Part I: A Laundromat for Stolen Jewelry

Below is the first of five installments of The Inquirer's exclusive investigation into the largest Diamond District in the United States: 47th Street in Manhattan. In the face of a challenged industry, the utterly unique city block is changing rapidly, and the results of our legwork show that not everything emerging is glittering, glamorous or good.

by Andrew Bast

On a cold February day in 2004, Freddy Castro Garzon and Claudia Guerro walked up 47th Street, the heart of New York City’s Diamond District. Windowed storefronts, glistening with gold, silver and precious stones, line the block. Some are dark, empty and dusty. And a few glare green and blue with neon signs that read, “We Buy We Buy.”

Castro and Guerro climbed the stairs to Kim’s Jewelry. At a metal gate, they rang the buzzer. To the left, the store seemed barren with a single glass display case. Hurriedly, Nam Pyo Kim ushered them inside, unlocked an inconspicuous coffee-colored wooden door and the three disappeared into a small room.

Jewelry boxes stacked to the ceiling. A table, a chair and a giant safe left the three little room to work. Kim sat, and Castro unloaded his pockets. Wrapped in paper towels were clear, plastic baggies filled with rings, necklaces, gold and diamonds. On a black jeweler’s mat, Kim studied the wares. He peered through a loupe, sized up the diamonds and consulted the curved line of his price chart. He weighed the gold. He punched numbers into his calculator. And then he made an offer.

Guerro translated from English into Spanish for Castro. This wasn’t the first time he’d done business with Kim. They haggled. Kim disappeared, and when he rushed back into the room, he dropped two $10,000 stacks of cash on the table.

“Get out,” Kim told them.

They returned to Kim’s Jewelry the next week and every week after for the next three months; the scene repeated like a looped film. The reality was: Castro and Guerro had engineered an ingenious scheme for knocking over jewelry stores in suburban malls up and down the eastern seaboard. Kim was their fence, and during those months, together they moved more than $1 million worth of jewelry through the Diamond District, and it was all stolen.

The Diamond District occupies an utterly unique stretch of Manhattan asphalt. The block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues is said to be home to more than 2,600 jewelry businesses. Nine out of ten diamonds in the U.S. are first touched by a hand on 47th Street. It’s the largest hub in the country for diamond trading, and what’s more, along with Ramat Gan, Israel and Antwerp, Belgium, one of the three main international hubs.

During the day, undercover security agents canvas the street. U.S. Postal Service trucks arrive with armed guards. To an outsider, everyone seems to be constantly shaking hands with everyone else. On a short walk from one end to the other, at least twenty people will approach you. Pretty women will wave through windows, welcoming you into their stores. All of them ask what they can sell you, and more often than not, they ask what you want to sell them.

At five o’clock, the glitter and shimmer of the storefront windows disappear. Dealers pack up their shops and vacate their storefronts, leaving behind only a lamp and an empty display case. The street fills with lines of limousines and brigades of armored trucks. At the corner on Fifth Avenue, crowds of bearded Hasidic Jewish men in black hats load onto yellow school buses. Everyone heads home to rest, as do the diamonds.

Only, 47th Street is home to much more.

The fact is: the Diamond District plays just as instrumental a role in the criminal side of the jewelry industry as it does in the side laced with dreams, romance and the ubiquitous marketing tag line, “A Diamond Is Forever.” Finding a fence there is no more difficult than slowly strolling and answering a few questions from a nameless solicitor. It’s the biggest Laundromat for stolen jewelry in North America. What’s more, the liquidity of gold and diamonds have for decades made it a place to turn for international money laundering, and, of late, the consequences have turned deadly.

Regardless, few will speak on the record about the black market that has long thrived in the country’s largest diamond-trading outpost. And much to the detriment of New York’s future as a hub in the jewelry industry, little is being done to combat it.

Check Part II for the story of the changing diamond industry . . .

Full investigation: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V.

(Neon photo from flickr and Diamond District streetlight photo from flickr.)

Comments

[German Camacho]

German Camacho youth age 21 beaten by
corrupt cops having connections with
MOB and then killed to prevent
NYPD Internal affair involvement.
Corruption link covering judges, ADA's
12 other police offices and 109 pct brass.
Case is covered with cloud and red tape.
beating took place on april and death followed in November.
medical findings , youth was beaten to a suffered massive internal bleeding, major damage to lungs, and all vital organs.
The case is pending, and no one has been assigned to further investigate case.

Youth was killed to prevent him from
providing testimony that would involve the police who beat him.
His testimony would lead to further
police involvement and has included
FBI intervention but case is so tight that case falls out of FBI juristiction, case has reach international attention , for civil rights violations on the home land and the department of Justice was notified .
stay tune for further developments

[MOHAMMED MOMMOH]

Dear sir,

Compliment of the season, is with great interest and honor that i am writing you this massage, which will go a long way to bring both of us together for future interest.

But before i proceed, my name is Mohammed Dudu Mommoh, i am the son of late General Mussa Dudu Mommoh who was the former general commander during the regime of the former president of Sierra Leone AMMED TIJAN KAABAH.

My father was poisoned during the A.U. Summit held in the republic of Gambia in 2006, by his business partners because of his position in the Gold and Diamond mining areas in the country.

But before his untimely death, he was in position of some Gold and Diamond treasures, which he secretly reserved with some reputable insurance companies around the neighboring countries.

In the republic of Guinea Conakry, he reserved 157KG OF AU metal, in the republic of Guinea Bissau, he reserved 220KG with the customs, and in Accra Ghana, he reserved 195kg of Au metal and 115 karat of pure Diamond with west Africa insurance company, all these reserves are in good condition, and he used my name as the next of kin to these treasures.

At this time sir, i deem it necessary to contact you to see the possibility of cooperating with you at all level to see how we can join hands together to ship these treasures to your destination for proper investment.

The documents of these saves are here with me, and i will send them to you as soon as the need arise. Sir, If you are pleased with this information, you can contact me through this email address for more details.
mohammed.mommoh@yahoo.com
Await your response.

Sincerely,
Mohammed D. Mommoh

[Conscientious Observers of Mount Sinai]

German Camacho youth age 21 beaten by corrupt cops having connections with MOB and then killed to prevent NYPD Internal affair involvement. Corruption link covering judges, ADA's 12 other police offices and 109 pct brass. Case is covered with cloud and red tape. beating took place on april and death followed in November. medical findings , youth was beaten to a suffered massive internal bleeding, major damage to lungs, and all vital organs. The case is pending, and no one has been assigned to further investigate case. Youth was killed to prevent him from providing testimony that would involve the police who beat him. His testimony would lead to further police involvement and has included FBI intervention but case is so tight that case falls out of FBI juristiction, case has reach international attention , for civil rights violations on the home land and the department of Justice was notified . stay tune for further developments Posted by: Conscientious Observers of Mount Sinai | Friday, January 12, 2007 at 06:49 PM It is evident that no one honestly cares if some one else is killed or how the person is killed, and every one hides under their save beds when they hear or read about some twenty one year old getting his head busted in by some over worked, under payed cop from the 109 pct. People are plain scared of police retaliation,or accidental friendly shake and bakes. They beat the hell out of some one then they claim he or she was pushing smoke signals and they will find a way to make it go down in the books as disorderly conduct. What hurts is the humiliation of the beating, then the processing, then the fine, then the legal costs that arise as one makes futile attempts to the correct the perfect justice machine, and finally to take a stand when all is against you and die because you did not yield to fabricated lies. The perfect justice machine, does not need fixing, it is the minds and hearts of the men and women who over see this mechanism and ultimately lend a deaf ear middle finger to the innocent and a advantageous ear and open hand and pen to the weavers sin and evil acts. On this young man's tomb stone it is written, I lived for truth, I was killed to prevent the truth from over-writting the lies. My crime standing straight and stalward,thank you to the New York Police Department,and specially to my main assailant, Officer Daniel Decastro and all the others who pitched in to assure the free beating, the frameup and the accusation went well the crime. To see this writting one must travel to the country of Colombia , this young man's birth place there in the middle of his place of rest is this magnificient stone carved with bold letters and the scale of justice unbalanced by a police badge. This design was initially made by German Camacho in June 1983 little did he know that same painting would be the basis of the stone on his grave. For the average investigator this looks like a fly by night COP beating on an average youth but as one begins to unveil the details of this young mans life, and interview the eye witness testimonies then it becomes evident that this indeed was a crime perpetrated by Police Officers entrusted with the law of life and death and they used it for their own personal greedy gain. Police services should not be viewed as right or wrong, they are essential,but beating a young man with out due cause other than to enforce some Mob associates interests is a violation of the law, and the meaning Serve and protect becomes beat, disrespect and execute if they protest.