Thieves staged what is being described in the mainstream media as a "Hollywood Heist" to steal some US$26K in Apple laptops from a Best Buy location in South Brunswick, New Jersey. NJ.com reported that the thieves used a gas pipe to climb onto the roof of the store, cut a hole in the roof with a saw, a suction cup to remove the roof piece, and then rappelled down to where the laptops were in such a way where the security cameras in the store were obscured by banners, all without touching the floor.
"[The thieves displayed a] high level of sophistication," Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman, told NJ.com. "They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out."
All told, the thieves managed to scoop up 20 Apple laptops, devices that tend to maintain their value when being sold in the open market.
"The tools they had to bring, the alarms they had to circumvent -- it certainly required a lot of high-level planning," Detective Ryan said. The police department said the thieves were comprised of at least 2-3 people, and that they may have been hitting other locations, as well.