Just to break up a bit of the GOP debate discussion…

Formula One driver, wife and friends were ripped off while staying in a villa on the French Riviera…and didn’t know it was happening because the entire villa was gassed.

It doesn’t even pay to be rich and famous and staying in the lap of luxury anymore.

I know many of you could care less about a rich F1 driver…I just thought it strange how it was done. And the rest of the article goes on to explain it has become a common tactic.

dailymail.co.ukUK Daily Mail - Jenson Button and his model wife Jessica Michibata were GASSED by burglars who broke into their St Tropez villa and stole her 250,000 diamond engagement ring while they were out cold

Jenson Button and his wife Jessica Michibata were gassed at their luxury French villa as robbers looted the house and stole belongings worth 300,000.

The couple - who had been asleep - lay unconscious in bed as the burglars rifled through the rented St Tropez home, taking items including 30-year-old Jessica’s 250,000 engagement ring.

French police believe the gang had been watching the villa for days before letting off a cannister of anaesthetic gas into an air-conditioning vent.

The raiders then broke into the luxury mansion and even walked around the couple’s bed. Three friends who were staying in the rented retreat are also believed to have been rendered unconscious.

The group only discovered they had been targeted when they woke up the next morning and found the mansion ransacked and the engagement ring missing.

Button, 35, who won the Formula 1 drivers’ championship in 2009, has a 71million fortune and was ranked as the third richest British sports star in this year’s Sunday Times Sport Rich List.

A source close to the McLaren driver told The Sun: ‘Police have told Jenson they’re convinced the burglars gassed the house using the air conditioning units.

‘Over the past five years, it’s becoming an increasingly common way for top criminals to launch raids on expensive properties in the area without being disturbed.

‘Jenson is convinced that’s what happened too. The burglars were in the same room as him and Jessica, rifling through all their drawers.

‘But they weren’t disturbed at all because the effects of the gas gives the burglars free reign.

‘It was the same for their three other friends — they were all completely out of it.’

—CUT—