Penelope (not her real name) owned a very valuable jewel that she had inherited from her parents. A 6.30 carat diamond embedded in a ring. Her father had bought it in 1947 for a million pesetas in a jewelry store on Passeig de Gràcia and its value had grown over the years. In 2016, after going through a time of economic hardship, the woman decided to resort to that precious asset and sell the diamond. Eight years later, the judge has sent five people accused of stealing Penelope’s jewel to trial. The trial has fallen on the eighth section of the Barcelona Court. The jewel, however, has not appeared, as stated in the documentation to which La Vanguardia has had access.
In February 2016, Penelope contacted a supposedly trustworthy jeweler and asked him to find buyers for the diamond. At that time, the jeweler was closing a transaction with some supposedly Swiss investors but he became frustrated because the seller backed out. The jeweler thought that he could use the same investors to sell Penelope’s jewel. “I have some interested investors,” she told him.
On February 2, 2016, Penelope and the jeweler removed the piece that was deposited in a safe at Banc Sabadell and used a nail remover to separate the diamond from the ring. Afterwards, they met with a gemologist sent by the supposed investors who put a price on the piece: 1.185 million euros. With the diamond now out of the mount, the delegation met with two emissaries of the investors in a reserved room at the Omm hotel in Barcelona. They dressed in expensive suits and sported high-end watches, as investors willing to pay a fortune for a diamond were supposed to display. The jeweler led the negotiations. They agreed on a final purchase price of 1,150,000 euros. The million euros would be paid by bank check and the rest in cash.
The next day, February 3, the sale would take place. Penelope woke up that morning thinking that the operation was going to be carried out in a bank branch with all the guarantees. However, at the last minute, her jeweler informed her of a change of location at the request of the buyers. Payment would finally be made at the Porta Fira hotel in Barcelona and would be all in cash. Swiss investors had apparently changed their minds. The jeweler was aware of the perverse evolution of events because at the last minute she agreed that he would also sell a pack of jewelry that she had kept for years and whose value amounted to 175,000 euros.
In this way, the total amount of the operation was 1,375,000 euros, which the buyers were happily willing to pay. The agreed operation was as follows. The jeweler would guard the diamond and the rest of the jewels at the SB hotel in L’Hospitalet together with the buyers’ gemologist while Penelope, who was accompanied by her husband, received the money from the buyers at the Porta Fira Hotel, also of Hospitalet. Once payment was made, she would call the jeweler to deliver the piece.
Gathered in a business room, two emissaries and two bankers presumably arrived from Switzerland showed Penelope and her husband 55 bundles with 25,000 euros each. While the woman was counting the bills with a machine, the two supposed bankers did not stop talking to her and bothering her. The bankers, in a sleight-of-hand maneuver that consisted of giving him the good bills to count and when they gave him a new wad, they put the good ones in a bag that they hid under the table and filled the briefcase. that they were going to deliver him with counterfeit bills. Just in case, they kept talking to Penelope to avoid being discovered.
When the operation was finished, the woman, overwhelmed, called the jeweler to hand over the diamond. The entourage went down together to the hotel hall, but before saying goodbye, the bankers locked the briefcase with a key and gave it to Penelope. When they were heading towards the exit, they threw him the key and left in a hurry. It took the woman to open the lock long enough for the scammers to flee. Inside, there were only counterfeit bills.
Penelope, the jeweler and two intermediaries who had contacted the false investors ended up filing a fraud complaint with the Mossos days later after doubting the legality of their operation. The Mossos found several fingerprints on the counterfeit bills that allowed them to identify the suspects along with the images from the hotel’s security cameras. They were not Swiss bankers but professional fraudsters of Serbian origin specialized in stealing precious jewels with the RIP Deal method, the shell maneuver they used in this case. They operated throughout Europe, although the first was arrested in Castelldefels and had an open case in France for stealing another diamond. The jewel, he said, was sold in Belgium. The rest of the group fell a year later thanks to the issuance of European arrest warrants. They all went to prison, but the slowness of justice meant that they were released, scattered throughout Europe. The prosecution will ask that they be located again, suspecting that they may not appear at trial.
