A pair of bold diamond thieves has hit jewelry stores across Canada, switching fakes for the real thing in the blink of an eye.
“They started in July in Vancouver and worked their way right across Canada,” said Wayne Smith, the Saint John, N.B., jeweller who went public about his own robbery this month and has since heard directly from stores and police officers from coast to coast about similar heists.
The thieves present themselves as a middle-aged couple arguing over how many carats to buy, and then switch real diamonds with fakes while salespeople are distracted.
The most recent reported robbery was in Charlottetown, where police said Monday that the couple “managed to swap useless stones for two diamonds valued at approximately $20,000” at a store in the P.E.I. capital.
John Lamont, director of loss prevention for Jewellers Vigilance Canada, said Tuesday he encourages stores to report such thefts, to prevent other stores from being victimized.
Charlottetown Deputy Chief Gary McGuigan said the Charlottetown theft was only discovered when the storeowner told his employees last week to familiarize themselves with images of the couple who struck a few days earlier in Saint John. Cont.
Story from - Global News
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