Tell me about diamond couriers in the 90s

March 16, 2022 11:23 AM

Quite some time ago, someone told me an elaborate story about working at a family-owned jewelry retailer/wholesaler in the mid 1990s. I've always wondered: Could any part of their story be even remotely true?

As part of their job at the jewelry store, every month or so they'd catch a flight to another state (they didn't say which), pack up a metal suitcase with various gems and materials, have the suitcase handcuffed to their wrist(!), and while handcuffed they would immediately fly back to their own city on the same day, where the handcuffed suitcase would be unlocked by the shop owner and the gems safely stored in the vault.

I have no way of reaching this person for more details. This person would have been in their 20s and former military.

posted by mochapickle to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

Unless they were a massive distributor, I can’t see any reason that a handcuffed suitcase would be involved, since it just scream “wildly valuable stuff right here!” to any potential thieves. Also, unless your acquaintance was specifically employed for transport/security, this seems unlikely for a normal employee to do as an occasional part of their duties. When I was growing up, my parents had diamond-broker friends in NYC, and they would all just move gems in envelopes that went in their pockets.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:09 PM on March 16, 2022 [5 favorites]

I can't confirm the flight part (I don't know how that would work with airline security), but even today you can sometimes see people in the diamond district in NYC with a briefcase handcuffed to their wrist.
posted by Mchelly at 12:11 PM on March 16, 2022 [11 favorites]

Yep, I've seen the briefcase-handcuffed-to-the-wrist a few times in Chicago around the diamond shops, around 2001-2004. It doesn't strike me as entirely fanciful.
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:20 PM on March 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Definitely tru-ish. On the other hand, if it's THAT valuable, it's also attracting a lot of attention. So either there's an undercover escort, or he may be a decoy (or the real thing, who knows?)
posted by kschang at 12:37 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Memory jogged: I can definitely say that this person had never been to NYC.
posted by mochapickle at 12:40 PM on March 16, 2022

I worked in an adjacent biz and, and the spouse worked at one of the big auction houses, and yea - couriers were basically the primary method. While the whole spy briefcase thing seems ridiculous an actual human courier was how we got a variety of high value goods like lab created gemstones to our office. Our insurance simply would not touch such shipments, so our option was courier or sometimes we would just put the shiny bits in a regular UPS package and hope.

There are several 'diamonds districts' and we had a relationship with an importer here in Chicago district. This side of the industry is entirely about those relationships. Through them we would get these nice older ladies dropping our packages off. They were always very very meticulous about the logistics of the delivery - checking the weight, numbers, making certain we got all the certs and papers. Our often modest envelope was often delivered by someone with a briefcase chained to them, but sometimes it was a hard sided suitcase, like a makeup bag, or just a leather bag. There was clearly a system and our orders were just tacked on.

They were quicker and cheaper than you might expect - they would pick our packages in London or Florida or wherever and gett them to use in Chicagoland for a couple of hundred dollars (or % or both) and if we were not in a big rush have it delivered in a weekish. I also dealt with an outfit based in Thailand and it was essentially the same - the only difference was they had the same lady handle all the deliveries.
posted by zenon at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2022 [7 favorites]

Yep, a friend of mine works for a family diamond business (not in NYC) and confirms, they do use couriers this way. He doesn't think his particular business does the whole handcuff thing but he didn't think that was farfetched.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:05 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

I never couriered in the gem world, but I had a summer job that twice flew me first class JFK to LAX to meet someone at the airport and pick up a package of documents and get right back on a flight home. On the ground for less than an hour. This was before 9/11. Not sure why FedEx wasn't good enough, but I had a merry time in first class both ways. Documents were legal docs I think having to do with securities deals/takeovers. Couriers are not uncommon for valuable items.

And, having purchased my engagement ring from "a guy" in the diamond district in NYC, I can say that security is always TIGHT. This does not sound out of the question at all.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 1:21 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

My brother worked for a high end jeweler in NJ, and would occasionally be sent on a train to the diamond district in NYC, with a pocket full of gemstones.
posted by conifer at 2:21 PM on March 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

My slender, unimposing female friend has told the story of working as a gem courier a few times. In her version, the big guy with the handcuffed briefcase may or may not have been carrying anything valuable, but she definitively carried tens of thousands worth of gems unobtrusively in her purse more than once.
posted by Jacen at 7:38 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Keep in mind that the handcuff to the wrist is not very visible if you wear the right type of sleeve and could have primarily been to reassure the courier that they couldn't do something dumb like forget the briefcase in the washroom.

And keep in mind that the boss may have been reading spy novels.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:55 PM on March 16, 2022 [1 favorite]