Chilean officials said Tuesday they handed over six expensive watches swiped from Canadian actor Keanu Reeves with at least one engraved Rolex worth more than $9,500 to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, months after the police raid that recovered them.
FBI to Return Watches to Keanu Reeves
The FBI will arrange for their return to Reeves, best known for his roles in action franchises like “The Matrix” and “John Wick.” Chilean prosecutors told reporters that Reeves had identified the watches as those stolen from his Los Angeles home during a string of high-profile burglaries in December 2023.
The revelation came as the Trump administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, landed in the South American nation for meetings with Chilean authorities on transnational crime, among other topics.
Noem Among Victims of Similar Crimes
Noem was a victim of a robbery blamed on a Chilean national living illegally in the U.S. when her purse was taken last April at a Washington restaurant.
Reeves’ six timepieces are worth a combined $125,000, said Marcelo Varas, a Chilean police officer from the robbery investigation unit.
The stolen watches from Reeves’ home in Hollywood Hills appeared in Santiago, the capital of Chile, when police conducted raids on residences and discovered hijacked cars, iPhones, designer handbags and luxury watches.
Links to Wider Celebrity Burglary Ring Investigated
That raid overlapped with a second Chilean probe, in collaboration with the FBI, into a string of burglaries by South America-based gangs of multimillion-dollar homes in the U.S., several owned by celebrities and professional athletes, including Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce.
In April, Chilean police reported that they had arrested 23 nationals for the break-in spree. Varas stated that authorities remained in the process of examining any connection between Reeves’ stolen watches and the other celebrity burglaries.
