Everything We Know About the $4.5 Million Ring That Was Stolen from Kim Kardashian
The 20-carat diamond was given to her by Kanye West just last month.
Kim Kardashian West was reportedly gagged and bound while men dressed as police stole more than $10 million worth of jewelry from her Paris residence late on Sunday night.
The prosecutor's office said a ring worth an estimated $4.49 million and other jewelry valued at $5.6 million were among the items stolen. It's unclear which ring in particular was taken by the thieves, but latest reports suggest the assailants were targeting the brand-new super-size Lorraine Schwartz diamond ring Kim was given by her husband Kanye West in September.
E! News has confirmed this "second" engagement ring (she was given a 15-carat engagement ring, also by designed Schwartz, when West proposed in 2013) is made from a 20-carat emerald-cut diamond, and Kim hasn't exactly been shy about flaunting it on social media. A recent selfie, taken three days before the robbery, showed the ring in all its glory, and quickly received 1.2 million likes on Instagram.
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for police in Paris said this public promotion of the ring could have driven the thieves to target Kim.
"Clearly when you have a star like Kim Kardashian who has more than 48 million followers on Twitter...I think this could have happened abroad just as easily as in Paris," Johanna Primevert, chief spokeswoman for the Paris police department, told the Associated Press.
"It was really the celebrity who was targeted, with possessions that had been seen and noticed via social media, and it was these goods that the attackers targeted," she added.
Kim's Paris selfie wasn't the first time the ring had been seen on Instagram, though. Designer Schwartz shared video footage of the star wearing it, alongside her original engagement ring, three weeks ago. Schwartz confirmed it was D-Flawless and type 2A, which are said to be the purest and most valuable type of diamonds in the world.
Kim has now safely returned to New York, noticeably without the ring, but questions around what happens next to her jewelry remain unanswered. According to a security expert, a rare diamond owned by one of the most high-profile celebrities in the world will be extremely difficult to sell.
"The stone will most likely end up broken down into smaller pieces," Lee Henderson, an intelligence officer at SaferGems, told CNN. "Otherwise it will be very difficult to sell. Nobody will want to handle it."
The police investigation into how this shocking robbery took place continues.
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