She was cruising the high, arcing ramp from the westbound 10 Freeway to the southbound 405 with a large bag of expensive jewelry in the passenger seat.
It was Oct. 18, and jeweler Stacy Nolan Soper was headed home in a rented Nissan Rogue after visiting downtown L.A.’s jewelry district, where she had picked up wares from a handful of businesses.
Traffic slowed as she came down the ramp, and the car in front of her suddenly stopped. A man hopped out. She wondered if he needed help. Then she saw two other men in ski masks jump out after him.
In a sickening flash, Soper realized: “They are coming after me.”
Two of them came to her car’s passenger side and began slashing its tires and smashing the windows. The other man stood at her open window waving something that she didn’t recognize with certainty but may have been a knife.
“It seemed like [he] was going to attack me,” Soper said.
As she looked at him in terror, the others grabbed the jewelry from the passenger seat — worth more than $100,000 — and ran back to their vehicle. One of the criminal’s faces was only partly obscured, and he looked like a man she’d seen “lingering around” the downtown lot where she’d parked her car, she said.
She was not the only jeweler targeted this way.
Six days later, in a widely publicized episode documented on video, a jeweler from Hong Kong was robbed by four thieves on the side of the eastbound 10. To instigate the heist, they crashed a minivan into his Alfa Romeo. Then, in November, a jewelry store employee was victimized in another attack in Orange County. And at least two additional thefts have been carried out under similar circumstances since last summer, according to interviews and search warrants filed by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Carried out in public — on L.A. freeways in broad daylight — the heists have a brazen quality befitting an action movie, or at least a TV police procedural. The crimes are linked to South American theft groups, said Capt. Francis Boateng, who oversees LAPD’s Commercial Crimes Division, which is investigating some of the robberies along with the California Highway Patrol. The crimes follow a pattern: thieves target jewelers in transit, slashing tires or creating other scenarios to get them to stop their vehicles. One jeweler said he found a tracking device on his car and believes robbers used it to follow him for miles.
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1. Jeweler Stacy Nolan Soper’s rental SUV was damaged during a robbery in October on a ramp connecting the 10 and 405 freeways. 2. Thieves smashed the car’s windows and stole more than $100,000 of jewelry. (Photos courtesy of Stacy Nolan Soper)
“We have had some jewelers targeted,” Boateng acknowledged. “We have some search warrants and are trying to track some things down.”
The heists are not new to L.A. In 1999, a taxi ferrying two jewelers was forced to stop on the 110 Freeway’s transition to the westbound 105 Freeway by gun-wielding men who stole two suitcases filled with pearl necklaces worth $600,000, The Times reported. But the recent incidents stand out in part because they’ve occurred amid a surge in crime perpetrated by “burglary tourists” from South America.
These sophisticated criminals have long operated in the Southland, taking advantage of the tourist visa system, which does not require a background check for travelers. But their efforts, which include other types of crimes, most notably home burglaries, have ramped up in recent months.
“There is not one crew doing all these crimes,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton, who oversees the department’s detectives. “Basically these individuals crew up for individual jobs or series of jobs.”
Historically, Hamilton said, the groups have targeted jewelers carrying merchandise from a trade show. He said they typically watch their targets for a while, learning their routes, before striking when they are most vulnerable.
Freeways make for enticing venues because traffic can trap a victim and keep authorities from arriving quickly. The criminal gangs, which include some local members, may also be targeting jewelers on freeways because they are patrolled by the California Highway Patrol, whose investigative apparatus is not as robust as that of the LAPD or other agencies, according to law enforcement officials.
That’s what Soper believes happened in her case. After the robbery, she said that a CHP officer responding to the incident told her, “We don’t deal with this that much.”
In a statement, CHP public information officer Alec Pereyda said that the highway patrol works with “allied agencies” on “a variety of things.”
“The California Highway Patrol treats every one of these incidents very seriously and always keeps the safety of the public on California highways in mind,” he said.
‘Nobody stopped’
Soper makes regular trips to downtown L.A.’s jewelry district, a bustling area filled with dozens of merchants on Broadway and Hill Street.
On her Oct. 18 visit, she picked up an especially large amount of merchandise from jewelry manufacturers who fabricate the pieces she designs for her Stacy Nolan brand.
Soper, whose original designs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, wonders if a tracker was affixed to her vehicle while it was parked at the lot on Hill. She said an LAPD detective who eventually picked up the case told her that when thieves “see someone going in and out of the jewelry district, they put a tracker on them.”
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1. Necklaces designed by L.A. jeweler Stacy Nolan Soper. 2. These gold hoop earrings, designed by Nolan, feature diamonds totaling 1 carat. (Photos courtesy of Misha Tchkheidze)
The jeweler had affixed two Apple AirTags to her belongings, she said, and after the incident she was able to use her iPhone to track the items to locations in the Van Nuys and the Sherman Oaks area, in addition to other spots. Hoping this might help the authorities, she tried to share this information with the CHP.
But, Soper said, the agency “never followed up. Nobody called.”
By the time she was able to alert the LAPD detective about the AirTags, she said, their signals had grown weak. The devices showed a location in the San Fernando Valley when they shut off for good around February.
Soper, who overhauled her security procedures after the robbery, has been deeply shaken by the crime. Among the uncomfortable elements of the story: Motorists didn’t come to her aid — both during and after the robbery.
After the assailants fled, traffic picked up, and drivers of passing cars asked, “Are you OK?” she said.
“I said, ‘No,’” Soper explained. But “nobody stopped.”
The jeweler in the Tesla
On June 16, an estate jewelry dealer set out from Polacheck’s Jewelers in Calabasas and headed for downtown via the 101 Freeway. In the trunk of his Tesla Model 3: a duffel bag filled with a “couple hundred thousand dollars of jewelry,” several Rolex watches and $5,000.
It was a typical haul for Polacheck’s, whose celebrity clientele includes Tom Brady, Caitlyn Jenner and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star Scott Disick.
The jeweler drove down the southbound 110 and onto the 6th Street offramp. Suddenly, a Mercedes-Benz SUV stopped in front of him, forcing him to slam on the brakes.
“My first thought was his car broke down,” said the jeweler, who requested anonymity over safety concerns.
Days after thieves stole as much as $30 million from a security company vault in Sylmar, residents and workers piece together details of the crime.
Then the SUV backed up — and smashed into the Tesla. Three men jumped out of the Mercedes; one ran up to the Tesla and slashed its tires, and another shattered its windows. “The glass exploded all over me,” the jeweler said.
Another man who stood at the driver’s window was about 5-foot-3 and wore a scarf and hat. The jeweler put the car into reverse and tried to flee, but backed into the vehicle behind him.
“Get the trunk open, get his bag!” One of the robbers shouted, according to the jeweler.
The thieves did exactly that. “I was more stunned than anything,” he said. “I wasn’t following them with four flat tires.”
The jeweler believes he was followed for roughly 30 miles from Polacheck’s, which is at the Commons at Calabasas, an outdoor shopping venue. He said he inspected the underside of his car a few days after the robbery and found a small plastic tracker attached to the inside of a wheel well.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for years — I am streetwise, not an idiot.”
He said that he’s seen the video of the October heist involving the Hong Kong jeweler and was certain about one thing: “It’s the same guys.”
‘Pretty nasty hits’
According to a warrant recently filed by the LAPD, an unnamed jeweler departed a Hill Street building in downtown Aug. 14 with a suitcase full of about $151,000 worth of precious stones he hoped to sell. The victim was spotted by members of a theft gang who’d been “scouting the jewelry district,” and followed the man to Westwood, the warrant said.
When he went into a cafe, someone smashed his rear window and took the suitcase.
Crews of thieves who travel from Chile and other South American nations for the purpose of stealing jewels and luxury goods are not new in Los Angeles, authorities say, but such heists “are way, way up.”
Another warrant filed in October detailed how victims are often surveilled by gang members as they enter a bank, while accomplices puncture a tire, ensuring they “will have to pull over.” It outlined an attempted theft of $5,000 from a Pacoima woman who had just withdrawn the cash from a Bank of America branch in Mission Hills on Sept. 30.
Once Benita Schirtz and Michael Eaddy drove off from the bank, they were approached by a motorist who pointed out a flat tire on their vehicle and then tried to rob them.
Reached by telephone, Schirtz expressed surprise over the details of the warrant.
“We were so dressed down — there was nothing that would scream ‘money,’” she said. “It’s not like my car is all pimped out. We were so casual; I wasn’t even wearing jewelry.”
After pulling out of the bank’s parking lot, she got onto the 405 before quickly exiting to head for the 118 Freeway, Schirtz said. It was then that a man in a neighboring car called attention to her flat tire. “They must’ve followed me onto the 405,” she said.
Schirtz pulled over — and so did the other car and a third vehicle, the warrant said. A man got out of one of them and tried to help Schirtz and Eaddy with the flat, but the interaction felt strange, so the couple demurred and got back in their car to call the police. That’s when she noticed her purse was missing.
Luckily, she had hidden the $5,000 and the value of her stolen items was only $1,100. While Schirtz said she was “shaken up,” she knew she and her husband had fared better than the jewelers.
“I got away lucky,” she said. “But ... they did some pretty nasty hits.”
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