At about 4:55 p.m., after setting off bombs in two cars at hotels nearby as a distraction for the police, a man armed with a submachine gun accompanied by two men with handguns threatened the guards and made off with three paintings.

The robbers escaped by throwing nails on the road to hinder the police cars, and fleeing in a motorboat they had moored in a nearby waterway.

[3][4] In January 2001, the police received a ransom demand for several million kronor from a lawyer acting on behalf of the thieves with photos of the paintings to prove it was real, but they refused to pay.

"[8] In September 2005, FBI in Los Angeles were investigating a Bulgarian criminal syndicate for drug trafficking when they heard talk of the Young Parisian.

The FBI arrested one of the group's leaders, a man named Boris Kostov, who after being interrogated, gave them the Young Parisian and told them that the Rembrandt was in Denmark.