Arrested yesterday by the judiciary police in Marseilles, Daft Punk could well be behind bars for a long spell.
Fans of the Parisian electronic duo needn’t worry however as this incident had nothing whatsoever to do with music. A gang of aggravated burglars going by the same name as the famous electro-pop pair due to their dark suits and motorbike helmets have finally been stopped in their tracks. The gang was already responsible for jeweller’s heist in the centre of Montpelier on the 30th of May last was arrested by the PJ (Police Judiciaire) of Marseilles on Wednesday morning.
The gang was intercepted in the middle of another raid on a jeweller’s in Narbonne. Arriving on two scooters at the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in the southern French town, the four men – who were armed with a pump-action shotgun and a side-arm – smashed the windows of the jewellery shop in question and threatened the witnesses who were present, before fleeing the scene with a significant haul. The modus operandi was identical to that of the Montpelier raid three weeks previously.
The Marseilles squad had been informed of the gang’s intentions for a number of weeks and a few weeks later, five suspects were arrested while returning home in an armoured van. In a follow-up search of the house, authorities said that they found “their costumes, bullet-proof vests, two arms corresponding to eye-witness descriptions and jewellery presentation boxes that had apparently been taken from the Narbonne jewellery store”.
The suspects are currently being held and must explain themselves in the context of several recent jewellery heists in the South of France, most notably that of a Carcassonne jeweller store dating from December 2012. And even though their booty is a good deal less than that of the recent hold-up at Brussels Airport (a job that brought €350 million to the crooks in ten minutes), the “Daft Punk” gang are destined to spend a hell of a long time locked away.