Hollywood-style heist: Gold worth $20 million vanishes through a brick wall at Los Angeles jewellery store

In a scene straight out of a heist movie, Love Jewels — a Los Angeles jewellery store — was cleaned out in a jaw-dropping robbery late on Sunday (April 13).

The price tag? An estimated $20 million in stolen merchandise.

It was not an average smash-and-grab.

At around 10 pm, under the cover of night, an unknown number of thieves pulled off an operation. Their entry point: A gaping hole smashed clean through a three-foot brick wall — the perfect secret passageway from an empty neighbouring building.

“They tunnelled through multiple levels of concrete into the target location,” LAPD officer David Cuellar told reporters.

The robbers moved like ghosts. They slipped through their hand-carved tunnel, cut the store’s security cameras, and disarmed the alarm system without triggering an alert.

“They were able to disable the cameras, disable the alarm and they were able to get into both the safes,” the store owner’s son revealed to NBC 4. “They probably had five, six hours in here.”

By the time Monday morning came around, Love Jewels staff arrived to a scene of eerie silence — and empty safes.

At first, authorities thought the loss amounted to $10 million. But the store’s owner later told local media that the true cost was closer to $20 million.

Adding salt to the wound: none of it was insured.

On Tuesday, staff tried to patch up the damage — literally — by bolting a metal plate over the infamous hole and cleaning up the wreckage.

“They probably went in there every night, slowly dug it until there was enough room for them to get in,” the store owner’s son speculated to NBC 4.

"It took over 20 years for my father to accumulate all that and overnight it was all taken," the son told Fox 11. "Mostly just gold, chains — we specialise in gold, so chains and bracelets. And especially with gold today, it's at an all-time high. It's a bad hit. I was telling them let's get out of the business. In the gold business, you reinvest everything so all our money was what was in the safe,” he added.

Then came the heartbreak.

"We're penniless, literally penniless," the store's owner told NBC 4.

Now, both the LAPD and the FBI are on the case, chasing shadows and whispers in the hope of recovering the missing fortune.

Until then, Love Jewels stands as both a crime scene and a cautionary tale — a glittering empire undone by a tunnel in the night.