Francs a Lot

It was a clockwork heist that lasted just two minutes. In that brief time, the four stickup men netted what was probably the biggest holdup haul in French history: $3,540,000. But the question that bedeviled Frenchmen last week was what in the world the culprits thought they could do with their loot. The bandits had made off with newly minted, neatly packaged, bronze-colored ten-franc coins--1,770,000 of them, to be exact--that weighed 17.7 tons and would require nearly 30 cu. yds. of space merely to store. If the four bandits each spend $100 per day of their bulky loot without raising suspicion, they will be plunking down the last of their ten-franc pieces some time in the year 2001.

Police believed that "the great piggy-bank robbery," as Paris papers called the heist, was almost certainly an inside job. Whoever masterminded the theft first had to know that the Administration des Monnaies et Medailles, which mints French coins, frequently ships them as ordinary freight, on the theory that transporting cash anonymously is safer than using armed guards. Next he had to know how and when last week's consignment was due to be transferred from the administration's plant in Pessac, outside Bordeaux, to the Bank of France in Paris. That intelligence was even more strictly guarded.

Packed in a large metal container and invoiced as metaux ouvres (worked metal), the coin shipment was met at Paris' Gare de Bercy by Jean Trottin, 51, a driver for a truck-rental agency. He loaded the container onto a flatbed tractor-trailer truck for delivery to a Bank of France side entrance. Shortly after leaving the station, Trottin found himself cut off by a disabled truck and got out to give a hand. Minutes later the two were surrounded by four pistol-carrying men and ordered into a nearby Peugeot sedan. One gunman took the wheel of Trottin's rig; the other three followed in the Peugeot with the two hostages. Trottin and the other trucker, neither of whom is a police suspect, were released 15 minutes later on Paris' northern outskirts.

National Passions. The heist was so professional that police suspect the thieves have ties to organized crime and may have little trouble fencing their take --although not at face value. Casinos, race tracks and other businesses that deal in large volumes of change should be able to absorb the coins (provided police informers don't spot them). Moreover, several national passions--ranging from tippling to the weekly tierce horse race--force cafes to keep large amounts of coins on hand. Last year two crooks who had stolen $80,000 in one-franc coins tried to convince police that the loot was unrecoverable because they had spent it on that greatest French coin guzzler of all--the pinball machines.

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