Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun, former executive at Tiffany & Co., was arrested on Tuesday at her home in Darien, Connecticut and charged with wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. Basically, the 46-year old was fired in February and in retaliation (or maybe just a retirement plan) made off with more than 165 pieces of Tiffany jewelry before leaving the company. Stolen items included diamond hoop earrings, diamond drop earrings, diamond pendants, diamond rings, diamond bracelets – the list goes on but I’ve reached my quota for how many times I can use diamond in a sentence.
As vice president of product development for the luxury store, Lederhaas-Okun could “check-out” jewelry from Tiffany’s midtown Manhattan headquarters to provide to potential manufacturers in order to determine production costs (according to CBS News). But I guess she just forgot to return the $1.3 million in diamond-encrusted items… at least that’s what she told the FBI. In a particularly comical part of the criminal complaint, the FBI stated that Lederhaas-Okun tried to conceal her sticky-fingers by telling everyone that she had left some of the jewelry in her office in a white envelope and that the other pieces were either lost or damaged. Strangely enough, a subsequent search of her office revealed no trace of the “white envelope” – but who doesn’t store their jewelry in a big white envelope at their office? I know I have a few platinum rings and precious stones in my desk drawer (actually, I don’t have a drawer but whatever).
Unlike the rest of us who solve an overstuffed-closet problem by storing some jewelry at the office in big white envelopes, apparently Lederhaas-Okun sold the Tiffany pieces to an unidentified Manhattan jeweler. Bank records show that since January 2011, the dealer wrote 75 checks to Lederhaas-Okun and her husband for amounts up to $47,400 and totaling $1.3 million. Investigators also allege that she only took out pieces worth less than $10,000 to avoid detection because of Tiffany’s daily inventory check on items worth over $25,000. If Lederhaas-Okun is convicted, she faces up to 20 years in jail – where she will probably never see the dazzle of a diamond encrusted bracelet in 18-carot gold again.
