the 840-pound emerald found / $400 million Bahia emerald

Do you know what an 840-pound emerald looks like? Have you heard of the $400 million Bahia emerald that was reported stolen last year? Well, here it is, the 840-pound emerald as uncovered by the Los Angeles Country Sheriff’s Department in a warehouse somewhere in Los Angeles just before Christmas last year. The precious haul was reported stolen last year and the police is eager to return it to its proper owner. However, that has not been easy to establish as several people are claiming ownership of the gem. Valued at a little less than $400 million when appraised in Brazil last year, the Bahia emerald is now temporarily in the hands of the police pending resolution of its ownership by the court. Here’s an excerpt of an entry from FoxNews on the giant Bahia emerald: (Photo courtesy of the LA County Sheriff Department)

Lt. Grubb, who had spent the bulk of his 26-year career conducting narcotics investigations, first got onto the case last September. A distraught man named Larry Biegler had called the sheriff’s office to say that his giant emerald had been stolen from a Los Angeles-area warehouse where he had been keeping it. It was worth nearly $400 million, he said.

Lt. Grubb’s detectives began investigating.

The emerald, they determined, was in the possession of two businessmen named Todd Armstrong and Kit Morrison, whom detectives tracked to a small town called Eagle, in western Idaho. When the detectives arrived in Eagle, Mr. Armstrong was in the process of trying to sell the emerald to a buyer. “We’ve run into a small snag,” Mr. Armstrong says he told his buyer.

The Idaho men said the emerald belonged to them. They said in an interview they paid Mr. Biegler $1 million for diamonds he never delivered. Mr. Biegler had put the emerald up as collateral, they say, for the stones. When the diamonds didn’t materialize, they picked up the emerald from the warehouse in Los Angeles. They showed investigators a stack of documents they said prove their claim.

Mr. Biegler — a gem broker and real-estate investor — disputes that account. He says he kept up his end of the diamond deal, and claims the Idaho men agreed to pay $80 million for the emerald, which he was willing to sell at that price.

You can read the full report here.

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