In a Paris courtroom, the 2016 heist that shocked the world faces its reckoning, with Kim Kardashian set to confront the “Grandpa Robbers” who stole $10 million in jewels and left her with lasting trauma.
Nearly nine years after masked robbers stormed Kim Kardashian’s Paris hotel suite, bound her at gunpoint, and fled with $10 million in jewelry, the trial of the 10 suspects dubbed the “Grandpa Robbers” began on April 28, 2025, at the Palais de Justice. The case, blending celebrity spectacle with gritty criminality, has gripped France and beyond, as Kardashian prepares to testify on May 13 in a courtroom charged with tension and regret.
On October 3, 2016, during Paris Fashion Week, five men—some disguised as police officers—forced their way into the Hôtel de Pourtalès, a discreet luxury residence in Paris’s Madeleine district. They overpowered the concierge, Abderrahmane Ouatiki, handcuffing him and demanding access to Kardashian’s suite. Inside, the 35-year-old reality star, clad in a bathrobe, was bound with zip ties, gagged, and placed in a bathtub.
“I thought I was going to die,”
she later told David Letterman in 2020. The thieves, in a six-minute robbery, robbed Kanye West of a $4 million diamond engagement ring, Cartier bangles, and Lorraine Schwartz earrings, among other things, worth $9–10 million. They fled on bicycles and foot, leaving behind a traumatized Kardashian and a single clue: a $24,000 diamond-encrusted cross necklace dropped in their haste.
The suspects, aged 35 to 78, earned their “Grandpa Robbers” moniker from their surprising ages and seasoned criminal pasts. Led by alleged mastermind Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, nicknamed “Old Omar,” the group included Didier “Blue Eyes” Dubreucq and Marc Boyer, a 78-year-old who supplied the gun. Their planning, described as sloppy, relied on outdated tactics, underestimating Paris’s CCTV network and modern DNA analysis. Arrested in January 2017 after DNA traces on zip ties and the recovered necklace, the gang’s members range from career criminals to Gary Madar, the 35-year-old brother of Kardashian’s chauffeur, accused of leaking her whereabouts.
At the trial’s heart is Yunice Abbas, a 72-year-old with Parkinson’s disease and a 20-year prison record. As a lookout, Abbas stayed downstairs, never facing Kardashian but receiving a bag of stolen jewels. Fleeing on a bicycle, a flat tire and a tangled bag led to his fall, scattering gems across the street. A passerby later found the $24,000 necklace in a gutter, the only recovered item. In 2021, Abbas co-authored I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian, boasting of the heist and blaming Kardashian’s wealth-flaunting social media posts.
“She was throwing money away, I was there to collect it,”
he told Vice in 2022. Yet in court on April 29, 2025, a trembling Abbas struck a different tone: “I regret it, not because I got caught, but because there was a trauma.” His royalties are frozen, and he earned just €70,000 from the heist, far less than promised.
The trial, set to run until May 23, charges the defendants with armed robbery, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy. Kardashian’s in-person testimony, alongside her stylist Simone Harouche and the concierge, is expected to draw a media frenzy. The courtroom, sketched by artists due to France’s no-camera rule, hums with contrasts: seasoned criminals with nicknames like “Old Omar” face a jury, while Abbas’s apologies clash with his past bravado.
For Kardashian, now 44, the robbery was a turning point. “I became so paranoid,” she said on Keeping Up With the Kardashians in 2017, describing agoraphobia and a fear of being alone. She swapped flashy jewelry for borrowed or faux pieces and scaled back her ostentatious social media presence. Her lawyer, Michael Rhodes, says she holds “tremendous appreciation” for France’s judicial system, but her testimony will likely revisit a night she feared rape or death.
