Last night, Kim Kardashian West was reportedly robbed of nearly $10 million (US dollars) in jewelry at a Parisian hotel. The assailants, dressed as police officers, were escorted to her room by a concierge, where they proceeded to tie the star up at gunpoint, snatch her jewelry, and escape on bicycles. When Kanye West got the news while performing at a New York concert, he abruptly ended his performance, leaving the crowd in confusion.
As expected, the media storm surrounding the event has been unending, and that’s simply because the Kardashian family itself is millennial royalty. Like it or hate it, Kim K has as much cultural pull on the world as any star or political figure—thus, it should be no surprise that her being held up by dudes with guns and taken for millions evokes the same type of reaction that would happen if somebody heisted the Queen of England.
That said, Kim K is not the first celebrity to have their wealth targeted by a would-be Ocean’s 11. From rappers who got their chain snatched to calculated heists on family homes, we rounded up some of the most prolific celebrity robberies so you don’t have to Google it for yourself.
Drake
It’s unclear if the Boy actually buys “really big rings” or not, but Drizzy himself was indeed jacked of $3 million in jewelry when a man broke into his tour bus in September during the Arizona stop of his Summer Sixteen tour. According to TMZ, Travion King, the guy who was charged with theft, was caught when a woman reported a man had broken into her dorm and asked to have sex with her. Police told TMZ that King was reportedly high on PCP and was in the “wrong head” space, but was just looking to “smoke and fuck.”
Despite video of him having a shit fit outside of his tour bus after the robbery, Drake later denied that the robbery ever happened to paparazzi. He has admitted to being robbed in Toronto in 2010 after being allegedly set up by a girl he was seeing, but details around the exact nature of the event are murky (AIN’T NO TELLLLING).
Bon Jovi
Fan of living on a prayer Jon Bon Jovi was the victim of a brazy $100,000 burglary on his Jersey Shore home in 2011—a theft that was actually part of a larger string of robberies by Nicholas Tracey, a 22-year-old at the time who had stolen an additional $200,000 of possessions from other victims before being caught by police. Court papers obtained by the Associated Press showed that most of what was stolen from the rocker’s home was jewelry, but I’m sure there was also some kind of sick 90s Bon Jovi tour merch that Tracey took with him before he dipped.
Paris Hilton
Someone who was once the queen of everything and Kim K’s own mentor, Paris Hilton was also taken for her a whopping $2 million of jewelry in 2010. Mind you, she wasn’t home at the time that the stash of precious objects went missing from her home, but her story was equally as high-profile as Kim’s due to the involvement of the “Bling Ring” heist gang—a group of teenagers that reached international fame and later had a (terrible) movie made about them due to their endless number of celebrity robberies.
Trill Sammy
Although most people have (probably, but also, definitely) never heard of him, Houston rapper Trill Sammy reportedly had his chain snatched last week at a concert in Greensboro, North Carolina, after he leaned into the crowd from the stage. Although it’s unclear who actually took the chain, video has surfaced of the rapper patrolling the streets of Greensboro after the concert with a group of other dudes, apparently in search of the chain snatcher, and Soulja Boy has now stepped into to help negotiate the chain back into Sammy’s possession. Let’s hope the thieves know how to hit the Superman.
2Chainz
Tity Boi himself was famously robbed in 2013 by a group of dudes armed with magnums in broad daylight. 2Chainz denies the robbery to this day, but his bodyguard confirmed that the video of the robbery attempt was indeed real.
According to MTV, the rapper and his crew bolted shortly after being confronted (despite having guns drawn on them), but were fired at multiple times. While no one was hurt, 2Chainz did hand over a number of items, including his wallet (which he says was empty), and it’s not clear if he actually lost his signature chains or not (if he did, he certainly replaced them quick).
Lindsay Lohan
Brexit expert, actress and one of my first childhood crushes Lindsay Lohan was, like Hilton, also caught in a Bling Ring heist—this time back in 2009—and lost around $130,000 of clothes and jewelry from her home because of it. One of the Bling Ring’s main members, Alexis Neiers, was actually in the same cell block as Lohan during the actresses time in jail, although they reportedly never spoke to each other.
Rod Stewart
In 1982, Rod Stewart actually had to help a dude steal his Porsche when the guy couldn’t start the car properly, but said that he was only concerned with the safety of his three-year-old daughter, who was with him at the time. The car cost $50,000.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus—ie. the millennial generation condensed into a tiny human being—has had her home burglarized three times—once for jewelry, once for a Maserati, and just last year with what has only been described as a “bundle” of her and her brother’s property by TMZ. She wasn’t home on any of these occasions, but I’d recommend that she personally pays Billy Ray to start guarding the home with the help of fellow washed-up white celebrity dads Kid Rock and Steven Seagal.
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