How an Emerald, 840 Pounds of It, Landed in Court[$400 Mil]

WSJ ^ | 02 Mar 2009 | TAMARA AUDI

[BGHater]

L.A. County Sheriff Has the Big Rock Many Claim to Own

Just before Christmas, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department pried open a crate outside a warehouse to find something they had been chasing for months: an 840-pound Brazilian emerald that had been reported stolen.

Now, if they could just figure out who owns it. So far, at least five people have come forward to say it's theirs.

"It seems like the more we talk to people, the more people claim to have ownership over this thing," said Lt. Thomas Grubb, who heads the sheriff's investigative team on the case. "We haven't determined who's not a suspect, really."

Unable to determine who the real owner is, Lt. Grubb decided to keep the emerald locked up while the investigation proceeds. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles civil court is scheduled to hear from different claimants in the case on Tuesday.

Lt. Grubb, who had spent the bulk of his 26-year career conducting narcotics investigations, first got onto the case last September. A distraught man named Larry Biegler had called the sheriff's office to say that his giant emerald had been stolen from a Los Angeles-area warehouse where he had been keeping it. It was worth nearly $400 million, he said.

Lt. Grubb's detectives began investigating.

[BGHater]

Bahia Emerald

[techcor]

Mine! It’s big and green and I left in a warehouse. No, really.

[Just another Joe]

OH, that old thing?
That's mine. I forgot it at a warehouse in Las Angeles. You know how those three day benders can be,

[BGHater]

BAHOE ping.

[a fool in paradise]

Who was renting the storage unit?

And so they opened the unit and then sought to determine ownership.

How much stolen swag is auctioned off at storage warehouses when the person paying rent stops?

[BGHater]

Dunno. But I've heard people buying units blind and getting cars and stuff like that in them.

[badgerlandjim]

The LA Sheriff’s Dept. could say they think the emerald is just ill-gotten gains from a drug deal and confiscate it. Problem solved. (Wouldn’t surprise me if they did just that!)

[Ignatz]

Ah! So THAT’S where I left that thing!
I’ll be by to pick it up after work.

[freefdny]

“The stuff that dreams are made of.”

[BGHater]

Lol. Ya think?

L.A. budget gap could hit $1 billion

[Travis T. OJustice]

BAHOE ping.

LOL!

[kaylar]

Amethysts were once considered precious stones , for their rarity and beauty. Then Brazil turned out to have amethysts so common as to practically count as pebbles, and the value of amethysts plummeted. They are now considered to be only semi precious stones, and amethyst jewelry is cheap. Too many more emeralds of that magnitude turn up, and emeralds won't be precious any more, either. Which would suck , as that's my birth stone.

[B-Chan]

On the other hand, emeralds are my favorite gem, and if they become cheap I might finally be able to own one!

[JimC214]

Down from the glen came the marching men
With their shields and their swords
To fight the fight they believed to be right
Overthrow the overlords

To the town where there was plenty
They brought plunder, swords and flame
When they left the town was empty
Children would never play again

From their graves I heard the fallen
Above the battle cry
By that bridge near the border
There were many more to die

Then onward over the mountain
And outward towards the sea
They had come to claim the Emerald
Without it they could not leave
Emerald by Thin Lizzy

[DocRock]

"It was worth nearly $400 million, he said."

No it's not. It may be worth $20 to $25 per pound. In the gemstone industry, we call that quality specimen "door stopper" quality because the only thing it is good for is keeping a door from swinging closed. If it was smaller, it would be "fish tank" material.

I smell a scam... probably used as collateral against a modest loan compared to the "appraised" value, then when the loan was defaulted, the new owner tries to sell to recover his loss and finds out it is common, massive material and worth less than his loss... now comes the insurance scam to recover the money. Just my opinion of course.

[BoneHead]

Looks like 840 pounds of emerald bearing rock, but it doesn't look like 840-pound Brazilian emerald.

But that's just my laymans view.