Violent S. American Jewel Thieves May Be Hitting Smaller U.S. Cities

The FBI is investigating whether a violent, well-organized ring of South American jewelry thieves is expanding its operations away from large metropolitan areas such as New York, Miami, Houston and Chicago and hitting targets in smaller cities in the South.

In one incident in Little Rock, diamond merchant Faramarz Hakimian, 48, of New York had just pulled into the parking lot of an upscale strip mall July 29 when two masked men jumped out of a black Chevrolet behind him, smashed his car windows, pulled a gun and told him to lie down on the seat. The assailants took his keys and stole a satchel with half a million dollars' worth of jewelry from the car's back seat, all in broad daylight in front of witnesses at the jewelry shop that Hakimian had come to visit.

Arkansas police and FBI agents say the attack may be related to similar robberies of jewelry salesmen in Pine Bluff, Ark., on June 26 and in Nashville on June 24. In Pine Bluff, a Los Angeles salesman was accosted at knifepoint in a parking lot, where robbers stole diamonds hidden in his socks and stabbed him in the back in a scuffle.

"You rarely have these kind of incidents in Arkansas," said John Kennedy, president of the Jewelers' Security Alliance trade group. "It's so rare to have two in a relatively short period of time there. They may still be there, or they may have moved on already."

Between April 22 and May 15 in Houston, at least $3.5 million worth of jewelry was stolen in six robberies, which the FBI considers related and linked to the South American ring. On May 14, a jewelry merchant was robbed at a gas station. Despite massive media and law enforcement attention, the next day another salesman was pistol-whipped and robbed in a Waffle House where he had stopped for lunch.

"They literally charged into the Waffle House store in broad daylight," said Shauna Dunlap, a Houston FBI special agent. "We were surprised at their brazenness and the level of violence."

Dunlap said the agency is investigating three Colombian nationals picked up loitering in a jewelry store parking lot. They had counterfeit documents and were later charged with federal counts of illegally reentering the United States. Four alleged members of the group were arrested in Los Angeles in April.

The FBI's Web site says "South American Theft Groups," made up largely of Colombians, started burglarizing hotels and cars during jewelry trade shows in the early 1980s and have moved on to sophisticated surveillance and violent attacks against jewelry salesmen in more recent years.

"We've seen these robberies in the past; it appears to be cyclical," Dunlap said. "We see them come through Houston, then perhaps they get frightened by law enforcement and media attention, then they move on to other cities, but we'll see them circle back in time."

The Jewelers' Security Alliance reports that overall jewelry industry losses to crime have dropped steadily for the past five years, with $97 million in losses in 2007, compared with $151 million in 2003. But off-premise robberies of traveling salespeople were up in 2007, with $35 million in losses in 177 incidents, compared with $21 million in 155 incidents in 2006. Salespeople are most often robbed in parking lots or airports after their assailants follow them from jewelry shows, according to the security alliance.

Jim Warren, a sales associate at Kenneth Edwards Fine Jewelers who witnessed the attack on Hakimian, said he has never experienced a robbery in 15 years in the business but is more wary now. He said Hakimian was making a cold call to the store with no advance notice, meaning the robbers must have had him under surveillance for some time.

"We finally got him into our store, gave him a bottle of water, and he broke down. He said he had three small children, and he thought he was going to be killed," Warren said. "When we tried to calm him down, he said this had happened to him before in Charlotte. I have a feeling this gentleman's going to get out of the business soon."