Nazmul Haque Helal had received false burglary alarm alerts on his phone in the past. However, on June 30, he was in for a shock when he arrived at his wine shop in Venice, California, just before 5am. Approximately 600 of his most valuable bottles had been stolen from the cellar of Lincoln Fine Wines, a store he had owned for 15 years. What added to the mystery was a 5-foot by 3-foot hole in the roof above where the bottles were kept.
According to the Washington Post, surveillance footage showed a white truck without a license plate arriving at the scene shortly before midnight. A masked man got out, accessed the roof, and cut the hole. The thief then used a rope to enter the wine cellar, which was kept at a chilly 55 degrees, and obscured the camera with tape. Store manager Nick Martinelle compared the heist to something out of the movie Ocean’s Eleven. Interestingly, no alarm was triggered at that point. The thief used stackable crates from the cellar to go in and out of the hole. It wasn’t until around 4am that the alarm finally went off.
By that time, the thief had made his way towards the front of the store and had smashed a glass liquor shelf. Nazmul Haque Helal stated that the intruder dropped a bottle of whiskey and escaped through the ceiling. Approximately a third of the 2,000 bottles in the cellar were stolen, including the most valuable ones with price tags, such as a $4,500 bottle of Chateau Petrus 2016. The Los Angeles Times reported Helal’s emotional devastation at losing years of work overnight. However, his customers have shown support by offering hugs, condolences, and increasing their orders.
CNN revealed that Helal is creating a list of stolen items and plans to share it with local buyers and auction houses in the hopes of catching the thief if they attempt to sell the stolen wine. Martinelle described the crime as “creepy” due to the thief’s knowledge of the roof and the fact that the most valuable bottles were stored in drawers, rather than being displayed on shelves.
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