Five wanna-be diamond thieves have been arrested this week for trying to steal gems worth $880,000 at a jewellery fair in Hong Kong, police said earlier today.
The spate of attempted thefts at the Hong Kong Jewellery and Gem Fair, which opened Monday, may have been the work of a gang from mainland China, local media reported.
The latest arrests yesterday happened when a 41-year-old man posing as a buyer tried to switch a five-carat stone worth HK$3 million (US$387,000) with a fake, according to media reports.
When he was challenged by a staff member, he dropped the real diamond and was arrested by police, the paper said.
“All the arrested persons were from the (Chinese) mainland although we still don´t know whether they were working together,” a police spokeswoman told.
