The world’s most visited museum has been plagued in recent years by employee walkouts, collection damage and thievery. This past week has turned up yet another scandal at the Louvre museum, as recent investigations revealed a ticket scam that lost the Louvre museum over $12 million dollars across the past ten years.
A complaint was originally filed in December 2024, alleging that tour guides were reusing tickets for multiple tour groups. Further investigation brought to light several tour guides who reused tickets for their tour groups, sometimes bringing 20 groups a day to the Louvre and using the same tickets for all of them.
Specifically, two married tour guides started the practice, and several others started copying their practice later on. The tour guides would also bribe museum employees in order to bypass ticket checks and split up large groups in order to avoid paying fees.
As a result of the complaint, an investigation was launched in 2025 in order to look into the issue. As a result of the inspection, over $1 million in cash was seized from the suspects, along with $500,000 from bank accounts.
Three vehicles and several safe deposit boxes were also seized. The suspects are also believed to have invested money into real estate in France and Dubai. Also, two Louvre employees, several tour guides and one person believed to be the ringleader were arrested.
Ticket scams are nothing new for the Louvre Museum. In 2022, fourteen people were arrested for running a ticket resale scam outside the Louvre. The perpetrators would coerce visitors exiting the museum to hand over their used tickets.
The group would then alter the QR codes on the tickets and resell a higher price to unsuspecting tourists, often claiming that the price markup was because they were skipping the ticket lines.
The scam is just another item in a long list of unfortunate events besieging the Louvre in recent times. Just last week, on the same day the ticket scam was revealed, a water leak from a pipe caused water damage in the Denon Wing, where the most valuable paintings are displayed, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the famous statue of Venus de Milo. While those priceless works were fortunately unharmed, a ceiling painted by 19th-century artist Charles Meynier was damaged by the leak.
Staff also staged a walkout just days after the ticket scam was uncovered, and the Devon gallery sustained water damage. The strike was in protest of worsening working conditions and increasing concerns over security, and only served to lengthen what is already the longest period of strikes in the history of the museum.
Many call for the removal of Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre since 2021. While she offered her resignation in the face of the October jewelry heist, the administration ultimately decided to leave her in power. But as the strikes and mounting problems prove, the steady decline of the world’s most famous museum will not stop unless changes of some kind are made.
