Monday, Jan. 20, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.
Jewelry thefts According to the Jewelers' Security Alliance, which receives reports from police, FBI, insurance companies and other sources, there were seven crimes involving stores selling jewelry between September and December. More than $2 million in jewelry was reported stolen. Between September and December, the following jewelry crimes were reported in Clark County:
The 96-carat platinum necklace with 2,000 white Russian diamonds and rare black coral from the western Caribbean was the pride of the Bernard K. Passman Gallery, an upscale showcase of jewelry and art at The Venetian's Grand Canal Shoppes.
It was worth a cool $1 million.
"It was a one-of-a-kind masterpiece," said Jack Crowder, general manager of the gallery. "It was extremely significant to the artist and to the company."
Last month a team of four thieves stole the necklace.
It was the third time in eight months that jewel thieves pulled bold heists at high-end, hotel-casino jewelry shops.
Metro Police think the same group of four also hit a diamond store at the Rio last March.
And just days before the Dec. 5 theft at the Passman gallery, a brazen, unrelated robbery occurred at the Jewelry Salon at the Four Seasons.
Heists like these are nothing new to Las Vegas, a city known for its glitz, glamor and crime, said John J. Kennedy, president of the Jewelers' Security Alliance, a national nonprofit agency based in New York that aims to track and prevent jewelry crime.
"Las Vegas is obviously a target," Kennedy said. "It tends to attract criminals. There have been a number of high-end thefts and robberies in Las Vegas over the years, and the police in Las Vegas are very hip to this stuff."
In the last four months of last year, thieves stole more than $2.1 million worth of jewelry in seven different incidents in Las Vegas, according to the Jewelers' Security Alliance.
Nationwide, jewelry crime -- theft, burglary and robbery -- increased about 3 percent in 2002, Kennedy said. More than $70 million worth of jewelry was stolen that year.
The prized Millennium necklace took Passman a year to create, Crowder said. The world-renowned, 86-year-old New Orleans-based artist spent six months making it, but he wasn't satisfied, so he took it apart and toiled over it for another six months.
"You have to understand the passion behind it," Crowder said. "It was one of the top five pieces he's ever done in his life."
The necklace was displayed inside a locked glass case. The day before it was stolen, four well-dressed men who looked to be of Eastern European descent came into the gallery and appeared to be browsing. But Detective Brian Mildebrandt said they were "scoping things out."
Shortly after 8 p.m. the next night, Dec. 5, the men came back into the store. Two of them distracted employees by asking questions about items in the gallery. Meanwhile, one of the thieves jimmied the lock while another stood in front of him, using his body as a shield.
The heist was recorded by the gallery's security system.
"It was very smooth, very professional," Mildebrandt said.
The men fled the store and are still at large. One of the thieves looked like a man who was involved in a similar heist at Diamonds International at the Rio last March, Detective Russell Lee said.
Six people were involved in that incident. Two groups of two men distracted clerks inside the shop while two others opened an unlocked glass case and grabbed two diamond necklaces, valued at a total of about $85,000.
The men ran outside to a car, which appeared to be a rental. Lee sent the surveillance tape to a jewelry crimes task force in Southern California, but he never uncovered any solid leads.
But when Lee saw the surveillance tape of the heist at the Passman gallery, he suspected the two crimes might be related.
"It's hard to describe the feelings you have when something like this happens," Crowder said. "It's extremely sad."
Police believe Russians or Israelis might be responsible for both heists.
Virtually all crimes committed against the jewelry industry are done by professional gangs, Kennedy said. Distracting employees then committing theft is the most common method.
Casual jewelry criminals, or jewelry criminals acting alone, are rare. Stealing jewelry via robbery -- taking property by use of force or fear -- is also less common than thefts, burglaries and passing bad checks.
But it does happen. A man working alone pulled a robbery at the Jewelry Salon at the Four Seasons three days before the theft at the Passman gallery.
A man wearing a sweatsuit and gray cap browsed for a little while, then asked to see a heart-shaped 10-carat diamond pendant with a yellow gold chain valued at $600,000. He left without buying it, but came in the next day and asked to see it again.
When the employee brought the necklace out, the man suddenly swung the necklace at the employee, hitting him in the face, Lt. Larry Spinosa said. He punched the employee, knocking him back, and then the man ran from the store. He made his way through the marbled corridors to a rental car. The man was arrested several weeks later in Los Angeles.
Skilled jewel thieves educate themselves on jewelry and watches, Kennedy said. Fences, or buyers of stolen jewels, are arranged in advance, and often request that thieves steal certain pieces. Many fences reside in foreign countries, such as the Soviet Union, Kennedy said.
Similar to a vehicle chop shop, where car thieves take apart vehicles and sell the parts individually, some stolen jewels are sold in pieces.
"If you have a million-dollar necklace, you're going to break it down and resell the parts," Mildebrandt said. "If it stayed intact, anyone would know it's a hot piece."
Las Vegas has seen several prominent jewelry crimes over the years.
In 1996 nearly $2 million worth of jewels were stolen at a trade show. A security guard at a Chinatown jewelry store was shot to death during a 1999 heist. A roving gang of Los Angeles jewelry thieves drove a car through the doors of a mall jewelry store in 1998.
Because it's such a profitable enterprise, thieves often keep committing heists until they slip up.
A gang of thieves that may have operated for as long as 15 years, committing a nationwide spree of smash-and-grab burglaries that netted as much as $100 million in booty, was captured in Las Vegas in 1999. They are now in federal custody.
"These thieves are going to keep committing the crimes, and they do get caught," Kennedy said. "Almost all of them are eventually caught."
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