Huge diamond forfeited in Ohio to be auctioned

By LISA CORNWELL
Associated Press
From: http://old.news.yahoo.com

Large yellow diamond

This undated photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows a large yellow diamond. The large yellow diamond, known as the “Golden Eye,” was seized in a federal drug and money laundering investigation in northeast Ohio and is going on the auction block with the minimum bid to start at $900,000. The 43.51 carat diamond belonged to an Ohio businessman convicted of money laundering and conspiracy. A refundable deposit of $180,000 is required to be able to view the diamond in Cleveland the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 2 and bid on it during the auction that begins at 8 a.m. on Sept. 6 and continues until 3 p.m. Sept. 8. … Read more »

(AP Photo/U.S. Marshals Service)

CINCINNATI – A large yellow diamond — known as the "Golden Eye" — seized in a federal drug and money-laundering investigation in northeast Ohio is going on the auction block with the minimum starting bid set at $900,000.

The 43.51-carat diamond belonged to a northeast Ohio businessman who was convicted of money laundering and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he tried to sell to an undercover FBI agent the diamond and an estate once owned by boxer Mike Tyson, all for $19.5 million and a boat.

The gem — about an inch long, almost 3/4-inch wide and nearly 1/2-inch deep — was seized in the sting operation and forfeited to the federal government.

It is believed to be one of the largest internally flawless yellow diamonds, said Jenny Lynch, a spokeswoman for the online auction company Bid4Assets. The company, based in Silver Spring, Md., will auction the diamond next month for the U.S. Marshals Service.

"This is the largest and most valuable diamond that we have auctioned in our company's 12-year history," Lynch said. The stone, which has a rectangular brilliant cut crown with 25 facets, is an intense yellow color.

"This precious gem is sure to generate interest worldwide," Peter Elliot, U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, said in a statement.

The diamond auction already has attracted interest in the United States and abroad, said Lisa Black coordinator for the forfeiture unit in the Marshals Service's northern Ohio district. After the starting bid of $900,000, bids must increase in increments of $110,000, according to the http://www.Bid4Assets.com/Diamond43 website, which had more than 9,000 page views for the gem through Friday afternoon

There is a hefty cost to even submit a bid for the diamond.

A refundable deposit of $180,000 is required for viewing the gem in Cleveland the week of Aug. 29-Sept. 2 and for bidding on it during the auction that begins Sept. 6 and ends Sept. 8, Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Helfrich said.

Officials would not release the appraised value of the Golden Eye, but federal prosecutors previously have said it could be worth millions.

The origin of the diamond remains shrouded in mystery, and authorities say they do not know where the former owner — Alliance businessman Paul Monea — acquired it. The Marshals Service has not been able to determine the mine of origin, but says it has no connection to any famous historic diamond.

Tom Moses, a senior vice president with the Gemological Institute of America that graded the diamond, said it likely came from southern Africa, especially because of its stronger yellow color.

"Historically, these kinds of larger yellow diamonds have come from that area," he said. "What makes this one rare is its color and clarity combined with its large size. The more yellow it has, the higher the value."

The institute grades diamonds for quality, but does not make pricing valuations.

Monea, who made millions in the `90s on infomercials that sold Tae Bo exercise videos, was convicted in May 2007 of money laundering and conspiracy in federal court in Akron. Authorities said Monea was trying to sell the Golden Eye diamond and the estate once owned by boxer Mike Tyson to an FBI agent posing as a broker for a drug cartel when he was caught in the sting operation.

Monea bought the 25,000-square-foot mansion in northeast Ohio's Trumbull County from Tyson in 1999 for $1.3 million, according to county records. Now 64, Monea was sentenced in 2007 to 12 1/2 years in prison. He is scheduled to be released from a federal prison in Ohio in 2018.

After the diamond was confiscated in the sting operation, it was claimed by numerous people — including two of Monea's children, a New York minister and a California business owner. But a federal judge in 2009 ruled that the government could keep the diamond, and a federal appeals court in Cincinnati affirmed that ruling last year. The final forfeiture order was issued in March, allowing the Marshals Service to proceed with selling the diamond.

Some of the proceeds from the sale will go to victims in the Monea case, and some will go to the federal government and state and local agencies that helped in the investigation, the Marshals Service said.

Super-Hard Diamonds Found in Meteorite

The ultra-hard rocks may not end up on your finger, but they could help scientists learn how to create harder diamonds in the lab.

By Larry O'Hanlon |

It didn't look quite this dramatic, but ultra hard diamonds were discovered in a meteorite that fell over Finland in 1971.
iStockPhoto

Researchers using a diamond paste to polish a slice of meteorite stumbled onto something remarkable: crystals in the rock that are harder than diamonds.

A closer look with an array of instruments revealed two totally new kinds of naturally occurring carbon, which are harder than the diamonds formed inside the Earth.

"The discovery was accidental but we were sure that looking in these meteorites would lead to new findings on the carbon system," said Tristan Ferroir of the Universite de Lyon in France.

Ferroir is the lead author of a report in the new diamond in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The researchers were polishing a slice of the carbon-rich Havero meteorite that fell to Earth in Finland in 1971. When they then studied the polished surface they discovered carbon-loaded spots that were raised well above the rest of the surface –- suggesting that these areas were harder than the diamonds used in the polishing paste.

WATCH VIDEO: Find out why iron meteorites are particularly sensitive to even the slightest bit of moisture - including the touch of a finger.

"That in itself is not surprising," said diamond researcher Changfeng Chen of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. He explained that sometimes during the shock of impact graphite can create jumbled "amorphous" zones that can resist diamonds, at least those coming at them from one direction.

But what apparently happened in the Havero meteorite is that graphite layers were shocked and heated enough to create bonds between the layers -- which is exactly how humans manufacture diamonds, Chen explained.

Ferroir's team took the next step and put the diamond-resistant crystals under the scrutiny of some very rigorous mineralogical analyzing instruments to learn how its atoms are lined up. That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new "phase" or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now.

"The new structure is very interesting," Chen told Discovery News. "It gives us some clues so we can try to make it in the laboratory, and then investigate it."

Among the things that would be interesting to learn, Chen said, is how hard are the new kinds of diamonds. The sample from the meteorite was far too small to test for hardness, except to show that it is certainly harder than regular diamonds.

"The only evidence we have for a higher hardness than diamond is the fact that we polished the rock section with a diamond paste and that our polymorph and polytypes were not polished by this material," said Ferroir. "This why we do think that its hardness is harder than diamond."

However, there is no way at the present to compare them to the artificial ultra-hard diamonds known as lonsdaleite and boron nitride, Ferroir said.

Inside a world-class ring of diamond thieves

globalpost.com — Interpol has dubbed them the Pink Panthers. In a GlobalPost exclusive report, four of the thieves reveal how they plan their robberies, how they dispose of the stolen diamonds — and who is winning the battle between them and police departments from Paris to Dubai. 

A saleswoman displays a 26.62 carat diamond, valued at $5.3 million, at a shopping center in Nanning, China, Nov. 27, 2006. (Reuters/China Daily)

click here for the amazing article: inside a world-class ring of diamond thieves
 

500-carat diamond found at S. African mine

Chicken-egg-sized stone may be among world's top 20 high-quality gems

Petra Diamonds/ho / EPA Petra Diamonds Chief Executive Johan Dippenaar holds a white diamond weighing 507.55 carats, which was excavated at the historic Cullinan mine in South Africa on Sept. 24, 2009. View related photos

Multimedia

A diamond’s journey From the mines in Africa, to polishers in India, to retailers in the West, follow a diamond's global path to market. (Enhanced with audio)

JOHANNESBURG - Petra Diamonds Ltd. says a diamond the size of a chicken egg has been found at South Africa's Cullinan mine.

The diamond may be among the world's top 20 high-quality gems. It was discovered Thursday at the mine northeast of Pretoria, South Africa.

Johan Dippenaar, the company's chief executive said in a statement Tuesday that the 507.55-carat gem was of "exceptional color and clarity."

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No value has been given yet for the diamond, which weighs just over 100 grams.

The mine also produced the largest diamond ever found, the Cullinan, at 3,106 carats in the rough. That finished stone is set in Britain's Imperial Scepter as part of the Crown Jewels.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Biggest Diamond Heist Suspect Found With Rough Stones

By Eliot Van Buskirk

Last week, Milanese authorities found Leonardo Notarbartolo, the man accused of masterminding the world’s biggest diamond heist, in possession of approximately 2.2 pounds of rough, uncut diamonds.

Many of the stolen diamonds were never recovered, and Notarbartolo was detained for driving around with hundreds of diamonds stashed in his BMW, just a few months after being released from prison for the crime.

Case closed? Not so fast.

Due to the slippery nature of rough diamonds — and of Leonardo Notarbartolo himself — the alleged criminal mastermind could walk away scot free, with the confiscated diamonds back in his possession.

Ever the charmer, Notarbartolo claims he purchased the diamonds legitimately for a mere 10,000 euros, as he told Wired’s Joshua Davis last week through an intermediary. (Davis wrote about the heist in March.) On Monday, the alleged jewel thief contacted Davis again to say that the confiscated diamonds are not precious jewels, but rather industrial-grade diamonds used to manufacture cutting tools, which is why he paid only 10,000 euros for the whole pile.

“Notarbartolo is saying, ‘These are my diamonds. I got them legitimately. Give them back.’ And he’s hired a lawyer, Basilio Foti, to advocate for the return of the diamonds,” explained Davis.

Notarbartolo’s defense will likely hinge on the fact that rough, uncut diamonds are nearly impossible to trace. Polished diamonds typically have certified identities that accompany them during transport, and often contain laser-etched logos or certification numbers that are invisible to the naked eye.

A rough diamond, on the other hand, is pretty much a rough diamond. Because they’re soon to be cut and polished, which changes their characteristics, they’re not certified by the industry. “To say with certainty that any rough diamond is the same rough diamond that was in a vault six years go is almost impossible,” explained Davis, who has reported extensively on the diamond trade.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of the diamonds stolen six years ago were in rough form — and that the guy proven to have organized the crime was just found with a big pile of rough diamonds — authorities probably lack sufficient evidence to put Notarbartolo back behind bars, due to the early-untraceable nature of unpolished stones. Most likely, they will be forced to return the jewels to the convicted jewel thief and send him on his merry way.

“I don’t understand the Italian legal system, of course,” explained Davis, “but speaking on purely logical grounds, if you can’t prove that the diamonds are stolen, then you would logically have to give them back.”

In other words, Leonardo Notarbartolo, who famously liberated $120 million in diamonds and cash from a bank so “secure” it didn’t even need live security guards, may finally have found a suitable second act: freeing himself after being caught red-handed, six years later, with hundreds of what could very well be the very same diamonds.

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist

In February 2003, Leonardo Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The loot was never found...

read more | digg story

Diamond is no longer nature’s hardest material

London: Diamond will always be a woman’s best friend but the gemstone is no longer the world’s hardest material, according to scientists. Instead, a rare natural substance, called lonsdaleite, which is made from carbon atoms just like diamond, has emerged as 58 per cent harder than the gemstone, according to a report in the New Scientist. An international team, led by Zicheng Pan at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, simulated how atoms in two substances believed to have promise as very hard materials would respond to the stress of a finely tipped probe pushing down on them. The simulation revealed that the first one, wurtzite boron nitride, withstood 18 per cent more stress than diamond, while the second, the mineral lonsdaleite, 58 per cent more. Rare mineral lonsdaleite is sometimes formed when meteorites containing graphite hit Earth, while wurtzite boron nitride is formed during volcanic eruptions that produce very high temperatures and pressures. If confirmed, however, wurtzite boron nitride may turn out most useful of the two, because it is stable in oxygen at higher temperatures than diamond. And, according to the scientists, this makes it ideal to place on the tips of cutting and drilling tools operating at high temperatures, or as corrosion resistant films on the surface of a space vehicle, for example. Paradoxically, wurtzite boron nitrides hardness appears to come from the flexibility of the bonds between the atoms that make it up. When its stressed some bonds tend to re-orientate themselves by about 90 to relieve the tension. Although diamond undergoes a similar process, something about the structure of wurtzite boron nitride makes it nearly 80 per cent stronger after the process takes place, the studys co-author Changfeng Chen of University of Nevada wrote in the Physical Review Letters journal. -PTI

Diamond thieves pull off 100-million-dollar Paris heist

by Pierre-Marie Giraud Pierre-marie Giraud

AFP/File – A man checks raw diamonds. Armed robbers pulled off one of the world's biggest jewellery heists at …

PARIS (AFP) – Armed robbers pulled off one of the world's biggest jewellery heists at a famed Paris store, making off with 85 million euros (107 million dollars) in diamonds and valuables, officials said Friday.

A gang of four thieves -- two of them disguised as women -- on Thursday stole nearly all the jewels on display at the Harry Winston boutique just off the Champs-Elysees avenue, which attracts a wealthy international clientele.

The heist was well-planned, a source from the investigating team told AFP. The men knew the names of some of the shop's employees and the location of some hidden storage cases for jewellery.

The robbers managed to elude the high-security surveillance system and burst into the boutique at 5:30 pm (1630 GMT), at the height of the holiday shopping season.

Brandishing weapons, they threatened some of the dozen employees and customers and herded them into a corner, while some of the staff suffered blows, according to investigators.

The US jeweller has reported losses to its insurer of 85 million euros, the Paris prosecutor's office said, making it by far the biggest jewellery heist yet in France. Earlier estimates put the jewels' value at 80 million euros.

Police said they were dealing with "major pros" who had meticulously planned their crime and knew the boutique's lay-out well, suggesting it may have been an inside job.

The thieves, who apparently were French-speaking, stuffed brooches, rings, necklaces and other finery in bags and quickly left, without firing a shot. The whole operation lasted just 15 minutes.

No leads were ruled out including the possibility that the robbers may have connections in eastern Europe, where the loot could be sold, contrary to western Europe where such high-value stolen goods would be quickly detected.

Police described the eastern European market as a "new El Dorado for traffickers" trying to get rid of high-end stolen goods.

Investigators were Friday questioning customers, employees and pedestrians and studying surveillance camera tapes for clues, while Harry Winston's head branch in New York said it was working closely with the French authorities.

"We are cooperating with the authorities in their investigation. Our first concern is the well-being of our employees," the company said in a statement.

The Harry Winston store on Avenue Montaigne, which specialises in ultra-luxury jewellery, was hit by another heist in October last year when armed robbers stole an estimated 10 million euros worth of valuables.

An insurance company offered a 500,000-dollar reward for information leading to the thieves' arrest but they were never found.

The Harry Winston jewellery chain has sold precious stones to royal families and lent them to film stars for events such as the Cannes film festival or the Oscars in Hollywood.

Belgium holds the record for the world's biggest jewellery heist when diamonds worth 100 million euros or more were stolen on February 14, 2003 in Antwerp.

A 1.8-million euro necklace was stolen in June 2001 from the Alexandre Reza shop in Cannes on the French Riviera, followed a month later by a 3.8-million-euro heist at a Van Cleef and Arpels shop in the same city.

Among other notable robberies, three Paris shops were targeted in October 2001 by a conman posing as a rich Kuwaiti emir who managed to make off with 2.2 million euros in jewels.

Artificial diamonds - now available in extra large

by Catherine Brahic

The CVD diamond in the centre has not been annealed, the ones to the left and right have (Image: Hemley /PNAS)

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, they say - and soon they could be every girl's best friend.

A team in the US has brought the world one step closer to cheap, mass-produced, perfect diamonds. The improvement also means there is no theoretical limit on the size of diamonds that can be grown in the lab.

A team led by Russell Hemley, of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, makes diamonds by chemical vapour deposition (CVD), where carbon atoms in a gas are deposited on a surface to produce diamond crystals.

The CVD process produces rapid diamond growth, but impurities from the gas are absorbed and the diamonds take on a brownish tint.

These defects can be purged by a costly high-pressure, high-temperature treatment called annealing. However, only relatively small diamonds can be produced this way: the largest so far being a 34-carat yellow diamond about 1 centimetre wide.

Microwaved gems

Now Hemley and his team have got around the size limit by using microwaves to "cook" their diamonds in a hydrogen plasma at 2200 °C but at low pressure. Diamond size is now limited only by the size of the microwave chamber used.

"The most exciting aspect of this new annealing process is the unlimited size of the crystals that can be treated. The breakthrough will allow us to push to kilocarat diamonds of high optical quality," says Hemley's Carnegie Institute colleague Ho-kwang Mao.

"The microwave unit is also significantly less expensive than a large high-pressure apparatus," adds Yufei Meng, who also participated in the experiments.

The new technique is so efficient that the synthetic diamonds contain fewer impurities than those found in nature, says Meng. "We once sent one of our lab-grown diamonds for jewellery identification, it wasn't told apart from natural ones," she says.

One immediate application will be to make ultra-high quality windows that are optically transparent to lasers.

Threat to commerce

The team's method "could be routinely run in any laboratory where it is needed," says Alexandre Zaitsev, a physicist at the City University of New York, whose work also includes diamonds. "When considered in combination with the high-growth-rate technique of CVD diamonds, it seems to be a starting point of mass-scale production of perfect diamond material at a low price."

Zaitsev considers low-pressure annealing at temperatures greater than 2000 °C to be a "breakthrough in diamond research and technology".

The improving quality of synthetic diamonds threatens the natural diamond market. While 20 tonnes of natural diamonds are mined annually, some 600 tonnes of synthetic diamonds are produced each year for industrial use alone.

They are used in a range of high-end technologies, such as lasers and high-pressure anvils. Some companies have also started to sell synthetic diamonds as gemstones. In response, diamond giant De Beers has set up a "Gem Defensive Programme" with the aim of finding ways to tell apart synthetic and natural diamonds.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0808230105)

Scientists grow bigger, better diamonds

Using chemical vapor deposition, gems can be grown very rapidly

Diamonds grown in the laboratory using a chemical vapor deposition process can be treated by a new high temperature, low pressure method to improve their color and optical clarity.

By Andrea Thompson

LiveScience

If you thought that rock on the ring in the window of Tiffany's was big and beautiful, the diamonds treated in labs with a newly-developed method will really blow you away.

Diamond, a particular form of pure carbon, is of course used for more than adding sparkle to jewelry. It is also used for making scalpel blades, electronic components, and even quantum computers.

But the very properties of diamond that make it perfect for these uses — its hardness (it's the hardest known naturally-occurring mineral), optical clarity and resistance to chemicals, radiation and electrical fields — can also make it a difficult substance to work with.

Defects can be purged from diamond by a heating process called annealing, but this process can turn diamond into graphite, another form, or allotrope, of carbon that is soft and gray and used in pencil leads.

To prevent graphitization, diamond treatments have previously required using high pressures (up to 60,000 times atmospheric pressure, or the pressure we experience at sea level) during the annealing process, but such high pressure/high temperature processes are expensive and put limits on the size and amounts of diamonds that can be treated.

A team of scientists at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., have found away to get around these issues — and make bigger, better diamonds.

Growing diamonds
They use a method called chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to grow synthetic diamonds. Unlike other diamond-growing methods that use high pressures like those found deep in the Earth where natural diamonds are formed, CVD produces single-crystal diamonds at low pressure. These diamonds can be grown very rapidly and have relatively few defects.

The Carnegie team could take these synthetic diamonds and anneal them at temperatures up to 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) at pressures below atmospheric pressure. The annealing process turns the diamond crystals, which are originally yellow-brown, colorless or light pink. The process also has minimal graphitization.

"It is striking to see brown CVD diamonds transformed by this cost-efficient method into clear, pink-tinted crystals," said study team member Chih-shiue Yan.

The researchers also figured out what causes the pink tint: A nitrogen atom takes the place of a carbon atom in certain place in the crystal structure. This finding "may also help the gem industry to distinguish natural from synthetic diamond," Yan said.

The new method, detailed in the Oct. 27 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also lets the researchers grow diamonds bigger.

"The most exciting aspect of this new annealing process is the unlimited size of the crystals that can be treated," said study team member Ho-kwang Mao. "The breakthrough will allow us to push to kilocarat diamonds of high optical quality."

The Hope Diamond is a mere 45.52 carats.