Police in Ohio are reportedly on the lookout for a gang that robbed $140,000 of merchandise from a Louis Vuitton store.
The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said that a group of as many as 10 armed and masked robbers entered Kenwood Towne Centre in Kenwood, Ohio, on Wednesday afternoon and pushed past employees at the luxury store before stealing "every item on the showroom floor," according to Fox affiliate WXIX.
Security camera images show the suspects entering the shopping mall, running from the store with items in hand, and fleeing to a gray SUV and a black sedan after completing the heist. The sheriff's office said that the group was last spotted heading north on Interstate 71.
The public was asked to provide tips to help investigators catch the suspects. Kenwood is a suburb of Cincinnati, a little more than 10 miles north of the city. The next major city north of Kenwood is Columbus, which is roughly 95 miles away on the interstate.
Newsweek reached out to the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office for comment and additional information.
Gangs of thieves targeted high-end consignment stores in New York City earlier this year, reportedly making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury merchandise.
Suspects swiped almost $500,000 in jewelry and luxury brand handbags during a February heist in the Upper East Side neighborhood, according to the New York Post. A similar robbery at a different shop in the same neighborhood reportedly resulted in a $100,000 loss this month.
A string of smash-and-grab robberies involving large groups of suspects were also reported last year in California and Illinois. Thieves targeted luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Nordstrom department store, as well as independent stores selling high-value items.
Louis Vuitton stores in the Chicago area were repeatedly targeted by gangs of masked thieves whose brazen robberies were caught on surveillance video. Police said that multiple robberies involved thefts of over $100,000.
Robberies at high-end stores in San Francisco last November caused at least six shops in the city's Union Square to be temporarily boarded up, including a Louis Vuitton. Additional robberies were reported in the Los Angeles area.
Danny Ryan, owner of the independent San Jose, California, store Kickz, Inc., told Newsweek that he closed shop and focused on online sales to avoid becoming the next victim of the robbery gangs.
"We're right in the heart of the shopping area of San Jose, and there was a bunch of smash-and-grabs 100 yards away from us," Ryan said last December. "I felt it wasn't going to be worth it to continue and give the thieves that opportunity to come smash-and-grab us."
"We have a lot of high-end merchandise," he added. "We're pretty well-known. It was only going to be a matter of time."
The company's brick-and-mortar store is set to reopen next week, according to the Kickz, Inc., Instagram page.
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Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more
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