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Subscribe to RSSJOHANNESBURG -- South African police have arrested a 25-year-old man suspected of attempting to smuggle 220 diamonds out of the country in his digestive tract through Johannesburg's main airport.
The Lebanese national bound for Dubai had swallowed $2.25 million worth of polished diamonds before he was stopped at a security checkpoint at Africa's biggest airport and then relieved of his concealed cargo, police said.
"We used laxatives to remove the diamonds," police spokesman Paul Ramaloko said Thursday.
In March, police arrested another Lebanese national who was attempting to smuggle $1.69 million worth of diamonds out of South Africa.
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He thought they were jawbreakers.
A few is caught with a few million diamonds down the hatch. How many are successful. Interesting.
That's one way to get some roughage in your diet.
the fact that this man would have to smuggle diamonds by swallowing them just proves how tight diamond security is nowadays. hopefully everyone obsessed with "blood diamonds" will realize the great lengths the industry goes through to keep human rights safe.
He must have lit up the scanner.
rock - im not sure I follow your logic on this one. ensuring someone isnt ripping off De Beers - isnt anything AT ALL remotely like making sure the folks who unearth those diamonds are treated humanely.
I would be willing to bet that there are TONS of people not as dumb as this man who've gotten diamonds out of s. africa. Who chooses to fly these days? hello...ever hear of XRAY machines?
id have chartered a boat.
The amazing thing to me is that because deBeers controls the world market, diamonds retain value. If they were actually priced based on their rarity, they'd be down there with cubic zirconium, etc. deBeers controls the quantity of diamonds available to the market. Quite possibly one of the world's largest monopolies.
Heck, emeralds, rubies and something most have probably not heard of, Bixtite (or red beryl or red emerald) is far, far more rare, quite beautiful as a gemstone, and yet it's price is very affordable when you can find a specimen. Of course, I rather doubt a woman would look at the fact that someone gave her one of the world's rarest gems in appreciation of her and would much rather get a more common stone that simply costs a small boatload of money per carat.
And if deBeers would open the gates to the market then the blood diamond demand would fall like, well, like a stone.
It is awful what some people will do to profit from the blood diamond trade. The cost in human suffering in unacceptable.
Actually this is the 'Mud Diamond' trade. Much more shameful to give your lady a mud diamond.
What is it about the Lebanese, read another story about 2 Lebanese brothers stealing a 5 mill lotto ticket from a guy, do certain cultures lend themselves to criminal activity?
lol, you must not read all the articles about americans stealing. *FACE PALM
come on, really?
I read daily stories about Americans that steal, rob, kill and rape.. Some cultures! One must be really square to think the way you do :)
Well, you know what they say: You can't eat just one!
I bet that felt like a million dollar dump... LOL
OK, now that the rim shot one liner is out of the way, I'm in full agreement with Windancersong-1494878 that it is a shame what people will do to circumvent the laws of a country. Unfortunately, they just got the mule. I hope he rolls on the big money folks that hired him to do this for them. Could be interesting who's names appear.
If this was his first time smuggling them, I'd imagine he would have been at most willing to talk when he was passing those diamonds.
How did they know he had them? What were the signs?
I need more information.
I initially had that question as well. I'm going to guess they showed up on a scanner in his stomach. Don't know what technology they apply in that airport though.
he thought he was a rabbit..eating all those carats...sorry
Are these the new Chocolate Diamonds I keep seeing advertised?
Sharpest poop ever.
What a crappy way to get a diamond.
One RICH diet
Nice way to devalue the stones. Who wants to buy butt-diamonds?
So,,, is the mastermind and his henchmen sitting in some dank hotel room with a big bucket, rubber gloves and gasmasks looking longfaced and disapointed?
What if the gut-load of glass went south like a bran muffin unexpectedly? Those diamonds would be in the blue water right now!
lol @ the puns.
This holiday season you need to be on your guard when buying jewlery. If the salesman uses the term 'nugget' when discribing an item it could be a 'butt diamond' from the dirty mud diamond trade. Don't be embarresed to give the stone a sniff or quick taste like a cop at a coke bust.
..after hearing the sound of the auto flush toilet in the airport the guy muttered
" the diamonds !!!, I forgot the diamonds "
The diamond industry is a scam and a sham.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of diamonds that are harvested and will NEVER see the light of day or market. If the market was flooded with these diamonds, the cost (and therefor profit from) of them would crash.
The diamond industry artificially keeps the cost inflated by keeping all these diamonds under lock and key. They will never see the light of day. And people will continue to pay through the nose to buy/afford a measly 1/3, 1/2, or 1 carat ring to give to a loved one.
What a SCAM!
Dear brainwashed and uninformed:
220 diamonds for Dabeers. lets think about this.
they lose 90% of their value upon purchase in a country that still thinks they are valuable. diamonds are NOT worth anything except to the stupid materialistic @!$%#s. who dont realize there is no shortage of them and that we have billions in vaults to maintain the prices. these diamonds are worth about 100$ a piece. WHO gave them the 2.2 million quote...the same people who told you romney was going to win? that things were "close"? Dabeers? the diamond seller? such a joke...
these diamonds were worth about 50k. IF. we should be supporting these guys trying to steal them. ALL of us should. it is violating human rights.
GOOOOOOOO. diamond thieves!!!! steal them all. feed the poor! @!$%# the rich greedy jews practicing ironic genocide in the middle east. steal there fake inflated fixed priced @!$%#ty diamonds that we can replicate in a lab for nothing.
and wait how does this work? oh ya! enslaved black people who live brutal misinformed lives who die young in miserable conditions pulling diamonds out of the ground, doing all the work to give some fat white guy an over inflated price on something that is deemed valuable by all our stupid princess girls. @!$%# every level of this except the thief. wish he would of got away.
Diamonds a thing of the past, except in its use of science. all for greedy materialistic bitches. all of this.
Of course diamonds are legal. I'm sure he was just trying to avoid declaring them when going through customs.
The 5 C's: Cut - Color - Clarity - Carat - Colon
Honestly what real value do diamonds have outside of adding them to drill bits or into abrasives or even in lasers. They just end up "blinging" on someone's neck or finger...I don't know what the value of that is. That being said my wife has a nice wedding set. :)
Idiots.
Of all the ways one can smuggle diamonds, ingesting them has to be one of the worst possible ways.
And let me guess, this twit probably had them in a deflated balloon as well?
Idiots.
1. Do not get your information from the salesman.
2. The thief was the only true one here, the good in all of this, so distorted and reversed...He was Robbing the true thieves.
What would be great is if everyone stopped buying diamonds.They are rare in the earths crust,but not to modern machinery.There are no doubt 10s of millions of carats in vaults.If they stopped mining tomorrow,they'd have decades worth to still sell.Throw in the whole blood aspect and it makes the whole thing unsavory. As far as the story,whack 'im
Hasn't every one heard. There is an election pending in Israel and Netanyahu is just getting in a few early campaign shots to show how tough he is and to do everything possible to cause unnecessary trouble for President Obama. Netanyahu was terribly disappointed he wouldn't have Romney to kiss his ass. The man is the closest thing to an international criminal as can be found today. Israel is a pariah in the world community for their criminal treatment of the Palestinian people and eventually International Law will prevail.
so let me see if I got this right
Net-me-boohoo got potus electus to have butt diamonds made because romney wanted israel to get diarrhrea?
mmmm, I find your ideas interesting and would like to subscribe to your news letter.
something stinks about your line of reasoning - oh, it's the diamonds