"Guilt? No I Don't Care" — Guy Who Tied Kim Kardashian Up In A Bathtub At Gunpoint Then Stole $10 Million Worth of Her Jewelry: "She Was Throwing Money Away, and I Was There To Collect It."
Michael Loccisano. Getty Images.LA TIMES — A man involved in the armed jewelry heist targeting Kim Kardashian in 2016 has no remorse about the incident because the beauty mogul was “throwing money away.”
In an interview with Vice about high-profile robberies enabled by social media, Yunice Abbas, one of the five men who allegedly robbed the reality star, detailed what he and his collaborators did to carry out the operation that allegedly involved holding Kardashian at gunpoint, tying her up and locking her in a bathroom at her rented apartment during Paris Fashion Week.
You don't need to be a Kardashian superfan who never misses an episode of KUWTK to remember hearing about this story way back in 2016 — Kim K tied up in a hotel bathtub and held at gunpoint while a group of thieves stole $10 million worth of jewelry. Maybe you also saw the sitdown she did with Letterman a few years after, talking about the effect the robbery had on her emotionally, the crippling anxiety and paranoia that forced her to keep a "low profile" (in Kardashian-World terms at least) for a while afterwards.
The group of 12 thieves — who made off with "High-priced bling…including two Cartier diamond bracelets, a gold Jacob necklace, and earrings with diamonds made by Loraine Schwarz" — and their accomplices (including the elderly men they used for recon, since "what’s more reassuring than the elderly, who are as peaceful as they are anonymous, to gather a maximum of information on scene?") were eventually tracked down one by one. The alleged "mastermind" of the plot has since written an apology to Kardashian from jail.
But, in a strict departure from every crime book you've ever read, the most famous — or infamous — of the robbers was NOT the mastermind, but one of the muscle guys: Yunice Abbas. Abbas was also in jail, but the gun-owning violent criminal is currently out due to "health concerns" while awaiting trial (Europe — they're just like us!)
You may be wondering why there is no "allegedly" anywhere in those sentences despite the fact he is "awaiting trial" — what makes me so confident of his guilt, that he was directly responsible for sequestering Kim Kardashian?
Which brings me to the book published by Abbas last year: "I Sequestered Kim Kardashian."
Eric Fougere - Corbis. Getty Images.In the "tell-all" Abbas goes into extreme detail over every part of the robbery, from the planning to the execution to the getaway (when Abbas, who only nominally knew Kardashian because of her ties to Kanye, has a legit fangirl reaction to Tracy "Youuuu've got a fast car" Chapman calling Kim's phone, which by this point was in his pocket). He recounts how they got in to the building, how they overpowered and tied up the concierge and other security, along with a step-by-step walkthrough of the robbery itself. He even mocked Kardashian and her secretary for calling 911…“the emergency call number for the US. Not very efficient when you are in Paris.”
Perhaps worried that the jury deciding on his guilt or innocence might forget the book he published confirming his guilt, Abbas granted an interview to Vice to just kind of reiterate everything, make sure there was absolutely no doubt about what he did:
…Abbas is among those awaiting trial in the case but was released from jail early because of health reasons. He told Vice he was caught because he left his DNA at the scene when he overpowered a guard at the Hôtel de Pourtalès.
“I took his hands, I tied him up, and by doing so I left my DNA,” he said. “As I already had a record, it was very easy to trace me.”
Abbas also detailed how he and the alleged robbers gained access to Kardashian’s apartment building and room.
“We got in through the little door that was open on the inside,” Abbas told Vice. “As soon as we got in, we took control of the concierge. We overpowered him. We tied him up. But then we looked for the keys of the bedroom she stayed in.
“I stayed downstairs, but my two colleagues went upstairs with the concierge to go to Madame Kardashian’s room,” he said. “Then they picked up the jewelry. They went downstairs. Ms. Kardashian’s secretary called for help. But she called 911 in the United States, which scared us, which made them lose a lot of time. And when we got out, there was a bunch of police outside who didn’t know anything about the robbery.”
The part of the Vice interview garnering the most headlines, however, is Abbas's response when asked if he feels bad at all about robbing a woman at gunpoint:
While Abbas believes that Kardashian was traumatized by the attack and said that “you don’t come out unscathed,” he doesn’t seem fazed by it.
“Since she was throwing money away, I was there to collect it, and that was that,” he told the interviewer in French. “Guilty? No, I don’t care. I don’t care.”
Abbas also told Vice that he vaguely knew of Kardashian because of her estranged husband, rapper Kanye West. But he did catch a glimpse of her TV show.
“I saw one of her shows,” he said. “I thought, ‘She’s got a lot of money. This lady doesn’t care at all.’”
"If she didn't want to have her property stolen from her under threat of death, she shouldn't have been owning it" — my paraphrase, but that's the gist of it. "She was asking for it." When people mention "blaming the victim," I believe this is what they mean by it.
Let me first say that my anti-Kardashian bonafides are pretty well-established and, in my opinion, beyond reproach. When Abbas, or the thousands of hot-take-havers on social media, say Kim K shouldn't be flashing her wealth around, constantly flaunting it on her Instagram along with her location, you won't find much of an argument from me. That it's stupid and dangerous is obvious to anyone with half a brain and an ounce of awareness, and the loss of material things like diamonds and pearls for someone that immensely wealthy won't have me shedding many tears into my pillow.
But when some glorified thug criminal says she was "throwing money away" and he "was just there to collect it," I feel the need to draw kind of a hard line there. I mean Kim wasn't out on the balcony throwing diamond necklaces to the little people and showering the peasantry with fine jewels — she was tied up in a bathtub with a gun pointed at her, being robbed. She feared for her life, feared she would be raped. I know "trauma" is used these days to describe everything down to a stubbed toe or missing the train (a trend that the Kardashians and their ilk have no doubt contributed to and amplified), but if we're talking real life capital-T Trauma, this is arguably it. Call me a typical Barstool misogynist but I don't believe a young mother deserves to be bound with ropes and forced to beg to not be raped and murdered no matter what the balance in her bank account. And that flashy, expensive jewelry — whether you like how she got the money for it or not, it belongs to her. It's her property. Being dangerously stupid and unsafe enough about it to lead to an armed robbery doesn't morally justify the ones doing the armed robbing. This moron and his Twitter fans acting like she deserved it — why, because she's rich? There's a word for forcibly confiscating the property and wealth of others under the belief that they have too much for themselves. And the definition doesn't change, no matter how much of an obnoxious brat someone who got famous off a sex tape is.