"A staggering $53 million of diamonds and other jewels were stolen Sunday from the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes, in one of Europe’s biggest jewelry heists in recent years, police said.
The hotel in the French Riviera this summer has been hosting an exhibit of jewels from the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev."
“Need answer fast”?
Well it depends on how much risk you are willing to take and how much time you want to spend.
It is fairly easy to move and sell diamonds if you are willing to take below wholesale cost. If they are in settings - all the diamonds would be removed. Depending on how big they are and the like - if they have laser serial numbers - would make a big difference in how easy they are to sell.
Take them to NYC or another city with a diamond district and you wouldn’t have too much problem moving the smaller stones for cash. In theory anything over $10k would need to be paid by check (or have to fill out one of those forms).
Jewelry is marked up usually 3x or more - so you aren’t going to be getting 53 million. If the person finds a corrupt jeweler it wouldn’t be that hard to move $100k here and there.
Larger stones that might be famous or something might have to be recut.
Actually the guy needs to fence a lot more than that-close to $136 million :
I updated the thread title. There’s a thread in Cafe Society about what happened when a bunch of thieves stole some famous paintings and found they couldn’t sell them, which apparently happens regularly - but jewels might be different.
I’ve heard that some of these big thefts are not with the “fence the goods” plan in mind - it’s with the “the boss that hired us will pay us” plan. In other words, the buyer was figured out before the heist was made.
And they don’t need much revenue to make a profit on the deal. They only need to sell some of the smaller, generic stones, not the entire umpty-million-dollar haul at once.
I’m sure they’ll be cut down for max profit. Hey, just watch the chain-stores and wait for [del]Zales[/del] sales…
"Where did she go for her stolen diamond things? ♫ She went to Ja-reds…! ♫ "
Visit every Cash4Gold store & pawn shop in a three state radius???
How Do You Fence Jewels Worth 136 Million Dollars?
At a very deep discount.
Still, they probably made more money that day than I did, so well done.
They probably got that $136 million valuation from that place that advertises “We always guarantee that our jewelry will appraise for twice what you paid!”
When I first heard that question asked; my immediate thought was: “How do they know there isn’t a specific buyer out there already?”
Some of those jewels are pretty unique aren’t they? Maybe someone commissioned the job for their private collection.
what do I win?
I’m kind of let down - in my mind, jewel thieves always wore black catsuits and wool caps and danced around lasers and pilfered gems when nobody was around and disappeared like puffs of smoke. From the clips I’ve seen recently, now they’re just pistol-wielding goons who smash display cases with hammers and then run out the front door.