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The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked The World
by Nancy Jo Sales
It Books
When the “Bling Ring” — a group of high school kids who pulled off a stunning series of robberies from October 2008 to August 2009, stealing over $3 million worth of high-end clothes, jewelry, art, cash and more from celebrities — were deciding on their first celebrity victim, they quickly realized that it had to be Paris Hilton.
The reason, according to journalist Nancy Jo Sales’ book about the spree, is that they needed someone stupid.
“Rachel’s idea, and, I guess, my idea,” said Nick Prugo, who masterminded the burglaries with his friend Rachel Lee, “was that [Paris] was dumb. Like, who would leave a door unlocked?”
The unsurprising answer is: most of the vapid celebrities in Hollywood.
This tale of the Bling Ring, whose victims included Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Audrina Patridge, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom and Brian Austin Green, has already been turned into a Lifetime TV movie — 2011’s “The Bling Ring” — while a feature film of the same name, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring “Harry Potter” actress Emma Watson, hits theaters on June 14.
In Sales’ book, based on her 2010 Vanity Fair article about the crimes, virtually everyone comes off as despicable, from the shallow perpetrators and victims, to the lawyers who preened for the media, to the cop who almost blew the entire case for a few seconds of screen time.
The Bling Ring began with Prugo and Lee — 17 and 18, respectively, when they began robbing celebrities — who bonded in high school over a love of fashion.
When they were in 10th grade, Lee confessed to Prugo — who spoke to Sales at length in 2009 — that she had “gone into someone’s house and stolen some money.” This led to them stealing $8,000 from the home of a friend of Prugo’s, and then to robbing the homes of some of Lee’s former “friends.” They also stole cash and credit cards from unlocked cars, with the proceeds funding high-end shopping sprees.
The pair — especially Lee, according to Prugo, who paints himself throughout as having bent to her will — were devoted to celebrity, and turned their attentions to bigger targets. (Lee has never spoken publicly about the Bling Ring.)
Preparing for their crimes was simple. A Web site called Celebrity Address Aerial provided addresses, and Google Earth offered maps and pictures of celebrity homes, helping them determine easy points of entry.
Google searches, TMZ and the celebrities’ own Twitter accounts then told them when their victims would be out of town.
The final piece of the puzzle was stupidity, as most of their celebrity targets left doors unlocked and their security systems turned off.
Using Google Earth, Prugo identified an area behind Hilton’s “7,493-square-foot, five-bedroom, Mediterranean-style mansion” that allowed for easy access.
Entry into Hilton’s home, though, was even more stunningly simple than they expected, as the star had left a key to her front door under her welcome mat. (Even dumber, the Bling Ring robbed Hilton’s home several times, and found a new key under the mat each time.)
Once inside Hilton’s home, the pair found a virtual museum in tribute to Hollywood’s formerly favorite celebutard, including, in every room including the bathroom, framed pictures, magazine covers and even “her face . . . silk-screened on couch pillows.”
Lee “squealed with delight when she found the closets. One was the size of a small room and the other the size of a small clothing store.”
After gazing worshipfully at the hundreds of pairs of shoes — “Manolos, Louboutins, Jimmy Choos, a pair of YSLs shaped like the Eiffel Tower” — Lee took a dress and several designer bras, and the two also took $1,800 each in “crumpled up cash” from Hilton’s purses.
(They also found pictures of the heiress oiled up and naked that they hoped to sell to the tabloids, but, said Prugo, “We were told everyone had seen Paris Hilton naked so it didn’t really matter.”)
They would ultimately go “shopping” at Hilton’s home three more times. One robbery netted $2 million worth of jewelry including “heirlooms that had been in her family for generations.” (Astoundingly, Hilton not only took a cameo role in Coppola’s movie, but allowed the director to film re-creations of the thefts in her actual home.)
Next up was the $1.2 million, three-bedroom home of Audrina Patridge, one of the stars of MTV’s “The Hills.”
When they initially opened an unlocked door at the home, a robotic voice said, “Door opened.” They ran off, but when no police arrived, they returned, and strolled inside. Soon, Lee was wearing Patridge’s white fedora, and the pair were filling Patridge’s luggage with her things in order to haul them out.
“Nick and Rachel robbed Patridge’s house twice that night,” Sales writes. “They went into a kind of frenzy they’d never experienced before, stealing more than they ever had. After they left, they decided they wanted more things, so they went back and robbed her again.”
Patridge told Sales that the items taken included “jewelry I got from my great-grandmother” and “specific jeans made to fit my body, only to my perfect shape.” The value of the stolen items was placed at $43,682.
The next day, Patridge put the video surveillance footage of the robbery — which she said had “a pretty clear image of their faces” — on her Web site. TMZ picked it up, and so did local news. The burglars were now semi-famous, but no one called in with any information.
As the scofflaws expanded their victims list, they also took on more accomplices. Sales spends a good portion of the book on Alexis Neiers, star of the one-season E! reality show “Pretty Wild” and, despite her minor role in the thefts, the Bling Ring member who found the greatest measure of fame. Joel McHale, host of E!’s “The Soup,” said that “Pretty Wild” was “like ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ without the intellect or the moral center.”
The filming of the show coincided with Neiers’ court appearances for her role in the robbery of actor Orlando Bloom (a role she has continued to deny). Sales depicts the show’s producers stage-managing Neiers’ entrance into the courtroom, and Neiers’ lawyer being overly concerned with his makeup and also confessing, “The only way I’ll get paid is if the reality show gets picked up.”
The gang would often wear their stolen booty out to clubs, and also bragged about their crimes at parties and in school. TMZ once posted a picture of Prugo “wearing a ‘P’ necklace allegedly belonging to Hilton; across the picture Nick had scrawled, Perez Hilton-style, ‘Hey Paris, look familiar?’ ”
As the Bling Ring became increasingly enchanted with themselves, so did certain members of the public. Someone even created a Facebook fan page for Prugo, who began receiving messages from young girls saying things like, “You’re so hot. I wish I was part of [the gang].”
Meanwhile, the size of their hauls continued to grow. Lee, Prugo, their friend Diana Tamayo (who has denied any involvement) and Neiers spent three hours at Bloom’s home, emerging “three or four times” to carry heavy bags to their cars, Sales writes.
Soon after, a woman overheard Prugo and Lee bragging about the robberies of Lohan and Patridge at a party. She notified a friend at CNN, who notified a security manager at the network, who in turn notified the LAPD.
Prugo eventually confessed and told on his accomplices, despite no guarantee of a deal. He says it was his lawyer’s idea. The lawyer, Sean Erenstoft — who, Sales writes, was later disbarred from practicing law in California for misdeeds in a separate case — says it was Prugo’s. Either way, had he not done so, chances are good he would have never seen prison.
But even after the arrests started, the Bling Ring continued bragging. One confederate, Courtney Ames, was shown on a TMZ video holding up a tabloid headline about the crimes and laughing.
And the stupidity and narcissism didn’t stop with the criminals. Lawyer Erenstoft told Sales during one court appearance, “NBC and ABC are still fighting over me. Everybody wants a piece of this.”
Officer Brett Goodkin, the LAPD’s lead investigator on the case, was hired as a consultant for Coppola’s film, and wound up playing a police officer. Defendants’ lawyers pounced on this “as a way to discredit Goodkin as a witness.” After a judge called Goodkin’s judgment “as poor as it gets,” several defendants, according to Sales, received unusually light sentences as a result.
Ultimately, Lee was sentenced to four years in prison; Prugo to two. (He served a little over one year, and was released in April.) Tamayo, Ames and a bouncer named Roy Lopez received mostly probation.
Neiers got six months in LA’s county jail, ultimately serving just 29 days. Coincidentally, she was “put in the same cell . . . that Paris Hilton had occupied when she was there in 2007 for probation violation.”
Neiers — who was later hired as a consultant on Coppola’s film but this past week slammed it as “trashy and inaccurate,” even though she hasn’t seen it — wound up with a celebrity neighbor housed, for a probation violation, in the cell right next to hers.
Neiers’ neighbor in jail was prisoner No. 2409752 — otherwise known as Lindsay Lohan.