The G Manifesto

The Madagascar Sapphire Report

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

A rampant desire to accumulate wealth pulses through Ilakaka’s streets. There is no bank, yet it is home to businesses worth millions of dollars.

It was back in 1998 that the discovery of major sapphire deposits in the hot and rocky plains of Madagascar’s southern interior sparked an extraordinary scramble for wealth.

So abundant were sapphires that they could simply be sifted from the river bed or picked up from the hot dusty earth. Fifty per cent of the world’s sapphires are said to come from this lawless region.

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

Over time people have been forced to dig deeper in their searches. Mineshafts wide enough for one man to descend are dotted around like lunar craters.

Beneath the surface men dig in tiny cramped caves, labouring in subterranean heat, the hope of finding sapphires tempered by the constant threat of a collapsed shaft. Desperation and greed mean many are killed or die in the pursuit of the precious gems.

People & Power takes a look at the extraordinary story of Ilakaka and the ‘sapphire rush’ through the eyes of those effected; gem dealers, mine owners, police chiefs and miners, those who risk their lives on a daily basis in search of that one stone that they hope will transform their impoverished lives.

What is life like in Ilakaka amidst the whirlwind pursuit of profit?

Madagascar Saphire Report Part I

Madagascar Saphire Report Part II

Source

Click Here for The Sapphire Sea: A Gemstone Thriller

Sapphires: Great to Heist.

But think twice about buying them for your wack girlfriend.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

EPMD Crossover

Flawless Blue Diamond Up For Auction at Sotheby’s

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

A flawless 7.03-carat blue diamond will be among the jewels up for sale at Sotheby’s upcoming auction in Geneva.

The diamond, an internally flawless, fancy-vivid-blue, cushion-cut stone, was cut from a 26.58-carat piece of rough discovered in 2008 at Petra Diamonds’ historic Cullinan Diamond Mine in South Africa.

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

The Cullinan mine has produced some of the world’s largest diamonds, including the 3,106-carat “Cullinan,” the largest rough gem ever unearthed.

The diamond is estimated to fetch between $5.8 million-$8.5 million, according to a press release from Sotheby’s, and, as always, the buyer will have the honor of naming the stone.

The sale, called “Magnificent Jewels,” is scheduled for May 12 at the Beau-Rivage Hotel in Geneva.

Commenting on the blue diamond, David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby’s International Jewellery Department for Europe and the Middle East, said “Blue diamonds are among the rarest of all nature’s treasures and it is very exciting to have such a fine example as the centerpiece of our forthcoming Geneva Magnificent Jewels sale. This stone certainly ranks among the most important blue diamonds that I have had the privilege of offering for sale in my career at Sotheby’s, and what makes it particularly special for us is that we’ve been able to follow its production from the initial rough state through the various stages of its cutting and polishing.”

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

In the last three years, Sotheby’s has seen three blue diamonds garner more than $1 million per carat at auction, including a pear-shaped vivid-blue diamond set in a ring that brought $4.9 million at the Geneva auction in May 2008, setting a new world record price-per-carat for any gemstone at auction.

Polished diamond prices have dropped 15 percent in the past six months, according to an index from PolishedPrices.com.

Sotheby’s sold a vivid blue emerald diamond in October 2007 for a then-record $1.32 million per carat. The 6.04-carat stone fetched $7.9 million in Hong Kong, the company said. It has since sold two further pear-shaped blue diamonds for $4.9 million and $4.7 million.

Petra sold a 39.19-carat rough blue diamond from Cullinan for $8.8 million in October. The world’s most expensive blue diamond is the 17th century Blue Wittelsbach Diamond, which fetched $24.3 million at Christie’s in December, according to the International Colored Gemstone Association’s web site.

Source Source

Click Here for Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Papoose- Bloody War

Leonardo Notarbartolo: The World’s Biggest Diamond Heist

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

Click Here for G Manifesto: The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for How to Swoop Girls and Influence People (Australia Style)

Excellent story of the Heist of the Antwerp Diamond Center:

It was February 16, 2003 — a clear, frozen Sunday evening in Belgium. Notarbartolo took the E19 motorway out of Antwerp. In the passenger seat, a man known as Speedy fidgeted nervously, damp with sweat. Notarbartolo punched it, and his rented Peugeot 307 sped south toward Brussels. They hadn’t slept in two days.

Speedy scanned the traffic behind them in the side-view mirror and maintained a tense silence. Notarbartolo had worked with him for 30 years—they were childhood buddies—but he knew that his friend had a habit of coming apart at the end of a job. The others on the team hadn’t wanted Speedy in on this one—they said he was a liability. Notarbartolo could see their point, but out of loyalty, he defended his friend. Speedy could handle it, he said.

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

And he had. They had executed the plan perfectly: no alarms, no police, no problems. The heist wouldn’t be discovered until guards checked the vault on Monday morning. The rest of the team was already driving back to Italy with the gems. They’d rendezvous outside Milan to divvy it all up. There was no reason to worry. Notarbartolo and Speedy just had to burn the incriminating evidence sitting in a garbage bag in the backseat.Notarbartolo pulled off the highway and turned onto a dirt road that led into a dense thicket. The spot wasn’t visible from the highway, though the headlights of passing cars fractured through the trees. Notarbartolo told Speedy to stay put and got out to scout the area.

He passed a rusty, dilapidated gate that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the Second World War. It was hard to see in the dark, but the spot seemed abandoned. He decided to burn the stuff near a shed beside a small pond and headed back to the car.

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

When he got there, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Speedy had lost it. The contents of the garbage bag was strewn amongst the trees. Speedy was stomping through the mud, hurling paper into the underbrush. Spools of videotape clung to the branches like streamers on a Christmas tree. Israeli and Indian currency skittered past a half-eaten salami sandwich. The mud around the car was flecked with dozens of tiny, glittering diamonds. It would take hours to gather everything up and burn it.

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

“I think someone’s coming,” Speedy said, looking panicked.

Notarbartolo glared at him. The forest was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car or truck on the highway. It was even possible to hear the faint gurgling of a small stream. Speedy was breathing fast and shallow—the man was clearly in the midst of a full-blown panic attack.

“Get back in the car,” Notarbartolo ordered. They were leaving. Nobody would ever find the stuff here.

The job was done.

Continue Reading

Click Here for ABC News Primetime Antwerp Diamond Heist

Thanks to Glengarry Glenpoon, Ryan, and everyone else who sent this to me.

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The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

It’s All Right by The Impressions

Big Jewel heist in Paris from Harry Winston’s boutique

(Click Here for Criminality in The Luxury Sector)

Click Here for The G Manifesto’s The Complete Guide to Burglary

Click Here for The Man Who Robbed the Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort

Click Here for Secrets of a Superthief by Jack MacLean

A savvy band of jewel thieves, armed with guns and some posing as women, have struck in the heart of the city’s golden triangle of luxury shops, stealing more than €85 million worth of diamonds, rings and watches from a posh Harry Winston boutique.

The brazen $108 million theft Thursday, which some French newspapers quickly branded the heist of the century, reflected a savvy knowledge of the jewelry business, happening during the peak of the holiday season, when jewelry stocks are plentiful.

It was the second time that the boutique on Avenue Montaigne was robbed in the past 14 months and came a little more than a week after Cartier in Paris lost a €635,000 diamond ring to a veiled woman posing as a tourist from Qatar who switched the real gem for a fake.

Robbers in drag steal $100M in jewel heist

The police said that at least four people were involved in the robbery of Harry Winston, which is on a street of deluxe shops near the Champs Élysées that is crowded with boutiques for Chanel, Dior and Gucci. Around closing time at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, the thieves entered and confronted 15 employees. At least two of the robbers were dressed in wigs and women’s clothes, while a fourth accomplice apparently waited outside as the getaway driver, Lévy said.

The boutique has already weathered an earlier audacious robbery of €10 million of goods, in October 2007. At the time, the company offered a €500,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of its diamonds. In April, Harry Winston posted a pre-tax gain of $13.5 million from the settlement of its insurance claim in that earlier robbery.

To date, the record for jewelry theft remains a heist in February 2003, when thieves reaped €100 millions in diamonds from the vaults at Antwerp’s diamond exchange.

Source

All in all a A-.

Points taken away for dressing in drag. Which is only slightly better than dressing in Ed Hardy Shirts.

You should wear custom Savile Row suits on a heist.

Still, not a bad day at the office.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA El Campeón De La Gente
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
The Guide to Getting More Out of Travel
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Az feat.Jadakiss & Cassidy-In

Female Thieves hustle jewellers for ring

Two thieves who stole a £15,000 diamond ring from a jewellers in Edinburgh are being sought by police.

Two women, believed to be of middle-eastern origin, walked into Lime Blue jewellers in George Street and asked to look at a ring in the window display.

They acted as if they wished to pay for the ring but when the shop assistant turned away, the thieves walked out of the shop with it.

A Lothian and Borders Police spokesman said: “This was a brazen high-value theft carried out by two women who are believed to have visited a number of shops in George Street yesterday afternoon.

“We are appealing for any members of the public who may have noticed the suspects in George Street, either before or after the theft took place, to contact us immediately.

“Similarly, anyone with any other information that can help us identify the two women should also get in touch.”

Source

This is a classic hustle.

And in my experience, is better preformed by women.

The Rest is Up to You…

Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA Your favorite International Playboy’s, favorite International Playboy
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com

Brick & Lace: Love is Wicked