Louvre heist suspect is social media star and former museum security guard, reports say

One of the men arrested on suspicion of stealing €88m (£77m) of crown jewels from the Louvre museum is a minor social media star with a passion for motorbikes who has worked as a security guard at the Pompidou centre, French media have reported.

Identified by justice officials as Abdoulaye N, the 39-year-old man was arrested at his home in Aubervilliers, the suburb north of Paris where he was born, six days after the 19 October heist. He faces charges of organised theft and criminal conspiracy.

A court in Bobigny, north of Paris, on Wednesday postponed his trial in a separate case in which he is accused of damaging public property, saying the conditions for a “serene” hearing could not be met due to “media attention and recent events”.

Maxime Cavaillé, one of the lawyers representing the suspect, said his defence would be “extremely vigilant” about “respect of the presumption of innocence” and aim to protect their client’s rights and privacy despite the extraordinary nature of the Louvre case.

Four suspects are in custody in relation to the theft, including three thought to have been members of the four-man gang who used a stolen truck with an extendable ladder and freight lift to reach the first-floor window of the museum’s Apollo gallery.

Two of the gang smashed an unsecured window and two glass display cases before descending in the lift and fleeing on motorbikes driven by the other two, in a brazen daylight heist that lasted less than seven minutes from start to finish.

They fled with eight pieces, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem set with 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds that once belonged to the wife of Napoleon III.

French media have reported that Abdoulaye N – whose DNA was reportedly found on one of the display cases and on items abandoned at the scene, which included gloves, a high-vis vest and disc cutters – is suspected of being one of the pair who broke into the gallery.

Le Parisien newspaper and BFMTV said the suspect was known on social media as Doudou Cross Bitume, a well-known neighbourhood figure who had released numerous videos on Youtube and, more recently, TikTok and Instagram.

Some videos, with the slogan Toujours plus près du bitume (Always close to the tarmac), show him performing tricks on motorbikes in Paris and Aubervilliers, near the Stade de France sports stadium. Others offer muscle-building tips.

In several of the videos, Doudou Cross Bitume is shown riding a Yamaha TMax, the particularly powerful make of mega-scooter used in the Louvre robbers’ getaway. Investigators working on the case have not yet recovered the stolen jewels.

Le Parisien reported that the suspect had worked for the logistics firm UPS, Toys R Us and as a security guard at the Pompidou Centre art museum. Neighbours told the paper he was “helpful”, “decent” and a man “who wears his heart on his sleeve”.

According to several French media outlets, Abdoulaye N’s criminal record features 15 offences, including possession and transportation of drugs; driving without a licence; and causing danger to others. He was also convicted of robbing a jewellery store in 2014.

The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, has said the suspect had told police little but had “partially admitted” his involvement in the Louvre heist. Another suspect in the Louvre case arrested last week had been convicted in the same 2014 robbery, she said.

Beccuau also said the suspects’ profiles “do not correspond with those one generally associates” with high-level, meticulously planned organised crime, prompting French media to speculate that they may have been hired by an unknown mastermind.

The suspect had been initially scheduled to stand trial on Wednesday on minor charges of breaking a mirror and damaging the door of the prison cell where he was detained in 2019 as part of a separate theft investigation, which later cleared him, Associated Press reported.