The Biggest Diamond Chutzpah

If you're having a tough day, spare a thought for the British jewelers who exchanged $5.3m of diamonds for a bag of worthless pebbles.

Some days are tough because of events beyond our control.  COVID-19, for example, or riots and looting in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody, in the USA.

These events cause widespread sadness and suffering, and the consequences can be devastating. Our business may fail, our shop may be trashed, our loved ones may succumb to the dreaded virus.

We are victims of fate, destiny, karma, call it what you want.  And if we seek a small crumb of consolation maybe this is it: It ain't personal. 

Yes, it's painful, but it's random. Coronavirus doesn't single out its victims because of a long-held grudge. A baying mob has no axe to grind as it smashes its way into whichever jewelery store happens to be in its path.

History unfolds, and some of us may be unlucky enough to find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One saving grace is that we haven't been deliberately targeted. Unlike Nicholas Wainwright, chairman of a family-run luxury jewelers that dates back six generations, and his gemologist Emma Barton.

It wasn't until the next day that the awful "we've been duped" moment of realization dawned.

They were defrauded by a gang posing as Russian businessmen who had clearly done their homework.

They'd meticulously planned a heist that hinged on a momentary sleight of hand - in which their own "gemologist" switched one padlocked bag of real gems with an identical padlocked bag of pebbles.

She popped the bag of diamonds into her handbag once the deal had been agreed, as if that was the normal way of doing things.

She was challenged by the Boodles gemologist, because the funds hadn't yet been transferred - so she obligingly withdrew the other "bag of diamonds" and handed it back.

Within three hours she and the fellow gang members were in France, before the switch had even been discovered.

Details of the case, from March 2016, were heard this week as a second gang member was jailed at a London court for conspiracy to steal.

Four accomplices, including the "gemologist" are still missing, as are the seven diamonds, among them a 20ct heart-shaped diamond worth $2.8m, a three-carat pear-shape fancy intense purple pink diamond worth $1.4m, and a six-carat Ashoka-cut diamond.   

This was by no means the biggest gem heist in history. That record goes to a raid last November on the Royal Palace museum, in Dresden, Germany, which netted an estimated  $1.1bn worth of diamonds and rubies.  It was no ordinary theft, as many of the jewels were set within priceless statues and art works.

As for thefts targeting "commercial" diamonds, few people in the industry will forget the "heist of the century" in 2003, in which a team of "diamond merchants" looted 123 safety-deposit boxes of diamonds worth at least $100m at the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, without even triggering an alarm.

Or the thieves dressed as armed police officers who drove on to the runway at Brussels airport in 2013 and calmly helped themselves to $50m of diamonds from the cargo hold of a Swiss jet.

Or the three masked men firing machine guns who made off with $60m from the jewelry store at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, in 2003.

The gang who targeted the Boodles store in Mayfair, London, by contrast, used no violence. They perpetrated a bold confidence trick literally under the noses of their victims.

And their only weapon was the shameless audacity best described by the Yiddish word chutzpah.

Their crime, and the others referenced above, grab the headlines because they're exceptional, the stuff of Hollywood. Few of us, thankfully, will ever be on the wrong end of villains like these.

So stay calm and positive in these troubling times. And have a fabulous weekend.