Be careful who you hire

or make sure you lock your valuables if you have a cleaning service. According to police records, thieves broke into an oenophile's posh home in this Silicon Valley suburb on Jan. 4, spiriting off with 454 bottles of wine worth $139,000. Their booty included a magnum of 1959 Petrus worth as much as $6,000. The owner, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted by other thieves, was robbed again and another dozen bottles of wine worth $350 each went missing from the collection.

The culprits? The maid [50-year-old Zhi Mua Deng of Burlingame] and her boyfriend [Xiao Yan Xiang, 52, of Belmont] have been caught on a new installed web cam, arrested and have been found in the possession of the stolen wine. This would account for my there was no sign of forced entry into the property.

It is sad that we have to put our nice things in life under lock and key otherwise someone might come along and just swipe it from you. This couldn't be more true in the high-end world of wine collecting has almost no real traceability so once that precious difficult-to-assemble set of Bordeaux wines is out of your possession, it is nearly impossible to get it back.

So the moral of the story, be careful who you hire or you just might get cleaned out yourself.