What is Digg?41 Comments
- aasukisuki, on 07/21/2009, -0/+47The original Wired article about the diamond heist was one of the best articles I've read in a long time.
You can read that here: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/f ... - jjesusfreak01, on 07/21/2009, -1/+39Well, considering that the only reason diamonds are worth anything is because the supply is tightly controlled by the industry, he really just owns a couple of pounds of rocks. Lets think about this. Criminal mastermind vs diamond cartels??? Hard not to root for anyone stealing diamonds.
- unknownpoltroon, on 07/21/2009, -0/+24It's not even that. The entire DEMAND is created by that same industry.
- TruckStuff, on 07/21/2009, -0/+18Yes, it would be awesome if there were some text in the article, perhaps underlined and a different color, that would take you to EIGHT FREAKING PAGES containing the answers you seek when you click on it.
If only such a technology existed. - BryanG412, on 07/21/2009, -4/+14I would love to know in detail how they managed to access a vault two stories underground protected by 10 layers of security. That's pretty bad ass IMO.
- d3dm, on 07/21/2009, -0/+9"Please.... diamonds aren't worth *****."
Once you figure out a way to explain this to your girlfriend or wife, let me know. - badfrog, on 07/21/2009, -0/+7This wouldn't happen in the US, the government would make up a reason to keep the diamonds anyway, and force you into a gigantic legal battle!
- dqderrick, on 07/21/2009, -0/+5I have to agree. Notarbartolo made for an interesting interview. While reading the interview, I was surprised he was revealing as much as he was considering his situation. Wasn't he in jail?
- fabriciom, on 07/21/2009, -0/+5And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig *****, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".
- verkon, on 07/21/2009, -0/+5Nothing weird with the italian justice system. If you can't proove that he did it, nad he says he didn't do it, he didn't do it.
The two diamond incidents are completely unrelated. - XZanatos, on 07/21/2009, -0/+4Diamonds are nothing more than shiny lumps of carbon. In another 10 years or so manufactured diamonds will kill the whole diamond jewelry market. Does anyone else remember this WIRED article from 2003? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.h ...
choice quote:
""These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.
"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."
Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry.""
... gold on the other hand... - D4RK354B3R, on 07/21/2009, -0/+4I couldn't help but think of Ocean's Eleven when I read the article. Yet Ocean's Eleven was inspired by a different heist.
- HiKevinRose, on 07/21/2009, -1/+5He's just beating them at their own game. Kudos to him, I'm glad he got to evade them for this little while longer at least.
- DaiMa, on 07/21/2009, -0/+4Im a boxing promoter.
Was a happy boxing promoter until a week ago...
...and then what do I know about diamonds ?
Dont they come from Antwerp? - anonymous10, on 07/21/2009, -0/+3Well, he has 5000 carats of uncut diamond. For argument's sake, lets say cutting and polishing halves the weight. If every single cut diamond was utterly useless as jewelry because of its color and clarity, together they'd be worth about €150 thousand, however if they were all utterly flawless, they be worth closer to €18 million.
I'm basing this on the retail value of cut half carat stones and guessing that half of the uncut weight is lost as waste - although even that waste has some value for use in making blades and drill bits amongst other things - but you can see how much diamonds sell for. - enevitable, on 07/21/2009, -2/+5I like the angle the guy is trying on his defense, going to be interesting to see if it pays off.
- ChiaGod, on 07/21/2009, -0/+2Heh, reminds me of the case of Stanley Mark Rifkin who stole $8.2 Million from a bank, bought $8.2 Million in Diamonds (to convert the account money to actual goods), then was stuck with the Diamonds when nobody wanted to buy them because the supply already exceeded the demand:
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap20.htm
Funny thing is, the bank couldn't sell the stones either and ended up accepting a fraction of what Rifkin paid and only was paid after the buyer took possession of the stones for 18 months! - aasukisuki, on 07/21/2009, -0/+2You're right about diamonds not being very rare, you're wrong about worth. Worth is dictated by the market, and there's obviously a market for diamonds.
- ferrisnox, on 07/21/2009, -2/+4Please.... diamonds aren't worth *****. Only Jared's and boutique stores within the diamond cartel market them to be "rare" and "special" and "forever". Diamonds are about as rare on Earth as salt is. Think about that.... they are not rare they are just controlled by one of the biggest monopolies on the planet. Google video and go educate yourself about the diamond cartels... stealing diamonds is really stupid.
- intekra, on 07/22/2009, -0/+2Excellent article!
- aasukisuki, on 07/21/2009, -0/+2You're probably pretty accurate with the 50% weight loss. However, you have to keep in mind that if he did have them cut and polished to resale, he's not going to get retail prices for them. He's going to get wholesale which can be as low as 30% of retail. The other thing is that there's zero chance that he's carrying around 5000 carats of D color flawless diamonds. If they are gem quality, they are much more likely to be in the G-J color range, SI1+ clarity. Finally, this guy is smart. He knows that he's being watched (due to the fact that police never recovered all of the diamonds that were stolen) and he's not going to carry around traceable goods, and cut diamonds can be traced back to the cutter, and even sometimes the mine they were harvested.
- morcheeba, on 07/21/2009, -0/+15000 carats can be divided up a number of ways: 500 10-carats stones is worth a fortune ($25M); 5,000,000 0.001 carat stones is not worth much ($25K).
The best wag I could get is from the USGS, which pegs industrial diamonds at $10/carat... so, not knowing the size, that's about EUR35,000.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/d ... - intekra, on 07/22/2009, -0/+1Good read indeed!
- nepidae, on 07/21/2009, -1/+2The biggest diamond thieves are de biers and the like.
- Sideshowslob, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1It wasn't cool when you did it.
- D0rk4L, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1So he's been caught by authorities twice now, yet he apparently pulled off the biggest diamond heist in history.
- WRXFiles, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1How odd is it that two totally unrelated things happened in two separate parts of the world, yet both made headlines...?
Wow. I see what you mean.
/s - anonymous10, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1"I didn't steal it, officer, a guy in a bar sold it to me."
Except with a kilo of diamonds, not a car stereo. - tama1drummer, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1The movie Blood Diamond did the trick for me. Not to mention, she already knew diamonds weren't worth anything, so she wanted tanzanite instead.
Compared to diamonds, tanzanites are relatively rare, so their prices aren't artificially inflated. - Sideshowslob, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1That makes me want to go steal some *****.
- andersleet, on 07/21/2009, -0/+1Cubic Zirconia!
- foned, on 07/21/2009, -1/+2diamonds arent worth *****? diamonds are worth what people are willing to pay for them, which is quite obviously a lot.
- morcheeba, on 07/21/2009, -1/+1I wonder what the street value of those rocks are... if it's really closer to the EUR10,000 he claimed to pay for them, then that's a pretty poor payoff for 6 years in jail. I'm sure it's totally depends on the average size of the stones, so without that information, it's impossible to convert 2.2 lbs in to EUR.
- inactive, on 07/21/2009, -1/+1Good show young man!
- CoD4, on 07/21/2009, -8/+5What do I know about diamonds?
- inactive, on 07/21/2009, -5/+2hope he gets away with it. the reall crook is the government
- aoe2bug, on 07/21/2009, -6/+1The Italian Job 3?
Blood Diamond 2? - BAM22, on 07/21/2009, -7/+2"A rough diamond, on the other hand, is pretty much a rough diamond."
'cause i would have never known that before reading this article... /s - Frally, on 07/21/2009, -6/+0Hey! I dugg about the same story one week ago!
- Claverhouse, on 07/21/2009, -14/+3How odd that within some hours parallel crimes in both Milan, Italy, and Milan, Illinois, are reported on Digg. This with the massive theft of diamonds and that in America with McDonalds giving out hepatitis A.
http://digg.com/health/McDonald_s_Worker_Exposed_1 ... - BZKyle, on 07/21/2009, -18/+3When they said 'biggest diamond heist suspect found' I was expecting some 500 pound dude with a bag of stones. Buried.
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