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It shouldn’t be this easy to steal $180,000

Posted at 5:06 PM, Dec 12, 2014
and last updated 2014-12-12 17:06:48-05

New York, NY -- Surveillance video shows a couple stealing a $180,000 fur coat from a store in New York.

The suspects, affecting a stylish shopper look, move smoothly toward the furs, where the man takes a coat off the rack.

If you blink, you might miss the move as the man apparently shoves the fancy fur up under his winter coat.

The surveillance video shows these cool customers taking a look at another coat, and then, with a certain theatrical flair, the man points at something across the room, just before exiting upscale retailer J. Mendel, police say, with one astronomically-expensive fur coat.

"I’m actually surprised at how easily they were able to get in, grab the fur, and leave without being challenged,” said Manuel Gomez, with Mg Security Services.

Gomez, a former FBI Special Agent, says he believes someone had cased the joint before this high-end heist.

"They must have been here before they must had noticed and realized that security is lax and that the furs are not locked away that nobody's going to be on top of them at all times as they should be in a high end store like this."

"This coat is very similar to the one that was taken by J. Mendel,” Marc Kaufman, fur dealer.

Kaufman believes the stolen coat -- likely Russian sable, which is among the world’s finest -- had been tried on previously by someone who wanted a deal.

"I think this coat was stolen for a particular customer that gave the order to some underground market to actually steal the coat,” he said.

A few days earlier, the same couple, police say, hit another luxury store just two blocks south on Madison a few days earlier, making off with a coat worth $20,000.

“I think it's incredible that people are brazen enough to walk into a store and just walk out with such an expensive item."