Exclusive: The alarms in wine’s biggest heist were switched off from inside before masked thieves took off with 30,000 bottles worth over $8 million

(Credit: Marchesi Antinori)

Masked thieves needed about three hours on a Saturday night to empty Marchesi Antinori’s warehouse in Cortona, Tuscany, of about 30,000 bottles of some of Italy’s most collected wine.

And they didn’t have to worry about tripping some alarms: they never went off. The day before the heist, the alarms had been switched off from inside the building, Lorenzo Vivoli, who works in Antinori’s communications office, told Fortune.