Malki said he will be there, explaining that he needs to “put food on the table,” and also log face time with his customers. “How can I the show right now?” he asked. And the theft of Supreme Gems’ inventory has forced Lee to forgo participating in the International Gem and Jewelry Show, which returns to the San Mateo County Event Center on Friday. This time, though, the Flying J heist is a much larger loss. Although you lost everything, you pay me whatever you lost later on, but I will still give you merchandise.’” “They said, ‘Kenny, you don’t have merchandise, you are young. jewelry trade - among them people who’d given him merchandise on memo - came to his aid. “I had to build my reputation and business again.”īut Lee said that elder statesmen of the L.A. “I owed money in the marketplace,” he said. The shows, Malki said, attract an eclectic milieu: “You see the $5 people there, and you see the $500,000 people there.”Īt the time, Lee did not have insurance - he said he could not afford it - and also lost merchandise he had held on memo. Some of the trade shows cater to the general public, and others are open only to wholesale shoppers. They are missing out not only on the business opportunities but also the fellowship that comes with their line of work. With the loss of their merchandise, some of the jewelers are forgoing upcoming trade shows.

“We never thought to insure it for more because it was so costly, so expensive,” he said. He is still calculating what he believes to be their fair-market value, but by his estimation, Supreme Gems’ lost merchandise alone dwarfs the $8.7-million valuation that Brink’s has attributed to all of the stolen shipments combined.īut, like some of the other victims, Lee gave the items he shipped with Brink’s a declared value of $400,000. Lee said that the cost of his stolen inventory - 1,300-plus items his company amassed over roughly 30 years - was at least $12 million. I can’t bring my face downtown and let people see me.” “Vendors don’t even ask me for money right away: They give me items on consignment. “With my reputation - built for so long - people trust me,” said Lee, who founded Supreme Gems’ predecessor company in 1992.

The complaint seeks to limit any payout Brink’s could have to make to the jewelers to that amount, alleging they “substantially under-declared the value of their shipments.” (Some jewelers have said they assigned their merchandise lower values than their fair-market costs to reduce shipping fees.) The total value of the loot is the subject of two lawsuits filed in August: one lodged by Brink’s against the affected jewelry companies, and another brought by the jewelers against the Richmond, Va., security and logistics giant.īrink’s alleged in its lawsuit that the stolen items had a declared total value of $8.7 million - a figure it said was drawn from agreements signed by its jewelry business customers. He declined to discuss details of the information shared in the voicemail message. Jerry Kroll, attorney for the 14 jewelry companies, said that his clients are cooperating with the FBI and have provided investigators with images of their stolen merchandise and, in one case, passed on a tip that a jeweler received via voicemail. Investigators believe that the heist was the work of sophisticated criminals, given the lack of violence and the speed of the thieves’ work, among other factors. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is working on the case with the FBI, so far has said little about the inquiry.

Brinks security uniform