean them some harm or you're wanted.

Speaker 2 So, just trying to get out of the city for these guys, I imagine was going to be a tall task without being recognized.

Speaker 2 But the moment that I heard about this, it made me think about the international gang of loosely affiliated thieves known as the Pink Panthers.

Speaker 2 If you don't know, the Pink Panther not only named after, appropriately named after the comedy movies, the Pink Panther, which at one point starred Steve Martin.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Was it Jean-Cluso? Was Jean-Clusau the Pink Panther?

Speaker 3 Jacques?

Speaker 2 Jacques Clusau? No, not Jacques Couseau. Jean Cluseau.
That's Jacques Cousteau.

Speaker 2 Jacques Cousteau.

Speaker 2 And his pet turtle. Yeah, he's known as the Explorer.

Speaker 2 Oh, the pink belugan whale.

Speaker 2 They are known as the Pink Panthers, and for the last couple of decades, they have been wreaking havoc in the most friendly of ways across Europe, mainly across Europe. Yes.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 what do we know about the Pink Panthers? Let me explain a little bit about the Pink Panthers.

Speaker 2 It's a group of very slick jewel thieves, essentially, is what they are.

Speaker 2 They target places by doing a lot of homework and looking like people who are meant to be there. High fashion,

Speaker 2 high fashion, well-dressed, well-educated. They look like they fit the scene wherever they are.
And that's usually some high, high street somewhere. And they've done, you know, it's been in Paris.

Speaker 2 High street. High street.
That's what they call it. Look at me.

Speaker 2 I'm one step closer to becoming a UK citizen.

Speaker 2 I mean, fancy? Is that? Yeah, fancy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, fancy, classy. Like, yeah, it's a high street, it's the fancy street, right? The place where you go and you, you know what it is.
It's Rodeo Drive, essentially, in whatever town.

Speaker 2 This has been in Paris and in the UK and all throughout Eastern and Western Europe. They have done this.

Speaker 2 They pick a jewelry store where they think they can get away with a lot of jewels in a short amount of time. And they use manners and fear rather than bullets and violence.

Speaker 2 That's what they're known for.

Speaker 2 They walk in, they get in, they get out, and usually less than a minute or two, they steal millions and millions of dollars worth of jewels, and they do it with the precision of a military operation or like a Secret Service CIA operation.

Speaker 2 They're named the Pink Panthers because they, because of the movies, but then also because it's kind of comical that they have

Speaker 2 away with it so quickly, and very rarely has anybody been hurt. I think one person has been killed in the entire time they have been doing this.
And who are these people?

Speaker 2 Well, a lot of people believe that they are former

Speaker 2 Serbian military operators that got together and they are loosely associated, right? But all the money filters up to whomever it filters up to, probably some kind of organized crime.

Speaker 2 But then there's multiple people involved. Maybe they, you know, a couple of them do a couple of heists over a couple of years and then the next group takes over or they switch and they intermingle.

Speaker 2 This is real Oceans 11 guys.

Speaker 3 I was going to say that reminds me of Oceans 11.

Speaker 2 And they have not been caught. None of them have been caught.
They have never been caught, which is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 International network of jewel thieves, probably from the Balkans, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, who have pulled off hundreds of robberies since the early 2000s. They were coined by Interpool

Speaker 2 after a 2003 London heist where a stolen diamond was hidden in a jar of face cream, just like the movie. Have you ever seen the movie with Peter Sellers? Yeah.
That's what happens.

Speaker 2 He sticks the big, whatever, the crown jewel inside of face cream. It's estimated that they have hauled in over $500 million

Speaker 2 worth of jewels. They're stylish, they're fast, and they're surgical, just as I described.
They favor daylight raids, precision timing, and a movie-level getaway tactics, often in under two minutes.

Speaker 2 No violence, just speed, coordination, using pure

Speaker 2 tactics. That's it.
That's what they do. Sometimes they drive cars into buildings, and then they'll smash, grab, and then they'll have getaway cars and they're all.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and then

Speaker 2 they've been known to move from one getaway car to the next getaway car to the third getaway car.

Speaker 2 And by the time the police even get to the scene, they're four getaway cars into it, and they're never going to be caught because they're just that good.

Speaker 3 Former military would make sense.

Speaker 2 Yes. Okay.
You want to hear about a few of their heists? I do. All right.
2001.

Speaker 2 This is kind of when the birth of this legend starts. They stole a diamond worth over $500,000 from a Mayfair jeweler.
Police found it hidden in a pot of face cream.

Speaker 2 Innerpool then coins them, the Pink Panthers.

Speaker 2 So then in a pair of nearly identical daylight robberies in Paris, they stole over $10 million worth of diamonds in under two minutes. In under two minutes.
They used wigs.

Speaker 2 they had makeup, they had no firing of any gun. They walked in, they smashed, they grabbed, they got out, and they were calm.

Speaker 2 And that's what I've watched some video on, like people who are investigating these guys, like 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes Australia and some other investigative journalists in the BBC.

Speaker 2 Every one of the people at Interpool or the different agencies that are investigating them all comment. There's almost like a certain amount of respect for these guys

Speaker 2 because they're calm and professional. They're not screaming and yelling like, you know, you see in the United States, these guys, they go in the smash and they grab and they cause chaos.

Speaker 2 And they usually get caught because they're being dumb about it. Right.
Not these dudes. These dudes take this.
This is like a job. They're going to work.
They know what they're going to do.

Speaker 2 They're going to do it. They're going to do it quickly.
And then they're going to move on and get away. And I, you know, I don't have respect for the jewel thievery part of it, but it's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's kind of fucking cool, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, it's like a movie. I mean, you're picturing George Claney at this point.
That's right.

Speaker 2 In 2005, in Geneva, Switzerland, they pulled off an $8 million

Speaker 2 robbery near Lake Geneva. Never been to Switzerland? I've been to Geneva.
They have a huge lake called Lake Geneva, so it's right in Geneva. It's convenient.

Speaker 2 Lake Geneva is conveniently located in Geneva. Picture perfect scenery, just as you would imagine.

Speaker 3 Pictures are beautiful.

Speaker 2 The mountains behind it,

Speaker 2 crystal clear water. I mean, it's really weird for a lake.
It's blue water. And then you could take a boat ride on it.

Speaker 2 But if you drive, if you take a boat ride around Lake Geneva, around the city of Geneva, this outskirts of Geneva, the amount of wealth that is sitting up in those mountains, that is sitting in that city, it's disgusting and classy.

Speaker 2 It's like, if you have old money, this is what you do with old money. You go to Lake Geneva, and then you just kind of chill out, right?

Speaker 2 But there are diamond shop after diamond shop after jeweler after jeweler. Right.

Speaker 3 It's like an aspen.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Aspen, but 600 years older.
Sure, it's they've been there for a minute, they know what they're doing. Um, in Dubai, two Audi sedans smash through the glass in the doors of the Waffi Mall.

Speaker 2 Four masked men loot the graft jewelry store, less than 88 seconds. They make out with 20 million dollars in jewels.
That's insane.

Speaker 2 Saint Tron, uh, Saint

Speaker 2 Saint

Speaker 2 I can't say the Saint-Trepe, if I honestly. Saint Trope.
Saint-Tropez, France. Robbers dressed as jourists stroll in and take $6 million worth of jewels.

Speaker 2 They flee on speedboats because, yeah, why not?

Speaker 2 Let's throw boats in the mix.

Speaker 2 Milan, Italy, another graft store, $7 million. They use smoke bombs to disorient the security, but they were non-toxic, so no one got hurt.
Cannes, France, Cains, France, 136

Speaker 2 million dollars as they steal a suitcase full of gems from the behind the counter of a jewelry store they knew what they were going in to do uh 2014 through 18 there are dozens of copycats or connected um robberies and then there's sporadic germany switzerland and balkans these guys have never been caught and it fascinates the fuck out of me of course first of all how do they?

Speaker 2 Here's my question. What do they do with the jewels?

Speaker 2 Obviously, they have a network of people that they must sell these to. And when you sell $136 million worth of retail value diamonds, you're not getting $136 million back.
They're stolen.

Speaker 2 You have to get rid of them. Diamonds these days have barcodes just like every other thing on Earth.
They can be tracked and traced. Do they? Yes.

Speaker 2 My brother just bought his engagement ring, and the guy showed him

Speaker 2 like the IDC, the International Diamond

Speaker 2 Charge or whatever it was. Okay.
He put a magnifying glass, like a super magnifying glass, down to the bottom of the diamond. He had it in that little, you know, the little forceps or whatever.

Speaker 2 And he showed the barcode essentially for the diamond. It was traced.
It can be tracked and insured.

Speaker 2 And so if someone else steals it and puts it in another ring, if you were ever to find the ring that somebody had, you would be able to track and trace that particular diamond to where it was sold, how the chain of custody.

Speaker 2 And the guy was telling us at the diamond store. He's like, this is how all of this is done now.
Yeah, well, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 When a guy comes in with a bag full of bag full of diamonds, when my guy comes in with a bag full of diamonds, you know, I imagine for some reason, I imagine a Hasidic Jew come, and I don't mean that, it's just what I imagine when I think of those New York jewelers, you know,

Speaker 2 coming in with the bag of diamonds, yeah, and then just like rolling them out on a table and you're looking at them.

Speaker 2 You exchange the diamonds and then you write down the serial numbers, and you, you know, whatever you do. I don't know what the fuck you do.
You do something.

Speaker 2 You write down the serial numbers.

Speaker 2 But when you're stealing these kind of jewels, they're either probably raw diamonds or old enough to not carry this diamond.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But the fact that these Pink Panthers know what they're stealing, they know what they're stealing.

Speaker 3 They know exactly what they're doing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is not a random smasher grab. This is not a couple of, you know, fucking 26-year-olds who think they're going to be the next, you know, I don't know, the guys from the town.

Speaker 2 Was that Ben Affleck movie, The Town?

Speaker 2 They're shooting up the

Speaker 2 town. They just saw the town.
You didn't see the town? Where Ben Affleck, they have that big shootout at the end at

Speaker 2 Fenway? Okay. Where they rob Fenway after one of the games because all the cash is downstairs.
Oh, it's a great movie. It's a fantastic movie.

Speaker 2 But this is not that. This is not like, you know, a bunch of, and those guys were professionals too, but they got caught.

Speaker 2 In case you haven't haven't seen the movie yet, I'll ruin it for you. They get caught.

Speaker 3 Is it a true story?

Speaker 2 It's not a true story. No, I wish it was a true story, but it's not

Speaker 2 cooler if it was. It'd be a lot cooler if it was.
But this is a true story. Where do these diamonds go? How did they get there?

Speaker 2 When people do international art heists, which is another thing that happens all around the world all the fucking time,

Speaker 2 where do they go? Who gets them? Like, if you steal a Monet or a Rembrandt or the Mona Lisa, whatever.

Speaker 2 If you steal, which, by the way, you know, the only reason why the Mona Lisa is really famous? It's because it's been stolen a number of times and it's made international news. Oh, right.

Speaker 2 So that's why the Mona Lisa became this famous painting is because it was traded hands between thieves and original owners. And it just kind of like got this lure, this

Speaker 2 the allure of a painting. I mean, when you go see the Mona Lisa, I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm going to be honest. It's not super impressive.
It's just not impressive.

Speaker 2 On popular opinion, the Mona Lisa to me was not impressive. I did not, I didn't feel some kind of like

Speaker 2 autistic overwhelm about the Mona Lisa.

Speaker 2 The most valuable painting in the world. I was just, it looked like more like a postage stamp.
It was really small. It was really small.
It was kind of puny. And it was like, eh, okay.
All right.

Speaker 2 That's the Mona Lisa. There you go.
And people are,

Speaker 2 oh, yeah. They're clamoring to get a picture with it next to it.
You can't actually stand next to it.

Speaker 2 But where does this stuff go?

Speaker 3 There's, well, there's, I think there's a whole black market then for it because I was reading about a painting heist in another book. And yeah, there's like a whole

Speaker 3 underground black market.

Speaker 2 Like there's people who want that. Who wants that? They'll put it in their house.
They'll hang it in their house and they don't give a fuck.

Speaker 2 They're kind of pissing in the wind of the high market, the high art market.

Speaker 3 Right. Like like all Russian oligarchs, that kind of thing.
I mean, it's, yeah, mafia, whatever. It's the people of the underworld.

Speaker 2 The art in the collectible market, like and the jewel market is out of sane.

Speaker 2 It's an insanely corrupt and crazy thing.

Speaker 2 When you scratch the surface, I think most of us think about art and we're like, yeah, in a museum or a nice painting in someone's home or this person collects art or that person collects art.

Speaker 2 When you really start scratching the surface surface about art and jewelry, it's insanely connected to everything terrible in this world. Insanely connected.
I'm not saying that.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of money laundering goes on through it.

Speaker 2 Of course it does. Of course it does.
These paintings keep capturing more and more money. Art right now is on fire.

Speaker 3 And they have those big, huge containers, right, at different points in the

Speaker 3 U.S. Yep, at ports.

Speaker 2 At ports. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You've seen the movie.

Speaker 2 What's the movie? Not Inception, but the other one.

Speaker 2 i god damn it now i love it it's a great movie the one where they're all moving backwards

Speaker 2 do you know what i'm talking about

Speaker 2 no not memento uh the one uh hold on one second um

Speaker 2 the movie

Speaker 2 after

Speaker 2 inception

Speaker 2 excuse me uh no i love that director though oh god damn dude why this is like my favorite uh

Speaker 2 my favorite director inception

Speaker 2 um my favorite director nolan nolan christopher tenant tenant okay tenant so in the movie tenant

Speaker 2 they

Speaker 2 are in this facility at an international airport you know the one where they drive the plane through where christopher where christopher nolan actually drove a plane through an actual building to get that effect that is a port in it that like this like a safe house essentially for fine art jewels and anything else that's extremely valuable that is free from taxation because it doesn't officially enter the country.

Speaker 2 It's like this no man's land.

Speaker 2 And these are becoming very popular for people to put their jewels.

Speaker 2 And when they talk about all the security, like if someone breaks in, then carbon monoxide fills the room and you'll be dead or passed out in 12 seconds.

Speaker 2 These kind of security measures are in place and it's real. It's fucking real

Speaker 2 that this happens. And these are becoming more and more popular.
They're proliferating throughout.

Speaker 2 I cannot talk through.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 You know, you have those days when you wake up and your brain's moving, but your mouth's not? Yes. It's one of those days.

Speaker 2 But of course, I do this for a living, so I'm bound to have one of these every once in two episodes. I'm bound to have one of these every Tuesday.

Speaker 2 So these things are all around the world, and they are safe houses for some of the most crazy, expensive shit ever.

Speaker 3 And some people don't even, I mean, what I've read is that some people like, you know, buy it at auction or whatever and then just ship it to one of those places.

Speaker 2 Ship it to one of those places.

Speaker 3 It never sees the light of day.

Speaker 2 Never sees the light of day. It's taken care of by a bunch of nameless, faceless

Speaker 2 money. It's just for money.
It's just a way to exchange value. And that's when you think about it, that's what money is.
Money is the exchange of energy.

Speaker 2 And sometimes you put that energy into a thing, and then you can exchange that energy later on down the road. It's a safe house.

Speaker 2 And the way that the art market has exploded lately, it's absolutely insane. I want to talk about it a little bit more.
Let's take a break because

Speaker 2 I don't know when we go streaming, all of a sudden we go like, we we have like 40 minute segments watching i know we did we do we were so good at sticking to like 15 to 20 minute segments and now we're into doing three hour episodes i became joe rogan after i went on twitch on streaming with no one watching

Speaker 2 oh dude hey

Speaker 2 hey good to see you we'll be back

Speaker 4 Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB. And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.

Speaker 4 Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears, and I'll rejoice that my check is in the mail.

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Speaker 2 Okay, they're called free ports, is what they're called. Free ports.
I'm sorry, I forgot the name, but I looked it up in the other. Port, you had port right.
What's that? I did. I like the port.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so there's a couple of them. They're Geneva, Delaware, Thailand, Bangkok.
There's a number of these.

Speaker 2 And basically what they are is they are stuffed in ports or international airports where essentially they are their own no man's land.

Speaker 2 They can't be taxed by any particular country because they never touch any particular country technically. So, these free ports have been around.

Speaker 2 The Geneva one has been around since the late 70s, early 80s. And according to my research, Chat GPT, some of these, some of this art has been there since its inception.
No pun, pun intended.

Speaker 2 It's been there the whole time. This is a place where the ultra-rich, ultra-ultra-rich, store cash, essentially, store valuables, not necessarily liquid, but it's cash.

Speaker 2 And the arm market over the last 15, 20 years has gotten absolutely bonkers. Exploded, yeah.
With

Speaker 2 guys from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Dubai, the Middle East, you know, billionaires. China.
There's like a new billionaire every day arising in this universe, in this world that we're living in.

Speaker 2 And so there are hundreds, if not thousands, maybe tens of thousands of billionaires throughout the world, and they're all looking to put their cash somewhere safer than cash because, you know, that's what you do when you have

Speaker 2 like indispensable amounts of wealth. You have to spread that wealth out.
You don't want to be a one-legged table, as we say here at the commercial break. You don't want to be a one-legged table.

Speaker 2 So they spread their wealth out and they put their valuables at these free ports where it can't be touched.

Speaker 2 It's very unlikely to be broken into because it's some of the most secure facilities in the world. You go in, you mean nefarious harm, you're dead.
That's how it works.

Speaker 2 And by the way, since it's not a country, if you're dead, you're likely, it's unlikely it'll be investigated by anybody of rich people.

Speaker 2 It's like being in international waters, right? That's how it happens. And so these

Speaker 2 free ports are becoming very popular with the ultra-rich. And so you'll buy a Rembrandt for $100 million, but you'll never see it.

Speaker 2 You would never dare put that in your house where someone can just come in and take it. You know, your house is probably the least secure place that you'll ever be if you're a billionaire.

Speaker 2 And this just fascinates me to no end because this is how

Speaker 3 you won't even get to enjoy it, though. Listen.

Speaker 3 I guess you just say you own it.

Speaker 2 I like art, and I don't have a billion dollars, so I will never know. It will never be in my purview to use a freeport.
Right. Right? I mean, I can only hope.
I can only imagine.

Speaker 2 I can only imagine what it's like to have a free port or do a freeport thing or even contact a freeport for that matter. We should call a Freeport.

Speaker 2 Is there a Freeport? And I should ask. I think there's one in New York.

Speaker 2 No, just Delaware. Oh, Delaware.
Yeah, Delaware.

Speaker 3 Where it goes to start their company.

Speaker 2 Would you keep my Dick Tracy collection secure,

Speaker 2 Corpse? How much would it cost? Hold on one second. I am curious as to.
Do you have the phone number to the Delaware Freeport? Question mark.

Speaker 3 I am curious as to how much it costs to store something in the Freeport. Go.
And I mean, would you, I mean, they're different, I guess there's different sizes.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like a storage unit place, right?

Speaker 2 But for

Speaker 3 that's like ultra wealthy.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Hold on one second. Tell me about the security measures at these free ports.

Speaker 2 So I did find a phone number for the Delaware Free Port. Should I call them? I think we should.
And ask them, what is the charge for keeping my Dick Tracy collection?

Speaker 3 What's the going rate?

Speaker 2 24-hour CCTV. Oh, of course, right? Hundreds of cameras covering every angle.
Access control by biometric entry only. That's iris scan fingerprint and possibly multi-factor.
That's wild.

Speaker 3 That's like in the movies, too, where you see people like cut off somebody's hand, you know, to use it for yourself.

Speaker 2 To use it, yeah, that's right. Take out your eyeball.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're in Terminator now. We're in Terminator.

Speaker 2 Take out your eyeball and scan it.

Speaker 2 Climate control, environment, because of temperature and humidity, fire suppression systems, strict inventory and tracking, sound vibration sensors, motion sensors,

Speaker 2 irregularity sensors, limited access for any non-owner.

Speaker 2 If a non-owner wants to view or interact with an item, they have to be escorted under scheduled supervision and have to go through thorough reviews and security checks.

Speaker 2 Fences, walls, barbed wire, secure loading docks, controlled parking.

Speaker 2 Lasers. Yeah.
And by the way, that's just the stuff that's publicly available. Yeah.
You know that they have the most advanced security systems in the world.

Speaker 2 It's probably like White House level security, I would imagine. I wonder if it includes a gold sign that says Freeport,

Speaker 2 hand-painted by a two-year-old. Right, right.
That you get off that. Freeport.
That's right.

Speaker 2 I mean, listen, let me ask,

Speaker 2 how does a free port charge for housing an item? Question mark.

Speaker 2 We're all learning together on this one. I would be curious.

Speaker 2 Okay, and then I want to tell you about Selma Hayek. Oh.
And how she fits into all of this. Oh, I like her.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 she's got an ultra-wealthy husband.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Geneva is expensive but discreet. Singapore

Speaker 2 is bond villain-like facility

Speaker 2 that is known to be the most expensive.

Speaker 3 Well, Singapore is like one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Speaker 2 Yes, of course.

Speaker 2 They will charge you for everything from receiving an item to photographing it, cataloging it, moving it, opening it, resealing it, and sometimes even for just looking at it.

Speaker 2 Yes, and they will charge you by the square foot to house something.

Speaker 2 And they're not giving a.

Speaker 2 It's not going to give us dollar amounts, right? Oh, wait, no, here it does give you dollar amounts.

Speaker 3 If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Speaker 2 $5,000 to $10,000 per foot per year. Whoa, okay, so now let's think about that.

Speaker 2 Let's think about you get a 10 by 10 piece of art and then you have to take that 10 by 10 piece of art and you have to crate it and you have to weather control it and all that other stuff, right?

Speaker 2 So maybe you're taking up a hundred square feet, right? Vertically, but maybe you're taking up a hundred square feet. I'm sure that's how they charge.
100 square feet times $5,000.

Speaker 2 That's $7,000 per year, according to my math.

Speaker 2 That's $500,000 a year. I know.
A year.

Speaker 2 A year to house your Rembrandt. Holy shit.
But I guess when you spend $100 million on it, what does it matter?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, that's pennies.

Speaker 2 You're going to spend, you won't even spend 1% of that for two years' worth of housing. I mean, I guess, and it probably raises in value 4% or 5% every year.
Well, yeah.

Speaker 2 So I got to imagine it's worth it. These free ports are fascinating.
I love them. Very.
Where is the tour of the free port? I bet you don't have that on YouTube.

Speaker 2 Go.

Speaker 2 Mr. Beast, get on it.
Where are the fuck are you on?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Mr. Beast can afford a free port.
Where is that free port? Seriously, that's just insane to me that you charge that much. And then on top of that, that's just the charge for housing it.

Speaker 2 That's not the charge for doing anything special with it.

Speaker 2 Like if you have to rotate it or whatever every year, they'll probably charge you $30,000 because anytime they handle it, they are at liability.

Speaker 2 And the insurance they must carry in those places is probably actually, actually, maybe they don't even, maybe they're un

Speaker 2 there's some corrupt insurance company that does that insurance. What is that, AIG or whatever, that huge insurance,

Speaker 2 someone out there, prudential, someone out there?

Speaker 3 Well, I don't know. I mean, I guess, but also

Speaker 3 you, as the individual who owns the art, have it insured.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 You have double secret insurance on stuff like that. And who do you call for shit like that? I guess you call like the network of people, only the ultra well.

Speaker 2 What's that company in the UK that'll like insure your voice or your hands or your

Speaker 3 Lloyds of London? Lloyds of London.

Speaker 2 You know, I talked to an insurance agent one time about getting life insurance.

Speaker 2 And the guy pitched me vocal insurance because I was a podcaster. Okay.
And I said, you don't understand this podcast. What do you think? What do you think it's worth? $5 an episode?

Speaker 2 So Selma Hayek is here. How does Selma Hayek move into all this art dealing and jewel thievery thievery and all this other stuff? Selma Hayek,

Speaker 2 very famous

Speaker 2 Mexican actress who we all know and beautiful woman, and she's been in a lot of movies that I like.

Speaker 2 She is married to François Henri Penault. That's right.
The French businessman who heads up Gucci, Saint-Laurent, and Balenciaga. Balenciaga, yeah.

Speaker 2 Balenciaga, which has found themselves in a spot of bother lately. Really? Well, yes, because they have been

Speaker 2 some people find their promotion of their particular

Speaker 2 clothing lines to be skewed toward,

Speaker 2 I got to be, I want to be very careful about how I say this because I don't know what the rules of Twitch are yet, but children.

Speaker 2 Very young models. Very young models, but very young models, like children models.
And so there's been a lot of hubble

Speaker 2 over the last couple of years about people wearing it and the famous people and all this other stuff. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 2 But they also own an empire of art collection, art museums, and luxury goods.

Speaker 2 He owns one of the most famous and expensive,

Speaker 2 not only art portfolios in the world, but art dealers in the world. And there are a lot of these paintings that are sold to this top 1%.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They are being trafficked, sold through his art dealership.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 some people are observing that some of this art is also

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 super adult, let's put it that way. Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yes, one particular artist in general, one particular artist specifically, excuse me, is kind of being targeted for the art that they do.

Speaker 2 Some of it can't even be shown on social media. Some of it you can see because it's art.
It's not photographs necessarily, but it's just a little weird.

Speaker 2 Is it a current artist or are we talking about it? It's a current artist. Okay.

Speaker 2 And the paintings are trading for millions and millions of dollars. Kim K has some of this art.
And if you look at some of this art, it's a little strange. It just is.

Speaker 3 Speaking of stolen jewels, I was going to bring that up earlier. Remember, she had that.

Speaker 3 She had like a million dollars worth of jewels stolen from Paris.

Speaker 2 She did, right out, like walking down the street, right? No, it was out of her hotel. Oh, that's right.
Who is the

Speaker 2 remember? We saw that one video of the lady who was robbed of her jewels, like right on the, tried to be kidnapped off the street. And her dad, like, got involved, and he got almost died.

Speaker 2 And the whole, anyway, this, this world is really weird. And

Speaker 2 I start looking into Selma Hayek. When I'm doing some research for the Pink Panthers, I start looking into Selma Hayek, Gucci, all the, this guy, you know, Panal, who's really like

Speaker 2 the wealthiest of the wealthy. I mean, aristocrats.
It's

Speaker 2 the wealthy of the wealthy.

Speaker 2 Is it fun, though, is my question.

Speaker 2 Because when I start looking into Panal and I start looking into Selma Hayek, I start realizing just how connected they are to all of the other aristocrats these extraordinarily wealthy Bezos Musks

Speaker 2 Epsteins of the world and it really started to like

Speaker 2 it started to make me realize that there is this crust on the top of our society right now that is largely driving the narrative, the conversations, the things we think about, the things we do.

Speaker 3 Well, I was just reading something or listening to something the other day, and they were talking about all of these people that own,

Speaker 3 they own the media companies. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. If you think for one second, what we consume.
If you think for one second that Elon Musk bought Twitter because he is some champion of free speech,

Speaker 2 you're wrong-headed on this. Like Joe Rogan, I've heard him say this before, you know, thank you, Elon, for buying Twitter.
So now, you know, we can all say what we want to say.

Speaker 2 While I can appreciate that's an altruistic view on free speech, Joe, that's not why Elon bought Twitter. Elon bought Twitter because he can literally reach half a billion people with his iPhone.

Speaker 2 And that's why he bought Twitter. He can reach you, he can sway you, he can put his opinions out there in the world, he can literally move the earth left or right based on these conversations.

Speaker 2 He is very public about how he does this, as are a lot of people,

Speaker 2 politicians. They're very public about how they do that.

Speaker 2 I'd say public, meaning they're in public life, but then there's this whole upper crust that's not so public, like Panon, who's moving billions of dollars worth of extremely valuable goods and services all around the world without any of us paying attention to any of it.

Speaker 2 But it has so much influence on our day-to-day lives, and we just don't realize it. It is not a conspiracy theory, it is a practical way of moving through life when you are that well to do.

Speaker 2 You almost have to get in that game because you want to protect the, it's just natural to want to protect the things you have, to amass more, to play the games the other people in your circles are playing, to do the things that the other people in your circles are doing.

Speaker 2 And that includes owning media companies and fine art and trafficking in goods and services that are that are beyond comprehension in price, beyond comprehension in price.

Speaker 2 And the rest of us, no matter how hard we try, will unlikely reach that.

Speaker 2 It is nice to think about, but yeah, you might have a couple million dollars in your bank account and have a nice boat in Miami and a condo here and a townhome there, but you're not going to be moving in the pinal worlds.

Speaker 2 That's not going to happen or the Epstein worlds or any of that other stuff. The more that I read about these Epstein emails, the more I realize how interconnected all of it is.

Speaker 2 It's all interconnected. I'm not talking about, I'm not trafficking in conspiracy theory.
It's plain English in the emails and the text messages. He knew everybody.
Everybody knew him.

Speaker 2 And he was moving the world the way that he wanted to move it because they were asking him for favors and he was doing them for him. It's insane.
And

Speaker 2 when you are this rich and you can stuff your art and your shoes and your fine jewels and all the other stuff that's beyond priceless into a place where it'll never be taxed and never be touched, never be seen or heard from again until a rainy day when you need it or passed on to your kin, whatever it is, then

Speaker 2 the game is rigged. The game is rigged.

Speaker 2 I want to start a free port for people who are like lower middle class. Right.

Speaker 2 So I can take my $10 Target guitar and put it in there and charge like six cents a square foot per decade. You know what I'm saying? Oh, wait, that's called self-storage.
That's what that's called.

Speaker 2 Self-storage.

Speaker 2 I don't have to scan my retina when I go to Easy Store down the street.

Speaker 2 This is the way that this is the way that it is. And art and jewels,

Speaker 2 I almost think of the Pink Panthers like Robinhood a little bit. I'd like to think they're doing something good with that money somewhere.
Somewhere along the line,

Speaker 2 it's probably going to some Serbian

Speaker 2 overlord.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's a whole underworld and black market for a lot of this stuff. It's like too with the antiquities, you know, a lot of the stolen, you know, stuff from Greece or Italy or the Roman Empire.

Speaker 2 Yeah, or Egypt. Yeah.
Yeah, it's all

Speaker 2 interconnected in some way, shape, or form. There's a whole, there's things going on out there, guys, that we just are not aware of.
It's weird. And then yesterday.

Speaker 3 Well, then we're addicted to our TikTok. That's where we're looking at it.
That's instead.

Speaker 2 There it is. And there is the rub.
The rub is as long as we are interacting with this thing

Speaker 2 and watching Brian on Twitch, we're just, we're too dumb to know. We're too dumb to care.
We don't care because, you know,

Speaker 2 Patty Cake11707 just put out another reel that I like

Speaker 2 about kitty cats.

Speaker 2 Or my favorite streamers getting arrested for, you know, a little pot in his pocket. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Well, listen, it's, you know,

Speaker 2 I don't have the answers. I wish I had the answers.
I don't have the answers. Chrissy has the answers, but she won't tell me.
Jeff's been giving her the secrets. Jeff's in the 1%.

Speaker 2 Jeff flies privately. He's rich.
Well, once a year. Yeah.
He does.

Speaker 2 On his friend's plane. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Where's a rich guy when you need him? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I did meet him. He was great.
He took us to Pearl Jam. He took us to Pearl Jam.
He was a great guy. What's up with him? Yeah, he's in Hawaii.
He's in Hawaii.

Speaker 2 We need you here to pay our bills. Can you fund the commercial break for like three months? Three months and I think we're going to be okay.

Speaker 2 All right. Okay, let's take a break and we'll be back.

Speaker 4 Let me do something Brian has never done.

Speaker 2 Be brief.

Speaker 4 Follow us on Instagram at thecommercial break. Text or call us 212-433-3TCB.
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Speaker 4 Then watch all the videos at youtube.com slash commercial break. And finally, share the show.
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Speaker 2 That really wasn't that difficult now, was it?

Speaker 4 You're welcome.

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Speaker 2 Attention, attention. Chrissy has something to say.

Speaker 3 Well, during the break, I was looking at, I asked Chad to tell me about the black market for art. And it is.
Oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 I just asked. I just said she had to do the same thing.
All right, go.

Speaker 3 It's a hidden global underground economy where stolen, looted, forged, or illegally traded cultural objects are bought and sold.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 It's massive, hard to measure, and is intertwined with organized crime. Here's a clear breakdown of how it works and why it exists.

Speaker 2 If you want me to get into it, but well, let me, I'll share an anecdote and then we can break it down. And then if you want to, if you want to read over it, forgeries.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 You read into it, and I'll tell you a little anecdote, a personal anecdote.

Speaker 2 I was married, and when I was married, some of you have listened to the stories. I'm not going to repeat it, but I was married.
And one of the

Speaker 2 my uncle-in-law, I guess is the best way to put it, was running one of the world's most prestigious brands.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm not going to say it right this second, but you can probably research it and figure it out through the commercial break.

Speaker 2 He was running one of the world's most prestigious brands, watches, handbags, items that belts, wallets that sometimes cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2 It's the kind of place where you only find in the high-end malls, if you ever find them in a mall, and you would have to make an appointment to go in and see it, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, so this guy was running this company, this international company. And while he never talked to me directly, he would talk at someone else when he was talking to me because he didn't like me.

Speaker 2 I will share that he explained how difficult it is to wrap your head around the problem of stolen merchandise, antiquities, and things that are valuable, this valuable, where a brand puts a label on something and it becomes extraordinarily valuable because that label is on it.

Speaker 2 And then thieves want to get at it. So, first of all, that market.
Then, second of all, the black market for trading these goods is so

Speaker 3 billions of dollars a year.

Speaker 2 For his company alone, it was hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's not the world's largest company, but you would want one of their items if you could have one of their items.

Speaker 2 Let's put it that way. Okay, tell me more about how this stuff gets trafficked throughout the universe.

Speaker 3 Well, let's see. So, how the black market operates is the supply chain generally looks like this.
Thief or looter acquires the piece, middleman smuggles it and hides its origin.

Speaker 3 Dealer or corrupt expert provides false provenance. Paperwork.
Yeah. In buyer acquires it quietly.

Speaker 3 Often, wealthy private collectors, criminals using art to store value, and investors speculating on its future legality.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Crypto transactions often involve cash, crypto, private sales via encrypted channels, free ports.

Speaker 2 Free ports. That's where all the stolen art is.
Maybe some of the jewels, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Who buys the who buys it? Not just villains in movies.
Real buyers include collectors who want more rare items without scrutiny.

Speaker 3 Investors, betting pieces will be legalized later, which I don't know how that works.

Speaker 2 I guess there's some way that you can, like over generations, you can then claim that you somehow came into. That's true.

Speaker 2 But I would imagine the person who originally owned it would want it back even if it was generations later. Yeah.
Yeah. Like the Jews who got all the

Speaker 2 people in Europe who got all of the stuff taken from them. You know, they it was like a whole they had whole

Speaker 2 I think units dedicated to returning art. Yes.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, and then other people that buy it, criminal organizations using for money laundering, and then people who don't know the art is illegal.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's the whole thing.
So I have a friend on Facebook.

Speaker 2 I mean, I have a friend. And then we're on Facebook together.
And a couple of weeks ago made a post about one of these art

Speaker 2 collectives where you can buy into the collective for a piece of art. I've seen that.
And then as it raises value, it's like stock. You're buying stock in this piece of art.

Speaker 2 And then as it raises value, your piece of this.

Speaker 2 particular piece of art then raises value and you can trade it in and if there's you know supply or demand all that other stuff and he had made ten thousand dollars in a little over three years he put in like a thousand dollars it was worth like his piece of this particular piece of art yeah it got traded at christie's and then the current value was like twelve thousand dollars wow so he made like ten thousand dollars in three years now not a ton of money but what if you had put a hundred thousand yeah exactly and he was 1.2 million dollars that's a big return on investment when you 10x your investment well that the art just keeps going up and up and up it really does listen art is the new real estate.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, didn't Snoop Dogg buy a piece of Meta World or something like that? Remember he bought a house in Sims or something, didn't he?

Speaker 2 Meta World. Yeah.
And I keep on getting these phone calls about buying my house on this,

Speaker 2 buying my house on some electronic map or something. Really? Yeah, that somebody else was going to buy.
And I'm like, okay, I fucking care.

Speaker 2 I care.

Speaker 2 Yeah. There's a world out there.
It's been replicated based on Google Earth. And now you can buy property.

Speaker 2 You can claim your property. You can buy it.
You know, some properties are $10. Some properties are $1,000.
And I'm like, the fuck, I'm going to buy my property again online.

Speaker 2 Cares?

Speaker 2 Exactly. But, you know, I had a friend one time who said, listen, URLs are the new real estate.
Right. And okay, great.
So.

Speaker 2 He bought, he just went on this buying spree. For years, he was buying all kinds of URLs.
He would get a whole list of URLs and he just purchased them a whole cloth, right?

Speaker 2 You know, $500, he'd buy 5 million URLs or whatever. And then occasionally somebody would come to him and say,

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'll pay you $1,000 for that or $500 for this or whatever. So I'm trying to do

Speaker 2 After the Break, which is, by the way, I'll explain more about that in the future. But there's one episode out there in case you want to listen to it.

Speaker 2 It's a good one. It's a good one.
So maybe I'll, maybe it'll just be the one episode podcast, like 18 million other podcasts.

Speaker 2 So he buys all these. So I'm trying to do After the Pod.
And the first thing you think about is, of course, I got to get a website to make sure that people can go to the website.

Speaker 2 And so I go to find afterthebreak.com. And I find that it is being sat on by a private individual.
And so, you know, GoDaddy will. contact that person or whatever.

Speaker 2 And it ends up being a company, like an investment company. So the guy calls me right back.
I send him an email. He calls me like 15 minutes later.
He's like, you want to buy afterthebreak.com?

Speaker 2 I said, yes, I do, but just depends on how much it is. He said, we'll sell it to you for $19,000.
And I was like, $19,000?

Speaker 2 I don't even think the commercial break has made that much money. I'm not going to buy it for $19,000.
I go, it's for a podcast, man. I'm not going to do it.

Speaker 2 He's like, what if it was $17,000? And I'm like, what if it was $17?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 That's for my language.

Speaker 2 There's probably a reason why you haven't sold after the break yet. And it probably has to do with your $19,000 asking price.
I'm not a REM brand. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 I'm going to put my URL in a free port, lock it up, and keep it humidified? That's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, listen, Art and Jewels, it's the fascinating world of the art and jewel heists.

Speaker 2 I could talk about it all day long. I really could.
I've been down the rabbit hole. It was actually going to be an episode of After the Break.

Speaker 2 So i did a lot of research as you can clearly hear i did a lot of research around it it's the it is fascinating it is fascinating i mean we could get into it about vegas robberies we could get into it about all kind of different stuff that's maybe maybe once a in a while we'll go into that i think we should heisty mode uh-huh figure out a new heist

Speaker 2 everyone loves a good heist story because

Speaker 2 Done correctly, like the Pink Panthers,

Speaker 2 it's not the feel-good story of the year, but it's kind of the anti-hero story of of the year.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that robbing a small mom and pop jeweler is a good thing, but these aren't mom and pop jewelers. These guys have cabillions of dollars worth of jewels sitting in their room.

Speaker 2 You know what I want to like side note real quick. Try not to get too ADHD here, but there's a guy that's currently on Instagram.

Speaker 2 He goes into these jewelry shows. Okay, jewelry show, there's 50 jewelers selling all kinds of

Speaker 2 diamonds, golds. They're kind of like conventions.
They're shows.

Speaker 2 they trade usually at wholesale. And he'll go in and he'll take 15 minutes and he'll look at someone's entire case.
We're talking millions of dollars worth of shit.

Speaker 2 And he'll say, I'll buy it for $2.2 million.

Speaker 2 All of it. And the dealer's like, you're going to buy all of this for $2.2 million?

Speaker 2 So he makes them a wholesale offer right there without ever doing any investigation, except with his eyeball. Sometimes counting.
You can see him go through the process.

Speaker 2 And then he'll just make a purchase of all of these diamonds, gems, emeralds, gold, white gold, all this stuff right off the rip. And it's fucking fascinating.
I'm like, damn, dude.

Speaker 2 You got big balls.

Speaker 2 He doesn't put that part in the actual Instagram story, so I don't know, but I'm assuming he's a dealer that then goes and sells on wholesale.

Speaker 2 He is relying on his ability to eyeball something and get a deal, right?

Speaker 2 And he's hoping that, like all human beings, that by throwing a big number out there, you get fascinated enough to take the offer. Now, it works about 50% of the time.

Speaker 2 50% of the time they say yes, 50% of the time they say no, believing that they're getting hoodwinked into something that then they will regret down the line.

Speaker 3 Especially if he's filming himself doing it, too.

Speaker 2 He films himself doing it. I mean, someone else is filming him doing it, but he's got such huge testicles to walk in and just, how much money has he lost? How much money has he won?

Speaker 2 That's the reel I want to know. Tell me how much money you're making off of each of these things.
Are you actually getting a good deal or are you doing this for views?

Speaker 2 Are you ultra-rich and doing this for views?

Speaker 2 Which, whatever, either way, you know, listen, I watched a guy from the UAE one time mail out thousands of dollars worth of American cash to anybody that sent him a TikTok message.

Speaker 2 I'd love to talk to those people and see if they ever got their TikTok cash. And that, my friends, is where the real money is.
Right there is

Speaker 2 Saudi Arabia. Oh, well, yes,

Speaker 2 the UAE, Saudi Arabia. They're about to buy Paramount Pictures.
What? They're about to buy Paramount Pictures.

Speaker 3 I thought that was just sold, that one guy.

Speaker 2 Sky Dance.

Speaker 2 But it's being funded by Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 2 So welcome to the show, my friends. Welcome to the show.
Media.

Speaker 2 Media. That's what it's all about.
Control the narrative.

Speaker 2 Control the narrative. Control the cash.
Control the world. That's what you need to do.
And so they're playing their cards and they're playing the long game. I mean, look, they bought live golf.

Speaker 2 and that certainly, I mean, there's major implications there. Who doesn't want to watch washed-up golfers on WB? Well, now they own the WB and Live Golf.
So there you go. It's all

Speaker 2 a grand conspiracy come full circle.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Settle down.

Speaker 3 Settle down. That was fun.
I love talking about this stuff, too.

Speaker 2 I do too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Reading about it, watching it, talking about it.

Speaker 2 I love a good heist movie.

Speaker 2 I love a good heist story.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the real stories are so much more fascinating than anything that's on cellular. It's true.

Speaker 2 It is.

Speaker 3 There's one that was just on Netflix that I watched a little while back, and he,

Speaker 3 this little network of people

Speaker 3 went into the Diamond District up in New York and just a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Nah, I wouldn't want to fuck with that Diamond District. Those guys look tough.
They do. Yeah, those guys look tough.
There's another guy that's out there that does it.

Speaker 2 He's in the Diamond District, and he's trying to make a name for himself on Instagram. So he goes in, and he's a negotiator on other people's behalf.

Speaker 2 So someone will want to sell a watch, like a really nice watch, and he'll go, for $1,000, I helped you, you know, I helped you get $6,000 extra on that watch.

Speaker 2 But I don't know if anyone's told him, but the ones where he fails, he probably shouldn't put them up there because he looks like a jerk off. And he fails way more than he wins.

Speaker 2 And it might be, you know, it might be rage bait. I'm not really sure, but

Speaker 2 he's clearly one over his head. Clearly enough.

Speaker 2 212-433-3 TCB. 212-433-3822.
Questions, comments, concerns, contents, ideas? We have a phone again, so there you go. The phone's working one more time.
And I bought 286 messages to respond to.

Speaker 2 I'll get a rod to him. Maybe tonight.

Speaker 2 Join us on our streaming channel. Not next week, Thanksgiving, we're off.
But we're going to be streaming at the commercial break on Instagram, TCB podcast on Twitch.

Speaker 2 At the commercial break, I mean, at the commercial break on YouTube, tcb podcast on twitch but at the commercial break on instagram also is our handle over there and at the tcb podcast on tick tock um

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 tcbpodcast.com that's where you can find all the audio all the video and your free sticker you want a free sticker go to the contact us button drop down menu says i want my free sticker

Speaker 2 Give us your address and we'll send one to you.

Speaker 2 What else? What else is there to say? It's been a fun episode. I have.
And why don't we do it again?

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 anybody that's interested in watching,

Speaker 2 give us 15 minutes.

Speaker 2 There you go. Give us 15 minutes and we'll come back.

Speaker 2 Youtube.com/slash the commercial break. All right, Chrissy, that's all I can do for now.
I think so.

Speaker 2 I love you. I love you.
Best of you. Best to you.
Best to you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time, Chrissy, and I will say, we do say, and we must say.

Speaker 2 Goodbye.

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