It is the unmistakable sign of 1% wealth: a gaudy watch with its inner workings on show, displayed on the wrists of billionaires, sports stars and rappers.
But Richard Mille watches have become must-haves not only for princes and potentates; international criminals are now going to extraordinary lengths to steal them.
So coveted are they that thieves are not just committing street robberies.
They are scanning social media to find who is wearing them, posing as ultra-sophisticated buyers and even flying their marks across the globe to snatch the watches, experts told The Post.
And the crimes are credited with fueling a boom in luxury watch theft. The total known value of stolen high-end watches is now estimated by the London-based Watch Register at $1.25 billion.
Richard Mille’s name might not be as widely-known as Rolex, Patek Phillipe and Jaeger-LeCoultre, and is certainly not as old: the first watches from the French-born, Swiss-based Mille were only released in 1999. But since then they have become a must-have.
Michelle Yeoh wore one worth $1 million when she won her Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in March; Jay-Z has sported a $2.5m model; the Sultan of Brunei bought two of a limited edition of five; Rafael Nadal has multiple models named for him; and when “Succession” needed to signal Kendall Roy’s billionaire bona fides, he wore an RM 67 Extra Flat.
The brand was only introduced in 1999, making it a newcomer to the luxury watch world, but its French-born, Swiss-based creator has fueled interest by making tiny production runs, and having big-name sports champions including Nadal put their name on new models.
Mille designed his watches as a break from convention, with their inner workings on display, colorful cases, unusual features, such as a tiny magnolia flower petal rhythmically opening and closing.
Among his other designs: watches named for golfer Bubba Watson which record the torque on each golf swing; ones inspired by Formula 1 racing cars down to their use of carbon-fiber; and the RM UP-01 Ferrari which is the thinnest mechanical watch in the world, just 1.75mm, or the same thickness as a quarter.
So in demand are stolen Richard Milles that they have even been advertised, discreetly, on Instagram.
Christopher Marinello, C.E.O. and founder of London-headquartered Art Recovery International told The Post that having specialized in recovering Nazi stolen art for Holocaust families, he was now working on getting back watches in vast numbers.
“All of a sudden, more and more of these high-end Richard Mille watches started showing up stolen, being reported to me every single week, from holiday locations like Monte Carlo, Milan, London and New York,” Marinello, an attorney who worked for 20 years in New York, said.
“And more of these watches were getting press about their values, and criminals read the press, and keep on top of values and they had become aware that these watches had astronomical prices – and then they started stealing them.
“I’ve recovered watches for major celebrities, for Formula 1 drivers, for influencers, people I can’t name because I’m an attorney.
“Most of the recoveries are confidential because the victims don’t want to be embarrassed and they don’t want anyone to know they have these watches.”
The latest publicly-disclosed Richard Mille heist occurred in broad daylight over the Labor Day weekend when Formula 1 Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, Jr., still in his racing uniform after having come in third place at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza was robbed of his RM 67-02 Alexander Zevrev, valued at $629,717.
Luckily, the street robbers were foiled when Sainz and a bodyguard chased the thieves, helped by passersby, and caught them until cops arrived.
He was not even the first driver in his team to be targeted. Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc had the $600,000 RM 67-02 named for him stolen in the Italian seaside resort of Viareggio in April 2022.
He was approached by two people sporting motorcycle helmets who asked Leclerc for a selfie, then snatched the timepiece off of his wrist and fled.
Not all of the RM heists are carried out by street thieves, according to Marinello. Some are highly sophisticated jobs involving much complex planning, he reveals.
“I had one criminal in Milan who corresponded with a guy in Singapore and asked him to bring his watch collection, which included Richard Mille watches, to Milan. He agreed to pay for his airfare and for his hotel bill and stay.
“So the guy flies from Singapore with the watches and ends up losing everything. He told me he thought he could trust the guy because he paid for the airfare and the hotel.”
Another current “scam” involves hotel employees who clandestinely work with gangs and tip them off that “a guy just checked in with an RM on his wrist. It gets stolen while he waits for his room to be made ready.”
Other high-profile victims have been robbed in the street at gunpoint, as happened to Kim Kardashian friend and celebrity food influencer Jonathan Cheban near his home in Engelwood Cliffs, NJ in 2020, and even at VIP events.
Last year in Miami, during a Formula One race, at least four wealthy fans had their RM watches — valued in total at an estimated $2 million — slipped off their wrists in a crowd by slick thieves, recalls veteran watch dealer Roman Sharf who himself was sporting a Richard Mille that day.
One of the alleged victims was real estate developer and financial influencer Grant Cardone whose $750,000 RM, which he had shown himself wearing on social media sites, was stolen.
He subsequently sued the organizers, including Formula 1’s parent company Liberty Media, claiming he had been targeted in the VIP area, but dismissed the case earlier this year.
According to the lawsuit, thieves “orchestrated a massive distraction” to steal his watch – one of many RMs in his collection – after gaining access to VIP areas and following Cardone and his wife.
Sharf, 53, C.E.O. of Luxury Bazaar, in suburban Philadelphia, and star of a popular YouTube wristwatch channel, told The Post: “I didn’t get taken because I’m always aware of my surroundings.
“The way it goes down is there are thousands of people at the event and someone bumps into you in the crowd and takes the watch off you without you even knowing. They can do it with a handshake,”
Ironically, Mille posed with musician Pharrell Williams and Jamaican 100m and 200m sprinter Yohan Blake to show off their watches at the event.
There have been no arrests after the Formula 1 heist, but the robber who targeted Cheban in 2020 is now serving 19 years that theft and a string of grabs of Richard Milles from jewelry shops in New York and New Jersey.
Marinello said, “75 percent of the stolen Richard Mille watches are not insured, and police departments are not staffed and properly funded to deal with these crimes. I like to say understaffed, the polite way of saying lazy.”
He told The Post he’s currently working on a case involving the theft in Athens of a Richard Mille worth $3 to $5 million that showed up for sale on Instagram – being sold by a Chinese national operating out of a Hong Kong apartment, Marinello’s investigation discovered.
“I wasn’t responding in my own capacity, and the guy demanded $3.1 million in cash from me. There are just five of those watches in the world, and the Sultan of Brunei has two of them.
“These stolen watches go where the money is. I find them in Hong Kong, in the United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, in auctions in Geneva – the latest hotspot for stolen watches because there are some uncooperative auction houses that will sell anything.”
Sharf offered a blunter explanation for why thieves love Richard Mille. “The Richard Mille watches are targeted because they are among the most expensive and sought after — and they are easy to fence.”
