Jewelry, Furs Taken in $1-Million Theft : Crime: Items in stolen truck were to be auctioned in Irvine. Victim reportedly suffered a $5-million theft loss earlier.

Thieves stole a truck loaded with nearly $1 million worth of jewelry, furs, historical documents and other high-priced merchandise from an Irvine hotel parking lot just hours before the items were to have been auctioned, police said Saturday.

It was the second theft within a week for the victim, Alexander Mahban. On Monday, he lost $5 million worth of jewelry to thieves in San Diego.

“I wish they’d just put a bullet in my head. No insurance,” said a distraught Mahban, owner of the company that had planned to auction the goods at the Radisson Plaza Hotel.

“A lot of people put merchandise (for sale at the auction) on consignment,” Mahban said. “They want their money. They want full price on their merchandise.”

Mahban arrived at the hotel across from John Wayne Airport on Saturday morning to learn that one of three rental trucks loaded with furs, tapestries, historical artifacts and artworks had been stolen.

Among the stolen items, according to Mahban and his wife, Melinda, was an early 1800s letter from a French general to Napoleon Bonaparte, inscribed with Bonaparte’s brief, handwritten response. The letter, they said, was worth $175,000. Also stolen, Mahban said, was a letter written by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower which Mahban valued at $25,000.

The Irvine robbery came just five days after the FBI opened an investigation into the theft of $5 million worth of jewels, specially marked Rolex watches and other items from Mahban at Lindbergh Field in San Diego.

Irvine Police Officer Henry Boggs said there is no indication that the two crimes were committed by the same people.

“It doesn’t appear to be the same type of crime,” Boggs said. “ . . . It’s a unique type of investigation (in Irvine) because of the loss involved.”

In San Diego, at least two thieves grabbed the items about midday Monday and ran to a waiting car when Mahban was briefly distracted. In Irvine, Boggs, said, “a truck disappeared with a million dollars worth of stuff.”

According to Boggs, Mahban and other employees of his company, this is what happened in Irvine:

The three rental trucks, all filled with merchandise, were driven Friday in a caravan from Las Vegas to Southern California. Two of the trucks went directly to the Radisson Hotel. The third truck stopped first at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, where it picked up a load of furs.

By 10 p.m. Friday, all three trucks were parked single-file in the Radisson Hotel parking lot, parallel to MacArthur Boulevard. No guard was posted by the trucks.

Some time between 10 p.m. Friday and 12:30 a.m. Saturday, the truck that had picked up the furs was stolen.

Boggs said the theft was reported to police about 6:20 a.m., after the driver--who still had the keys to the truck--went to parking lot, only to find a white Cadillac in its place. Boggs and Mahban said the estimated wholesale value of the stolen items is $970,700.

“The truck is packed with merchandise,” Mahban said. He is offering cash rewards of $50,000 to anyone who supplies information leading to the recovery of the items from the San Diego heist, and $10,000 for information about the Irvine theft.

In addition to the furs and historical documents, Mahban and Boggs said that among the items stolen in Irvine were lithographs by Picasso and modern sports artist Leroy Nieman and various tapestries.

Boggs said that Irvine police had “absolutely no suspect information,” adding that hotel workers and many of the 80 people employed by Mahban had been interviewed.

A parking attendant who was on duty when the truck was stolen told Boggs that he did not see the truck leave. Boggs described the stolen vehicle as an Isuzu Budget rental truck, 18 feet long, with an Oklahoma license plate of P 13825.

Mahban, 45, a resident of Las Vegas, said he may be knocked out of business by the $6 million in losses sustained during the week. The only comparable casualty, he said, was when he lost about $2 million worth of merchandise in the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, which killed 84 people.

Mahban, whose Las Vegas-based company, International Fur Collections, conducts auctions every week at sites throughout California, slumped in a chair near where his employees were auctioning vases, jewels and dozens of other items, and said the week’s robberies had left him stunned.

“I am in a state of shock,” he said.