
A luxury handbag addict had her $300,000 collection sacked Monday afternoon in Los Angeles while she was away — and she believes the thieves stalked her.
Patricia Vuagniaux, a collector and authenticator of the bags, said crooks broke into her home and stole Hermes Birkin bags, watches and a jewelry box containing her daughter’s baby teeth while she was at a doctor’s appointment.
Vuagniaux said the burglars prowled around her Ring camera, through reinforced windows and cracked a lock on her bedroom closet to make off with about 20 of the expensive handbags.
She told The Post they used a signal jammer to disrupt cameras, because even her neighbor’s cameras were disrupted during the robbery.
To add insult to injury, the thieves used her bedroom’s fitted sheet to wrap up the bags and make off with them.
“They were strategic enough to avoid the Ring camera in the front so they came through the side. They knew exactly what they were doing,” she told ABC7.
Vuagniaux took videos from within the home showing her ransacked closet and shattered glass.
The luxury bag collector told The Post she has a passion for the bags and has been a “collector for a long time.” She said she “fell in love” with luxury handbags after she retired and sold her coffee business.
She began collecting the bags. Selling them when she grew tired of one and bought more when the want arose.
Several months before the robbery, she posted a list of her collection on Facebook within a luxury handbag group. The list alone had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of handbags.
“I have a portion of my private collection that I’m in the process of consigning with The Real Real,” she wrote.
The list included various Birkin 35 bags, 1 gold Kelly Sellier bag, a Birkin 30 in Tiffany blue swift and a brand new Evelyne Pochette 23.
When told by The Post about the list, she exclaimed.
“I never thought of that,” she said. “I’m such an idiot.”
Vuagniaux now feels the thieves targeted her specifically because of her expensive handbag collection.
The collector said the bags served as a retirement fund for her that she no longer has.
“I worked hard for everything I got,” she said.
The heist also robbed her of any feeling of safety she had in her Eagle Rock neighborhood.
“I’m so scared,” she told The Post. “I’m so afraid to be in my home.”
But at least, she said, her husband and daughter are safe.
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