Recently, the case of a 24-year-old Chinese woman who stole a museum in Paris at night shocked France, and also attracted strong media attention at home and abroad!

What happened?

The incident happened at 5:50 pm on September 15, 2025. A 24-year-old Chinese woman, like normal tourists, entered the Museum of Natural History in Paris. However, she chose the last batch to enter and prepared to implement her theft plan!

She has been observing for a long time near the museum before, and she thinks Monday closed day theft is the best time to do because Tuesday to Sunday night museums have infrared patrols.When Sunday closed museum radio sounded, she quickly flashed into the top compartment of the bathroom with a black shoulder bag hidden under her feet.

At eight o¡¯clock, the security closed the door, and she became the only living person in the museum.

After 7 hours of hiding in the bathroom roof of the museum toilet, at 1 am in the morning, she took out the corner grinder and started cutting the first steel door. The tool was purchased from a pentagon store in the suburbs of Paris, and in order to ensure the quality of the tool, the receipt of the purchase of the cutting machine showed that she had returned the goods twice, eventually selecting the German-made diamond cutting sheet.

Later, police surveillance showed that she was wearing industrial-grade noise-reducing headphones and stopped to observe every ten minutes of cutting. The 5-cm-thick steel door was cut through a 40×60-cm gap, which took the China woman 47 minutes.

After the first thick steel door opened, the woman entered the interior corridor. Below her, she faced a bulletproof glass showcase and a vibration alarm system. In order not to "startle the snake", she prepared the tool oxyacetylene welding gun. She first wrapped the periphery of the glass with a wet cloth to prevent heat diffusion, controlled the flame temperature at 3000 degrees, and soon burned out a round hole within 8 minutes. Police later found three gas tanks at the scene, two of which were completely depleted and one with 15% remaining.

Finally, the women got what they needed, and four natural gold pieces were taken in a row: Bolivian gold (a few hundred grams), Ural mountain gold (1 kg), California gold (1.5 kg), and Australian gold (3 kg).

Later, the police found that the woman didn't touch the crystal specimen adjacent to the gold nugget at all, indicating that she had a clear goal of committing the crime. The gold nuggets weighed 5.98 kilograms when they were packed into a special climbing bag, and she also installed a lead plate at the bottom of the backpack to distribute the weight.

The woman¡¯s escape route was also carefully calculated: it took only 6 minutes from the back door of the museum to the botanical garden trail to the metro station, but she remained in the museum until 4 o¡¯clock in the morning. Monitoring showed her several times close to the window to observe the patrol car, eventually cleverly choosing the guard to leave the gap.

After interrogation, the police learned that one week before committing the crime, she entered the museum seven times as a tourist. According to the data of the mobile phone base station, she had sat on the bench opposite the showcase for three consecutive days and stayed for five hours. The shopping record shows that she also bought the same walkie-talkie as the security guard, which is used to monitor patrol dynamics.

After the police arrested her, they found that the balance of her bank card account was less than 1,000 euros, but there were three bitcoin exchange records in the week before the crime, totaling 30,000 euros. The remittance route was transferred to an underground money house in Guangdong via Singapore, and the payee information was vague. The police are currently investigating.

The natural gold stolen by the woman has a special historical background: the Ural gold nugget was donated by Tsar Nicholas I in 1833, and the raw ore came from Russian-occupied China territory; the California gold nugget is related to the history of gold mining by Chinese workers in the 19th century. The outside world believes that this kind of target choice by China women has a symbolic meaning.

After the woman was arrested and brought to justice, the police conducted technical analysis and found that the woman's tools for crimes were very professional: the angle grinder was modified with a noise reduction device, and the welding gun was equipped with a precise temperature control valve. The police also found her rented studio in a warehouse in the 13th District. There was a museum structure diagram on the wall, and 16 camera blind spots were marked.

Interpol's tracking showed that she had arrived in Spain at noon on September 16th, during which the gold nuggets were partially smelted. When she was arrested, the gold nugget with her was 85% pure, which was consistent with museum records, but there were remelting pores on the surface, indicating that she had used a portable furnace.

The woman is currently detained in a prison in the suburbs of Paris, where lawyers have applied for bail for ¡°excessive psychological pressure.¡± The judge believes that her transnational escape experience is highly dangerous and has rejected the application.

At the moment, limited information shows that the woman was born in January 2001, at the time of the case, 24 years old. She holds a valid Chinese passport and enters France with a short-term tourist visa (Schengen visa) at the end of August 2025.

This case also triggered discussions on cross-border judicial cooperation. The European arrest warrant took only 14 days to complete extradition, but the 5 kilograms of gold nuggets have not yet been recovered. Interpol has issued gold content testing guidelines to Asian ports to prevent stolen goods from being smuggled into other regions.

This case also exposed the security loopholes of French museums: there were no dynamic sensors on Monday closed days, and the patrol interval reached 2 hours. In the same period, the Louvre theft also used a similar time difference to commit crimes, which raised questions about the French cultural security system.

At this time, it also aroused controversy among domestic netizens. Some people accused her of committing crimes that embarrassed China. Some people thought that cultural relics in Yuanmingyuan were stolen by the French. The woman chose a symbolic gold nugget to steal in Paris, which may have deeper significance.