At 2.30am on October 3, 2016, Yunis Abbas, a 63-year-old French-Algerian, made his way to the Hotel de Pourtalès in Paris to rob one of the richest women in the world: Kim Kardashian.
Along with four other men in their 60s and 70, all dressed as policemen and wheeling pushbikes, the elderly conspirators cased the joint beforehand, entered Kim Kardashian's rented apartment, and held her at gunpoint. They zip-tied her hands and ankles, dumped her in the bathtub and promptly made off with £7 million ($13m) of jewellery and two mobile phones.
It was a shocking crime, reportedly set in motion after the reality star marked her Paris arrival with an Instagram photo featuring a £3.5m diamond ring. But a new book - written by Abbas, who is currently awaiting trial - reveals just how madcap their audacious plot was. I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian, his recollection of the biggest robbery of an individual in France in two decades, is by turns bizarre and fascinating; it could easily inspire the script for a Hollywood action comedy. Think Taxi meets Heat.
To wit: in the book, published today, Abbas describes how within moments of cycling off with his loot he got a flat tyre, catapulting him (and his goods) over the handlebars and on to a Paris pavement. A €30,000 ($50,000) pendant was left behind in the fracas; then a phone rang - Kim's, with an incoming call from singer Tracy Chapman. Abbas tossed it into the Canal de l'Ourcq and sped home to face his wife, Farida, prone to chiding him for late returns.
Abbas, now 67, and his four accomplices, who were arrested in January 2017, are all awaiting trial, but he plans to plead guilty to all charges against him. His book was written, as he says, to set the record straight, frustrated by his portrayal as "a very uninviting character ... It's sad really".
He adds he's proud to have fulfilled the kind of heist "every mobster dreams of" - in spite of claiming that he "knew nothing about this girl before taking part in the robbery... I was closed off from the universe of reality TV stars and influencers."
Abbas claims to have been recruited by a longtime criminal mastermind nicknamed Le Pince (Aomar Ait Khedache) when Kardashian was just "the wife of an American rapper", who would be in possession of a $4 million engagement ring, Kanye's €40,000 Rolex, plus jewellery loaned by haute couture houses she had visited while in Paris for Fashion Week.
According to the book, Le Pince's "granny and grandpa spies" allegedly conducted multiple reconnaissance missions on Hotel de Pourtalès, where they found little security and the communal door - as is common in Parisian buildings with courtyards - was left open around the clock. (Khedache, who has previously admitted to involvement in the robbery but denies being the ringleader, is awaiting trial.)
As for the security cameras, they were found to be mostly a deterrent - after all, this is where the high-fliers like Prince, Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio had stayed to ensure their privacy. That night, a network of sources, including a brother of the owner of the car rental enterprise used by the Kardashian-Wests, fed the gang live updates on their movements and, at 2am, it was clear that Kardashian was alone.
Kanye West was on a flight to play at a festival in New York, sister Kourtney and bodyguard Pascal Duvier were at a club, and Kris Jenner, her mother, had settled in for the night at nearby luxury hotel, Plaza Athénée.
A concierge, on hearing banging at the door and cries of "Police!", let the gang in and, claims Abbas, asked "Is it about the cocaine, gentlemen?" He was promptly tied up, and Kardashian sought out.
For all his promises to "set the record straight", Abbas fails to explain how he knew what really happened to Kardashian, maintaining instead that he remained on the ground floor and never spoke to his co-conspirators ever again - although, "as seasoned thugs, we talk to each other with just our eyes".
Much of the book is dedicated to Abbas' life story instead. He describes himself as a family man who, growing up in the darkest of the Paris banlieues, was crushed by his circumstances.
A passionate apprentice mechanic, he gave most of his hard-earned salary to his mother before turning to a life of crime to pay off his debts; he committed his first crime aged 18, stealing 100,000 francs from the safe of a mini-market, for which he served two and a half years in prison.
That would be just the start of a laundry list of petty crimes - his criminal record is included in the postscript. "After six years of injustice with irreparable consequences, I am already a hardened mobster in my head. Like most of my peers, I'm not even afraid of the police anymore. When you get to this point, and you don't have much to lose, it is often the beginning of the end."
During his attempts to lie low and avoid capture Abbas began "researching" his victim - by binge watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Soon followed the resurfacing of a historic heart problem - possibly due to growing guilt - which forced him into hospital, where he was told he would need a new heart valve and an urgent coronary bypass.
Healthy enough to collect his share of the cash from the sold jewellery, Abbas met the group in the car park of Hospital Saint-Antoine in Paris' 12th arrondissement. His share was "a nice little bonus before the New Year's Eve celebrations".
Abbas was arrested at home on January 9 2017, after the FBI matched DNA found on the concierge's cuffs with archival material from a hold-up he did in Belgium. "The problem with your past is that it sticks to your soles throughout life. No one escapes it." He cannot help but lament his situation, though; having worn two pairs of gloves - his "perfectionist side" in action, as he's someone who "cares about every little detail" - a part of him clearly felt he could evade justice for good.
Why Abbas has sought to write such an incendiary confessional while awaiting trial (which could be delayed beyond this year as a result of the pandemic), other than to assure people he and the "papi-gangsters are just like other sixty-somethings," remains unclear.
But I doubt this is the last we'll hear of Yunis Abbas. Will he get a hefty payout for the rights to his life story while behind bars, just like faux-socialite Anna Delvey (real name Sorokin), whose tale is set to become a multimillion pound Netflix drama? If the script isn't already in motion, it certainly will be soon.
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