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Updated 12.35pm
REALITY TV STAR Kim Kardashian was tied up and robbed at gunpoint at a luxury Paris residence by assailants disguised as police who made off with millions in jewellery, French police and her representative have said.
A spokeswoman for Kardashian said she was “badly shaken but physically unharmed” after the assault, which occurred at about 12.30am Irish time this morning.
Police said 35-year-old Kardashian had been “tied up and locked in the bathroom” of the residence in the chic Madeleine district of Paris, near the city’s main department stores.
A police source said a ring worth around €4 million and a case of jewellery with a value of €5 million were stolen. Two mobile phones were also taken.
Police said five men were involved in the robbery and two of them had entered Kardashian’s bedroom.
Kardashian’s spokeswoman said “two armed masked men dressed as police officers” had burst into her room.
Another member of the gang had restrained the building’s security guard during the robbery but he was unhurt, police said.
‘Family emergency’
On hearing the news, Kardashian’s husband, rap superstar Kanye West, abruptly cut short an appearance at a festival in New York, citing a “family emergency”.
It was not immediately clear whether either of Kardashian’s two children with West were with her in Paris at the time of the robbery.
She flew out of France today after being questioned by police about the robbery.
Kardashian, one of the most recognisable US celebrities, had made a series of high-profile appearances at Paris Fashion Week.
She had attended catwalk shows by Balenciaga and Givenchy yesterday and had also appeared at a launch for Armenian-American jewellery designer Siran Manoukian.
The Los Angeles-born designer and socialite, a longtime friend of Kardashian, was launching her own clothing label Maison Siran.
A spokeswoman for the label said it had not loaned Kardashian any of its jewellery and none of it was missing.
Today, journalists and fans gathered outside the red painted door of the luxury residence where Kardashian had been staying.
A waiter at a cafe opposite said: “Only stars stay there. Kanye West, Jay Z. Kim Kardashian has been there for a week, I have seen her coming and going.”
Kardashian was last week approached in Paris by Vitalii Sediuk, who carries out pranks on stars. He was caught on video attempting to kiss her behind in an apparent social commentary.
She has been a fixture of US celebrity news for more than a decade after the leak of a sex tape and on the back of reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Swift exit for Kanye
West learned about the assault as he headlined a music festival in New York.
He took to the stage half an hour late but in dramatic fashion with a fireworks show overhead as he ripped into songs from his latest album The Life of Pablo.
However, an hour into his set, West said mid-song, “I’m sorry, show’s over,” and quickly left the stage.
A festival representative took the microphone to declare a 10-minute intermission before quickly returning to say that West had a “family emergency” and had already left the venue.
The festival later issued a statement praising West for a “great show” and said: “Our thoughts are with West and his family.”
West had flown to Paris to appear with his wife and her sister Kourtney Kardashian on Thursday during a one-day break in his North American tour.
Kardashian and West are frequent visitors to France. In 2014, they threw a lavish private party at the Versailles chateau near Paris during a tour of Europe to celebrate their wedding.
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I’m so sick and tired of all these scams going around.
One of those scam messages came into the message part of one of my bookings, it was under legitimate correspondence from the hotel. I sent an email to booking.com to ask them to warn others etc. and to see if they would have it removed. I haven’t heard anything back from them
@Caroline ORiordan: looks like an inside job! How else would they know both booker and hotel info!
@Sinead D: Probably from a low level employee at the hotel.
@Sinead D: Absolutely, very suss, they had all the details correct, even addressed me by my name.
Happened to my other half, it had all her details, the reference, and the dates she’d booked the hotel. The only thing that was off was the price she’d paid, and that was only off by about €20. The only reason we knew it was a scam was because it went into her junk folder.
Contacted the hotel who confirmed it wasn’t them and contacted booking.com to complain because the level of detail they had meant there had to be a data breach. Their response was pretty much oh it was one of our partners (basically blaming the hotel). Our hotel was in a different country to the one in this story so can’t even say it was the same hotel, clearly some leak on booking.coms side!
@Abi Dennis: Booking.com is now too big for its Boots! Cracks are starting to show
Nothing is safe anymore online.
@Emer Daly: It never was@
@Emer Daly: literally nothing?
This happened to me but luckily I doubted it since it was a Russian address. But how did they send the mail in the app?
@Davy Smith: Booking.com seriously compromised
@Davy Smith: They didn’t. If you were to receive a letter in the post with a printed envelope bearing the White House logo and containing a letter with a fancy White House letterhead apparently signed by Biden would you believe it?
What if the postmark showed it was posted in Cork?
Anyone with a laser printer and some knowledge could send such a letter.
Likewise anyone with a computer and some knowledge can send an email purporting to be from anyone they choose. It’s as simple as typing
From: president@whitehouse.gov
In the right place and knowing how to send an email directly through a relay. I’ve done exactly that as a joke before now, I was of course careful to make it an obvious joke on the first of April.
@Steve O’Hara Smith.: The difference is that the scammers somehow knew that the targeted person had made a booking at that hotel. This information could only come from compromised systems at Booking.com or the hotel..
I also received 3 of this emails, one of the hotels in question sent me an email to alert me of the scam. Nothing from booking.com and when I queried it with them and said id received 3 different emails on future bookings they said they’d get back to me, needless to say, I’m still waiting.
Why should booking.com pay Lee for being slow and making an inept decision clicking on a link that’s clearly a fake site link. I would expect the scam is the hotel staff itself either selling the data to scammers or doing the scamming themselves and nothing to do with the booking.com platform. I would avoid the hotel itself.
@Dave Cummins: it wasn’t just some random email, according to the article it came via the booking.com app, hence booking.com may hold a proportion of responsibility if their app wasn’t secured sufficiently
@Dave Cummins: Wise after the event..surely
It almost certainly did not come from booking.com and certainly not from their app – nothing comes from the app. Faking a from address is very easy for anyone who knows how email works, although these days you have to find an entry point that won’t reject the spoof and is trusted by others, but there are plenty of them.
The only way to check is to view the raw source of the email, or at least all headers, and examine the chain of “Received by” headers identifying the mail transfer agents it has been through, they cannot all be spoofed. Then you have to know what the legitimate chain looks like.
Same happened to a friend three weeks ago also hotel in Milan. Still awaiting a response from booking.com
It’s not from booking.com it’s from booking.complete
@Leonski: Not even that booking.complete(some digits).online.
I can’t see the digits while replying.
@Leonski: they got the message from booking.com app so they must have thought it was safe
Look at the url and it’s a scam. Silly lad.
@B6Tr3OgE: ah come on some ppl wouldn’t know that.
@Emer Daly: How could they not it’s right there in front of them.
@Emer Daly: they’re the ones that get scammed then aren’t they? If Lee is out there he should get in touch with me. I’ve a bridge to sell him!
People in Gaza have no water, food and medication. People from Ukraine are now picking and choosing which country gives better benefits to go to, hardly a behaviour of someone who is surviving and fleeing war. Some people are more important than others. Americans conveniently forgot about Afghanistan , they are forgetting Palestinians now too. Ukrainians are only supported because of the power battle with Russia. No such thing as all human beings equal and worthy of having basic needs covered
Fed up of all the scams.
Booking.com owe the customer nothing, if he’s going to get anything back it’ll be through the bank.
The link is fairly obviously fake. Cancelled is spelt wrong. There is so much information out there to help people prevent been scammed, I genuinely don’t get how people get screwed over by something like this which is far from the best attempt I’ve seen
@Colm O’ Shea: Also it starts Dear Guest, that’s a big giveaway!
There is an app called Scamadviser I recommend you all look at it. Possibly one of the best tools for checking scam sites.. while they look OK thus helps big time..
Claiic spelling error should have alerted the person,, “canceled”
@Sinead D: Hew know right goud Ingrish!?
@Sinead D:
It wouldn’t be unusual for American English to be used on a huge platform like that
The scammers are thinking of new scams every day.
@Emer Daly: yes but that’s an old and very obvious scam – why would they need new scams when there are still people who will fall for that one?
Should’ve know better. Clear scam link to be fair..
If this happens to anyone they are protected under the Payment Services Directive 2. Get in touch with your bank and ask to raise a chargeback. It will take a week or two but you will get your money back.
To process a debit/credit card payment someone needs to get approved by a credit card processing company (Stripe/Braintree/PayPal) and this is their liability. The processer will either recover the funds or it is their loss that they will have to stomach.
In short your bank will do all the work. Just get in touch and ask to raise a chargeback.
@Keith Crowe: Booking.com took an additional €50 from my bank account without my permission and PTSB say they can do nothing?
@Rose Sheridan: call PTSB again (sounds like someone just said what they needed to say to get you off the phone). Ask for the visa/MasterCard department and say you want to raise a chargeback due to an unauthorized charge on your card. You are covered under PSD2.
You may be asked for some proof etc, in particular that you have tried to resolve it directly with the merchant.
As background I have worked for Braintree and PayPal (both card processors).
@Keith Crowe: Thanks Keith..good advice
Lee can’t expect a refund, if he was a victim of a fraudster. Checking the email address is the only way to ensure you are not being directed to a fake website. A web address with extra words or digits after the Company name, should raise suspicions.
@Patrick MC Dermott: Checking the email address tells you NOTHING. From addresses are trivially easy to spoof.
the last couple of reservations iv made through booking . com the owner has contacted me and we agreed to cancel the reservation pay cash on arrival at a slight price drop on my end
cut out the middle , was going to say man but ill probably get deleted, middle person.
@John Duggan: risky thing as you have no proof it will be there and vacant when you arrive?
@Rose Sheridan: yes I was thinking the same thing good luck with that approach – leaves him wide open to being scammed for full amount.
Booking.com has gone down hill a lot. They were very good but not anymore. Not even competitive
The biggest issue is the IT departments of a lot of companies are not willing to keep up to date on the latest ways to prevent scams. Also theres no real monitoring to see if state or private companies who hold peoples information are adhering to the latest security and prevention. Its not gonna stop these scammers but I think a fair portion of the issues with online scamming is companies being over confident or almost arrogant around how secure they are
Pay cash over counter…the way to book.
Booking.com is a terrible website. Surely someone can do better.
@John Doyle: You are free to try.
@John Doyle: exactly John! What dya think Paddy Cosgrave is out of a job?
Fob off by booking.com. if this was a phishing email then how did it know the person, hotel and date. Booking.com was hacked.
Setting any from address you like on an email is trivially easy, it’s nothing but a header field in the email. Doing this does not require compromising the account being spoofed only the knowledge to compose an SMTP message. Booking.com are almost certainly correct when they say that their site has not been compromised.
The from address in an email is not something that can be trusted to mean anything.
Likewise those scam emails claiming to have videos of you watching porn and ‘prove’ their access to your systems by appearing to come from your own email address are incredibly easy to generate and prove NOTHING.
The email came from booking.complete, a clever if obvious scam in hindsight.
It has got to the stage when we have to scrutinise every email for these kinds of variants.
@John Mulligan: it didn’t, it came from noreply @ booking. com and then brought him directly to the app with all the previous communications from the hotel.
There’s are tons of reddit threads on this happening to many many people and you can see from other commenters here too that assumed once they were in the app it would be secure and legit,it wasn’t and that’s not the fault of the customer in my opinion.
The link was not from booking.com it was from booking.complete4685.online which is a completely different website. Nothing to do with booking.com or their employees.
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