Five Jewelry Crimes to Guard Against This Summer

By Rob Bates | June 12, 2025

Jewelry thieves are getting more sophisticated, and they’re increasingly targeting retailers’ computer systems, experts warned during a seminar on “Safeguarding Your Business: Crime Prevention in 2025,” held June 5 at the JCK show in Las Vegas.

The panelists noted that crimes typically come in waves, so chances are if something happens to one store, it also happens to another. They outlined five specific crimes that jewelers need to watch out for:

Distraction thefts

These robberies, generally perpetrated by transient groups from overseas, occur at jewelry stores “almost every day,” said Scott Guginsky, executive vice president of Jewelers’ Security Alliance (JSA).

“[The gangs] come into your store well-dressed,” he explained. “A lot of times they come in close to closing hours. They like to separate people. They speak in their own dialect. They sometimes say they’re from Dubai. They are very flamboyant, waving cash around. They want you to think that they have wealth and try to gain your confidence.”

The actual thefts tend to follow a certain pattern.

“They ask to handle things,” Guginsky said. “They want to touch the watch, touch the jewelry. They’ll say, ‘For religious reasons, we prefer to wrap it up ourselves, put a bow on it.’ And then they’ll say, ‘I only have $1,000. Can you hold this? Put it in the box, and I’ll come back with the money.’ Then they never come back. And when the sales associate looks in the [box], there’s nothing there. They already took the piece out. So don’t let anybody touch your jewelry and wrap it themselves.”

Andrew Chipman, vice president of Jewelers Block at Berkley Asset Protection, said, “In a number of cases, [these gangs will] try to overwhelm the number of salespeople that are on the floor. They’ll bring in three, four, five people, and there’s just not enough salespeople to adequately handle them. And they will use that as a distraction. They’re so good at the sleight of hand, it only takes one moment of not paying attention to them to lose a piece of jewelry.”

To avoid being victimized by these gangs, jewelers need to be aware and make sure they don’t let the gang control the sales process, advised Howard Stone, vice president of global asset protection and analytics at Jewelers Mutual Group.

“You should have some method to communicate internally with your team to let them know that you need help and assistance,” he said. “You can provide great customer service, but always control the amount of pieces that you have out and take control of the sales situation, versus allowing [the customers] to take control. So create an environment where there’s a code word, or just something that works for you and your team, that lets people know that somebody needs help and there could potentially be a crime happening.”

Technology-enabled break-ins

Jewelry thieves are increasingly using high-tech gadgets in their crimes, said Stone.

“We are starting to see groups use more sophisticated tools,” he explained. “They come in overnight, utilize WiFi cell phone jammers, which can take out the alarm system. The alarm monitoring station gets a [communication] failure, and many times the jeweler doesn’t answer their phone or in some cases chooses not to respond. And then they come in Monday morning, and all the product inside their safe is gone.”

Jewelers should always respond to communication failures, Guginsky said, but they should first contact law enforcement and wait for a police officer to arrive at the scene and accompany store personnel who are responding.

“Never go into the store by yourself,” he said. “Because if you’re at that store by yourself in the middle of the night and they’re jamming your cell phone, you can’t call for help, you can’t even call 911.

“The police are supposed to be proactive,” he added. “Call and say, ‘Listen, I’m going to be waiting across the street in the parking lot. I had an alarm communication error. I think there might be somebody in my store.’ They’re going to send somebody. They can’t say, ‘We don’t respond.’

“You don’t want to park directly in front of the store. Stay off-site and say, ‘This is where I am. If the patrol car can meet me here, I’ll take them over to my store and I’ll key them in and we can do an inspection.’ They’re going to eventually come. It could take some time, but they’re going to come.”

When the police arrive, make sure they do a thorough walk-through, and that they check the back door, power box, and roof, he said.

Thieves dressed as construction workers

Guginsky said that in 2023, JSA saw one instance when thieves dressed up as construction crew. In 2024, it recorded 20.

“When these burglaries take place in mall settings, a lot of times afterwards some of the stores will say, ‘I didn’t know there was construction going on,’” Guginsky said. “You can check with the property owners and ask them, ‘Is there construction going on?’”

A lot of times the crew will be wearing masks. That’s another red flag, he said.

Products stolen while shipped

“We’re having a big issue with shipping right now,” said Chipman. “It’s just too easy for things to go missing in today’s world. Make sure whoever’s preparing the package has somebody checking it so it doesn’t mention that it contains jewelry. Make sure you double-check the address to ensure it’s going to a real address. And have a good relationship with your carrier so that things can’t get rerouted without you being personally involved.”

Sometimes, the best practice is to not send too much jewelry in one package, but to break it up into multiple shipments, Chipman said.

Cyberthefts

The recent Cartier data breach shows that luxury retailers are increasingly becoming targets for cybercrooks. JSA president Jennifer Mulvihill said there’s been a 29% increase in hacks against the luxury sector since 2024.

“We have seen in the last couple of weeks at least eight retailers get attacked,” said Mulvihill. “You may wonder: What would make me an attractive target to a cybercriminal? Data. In the cyberworld, criminals think of data as their version of diamonds.”

She advised jewelers to be scrupulous with basic security, particularly with passwords.

“Make sure you inform employees that they can’t use passwords that they use for other sites,” Mulvihill said. “Make sure that the passwords are complex and that they’re changing their passwords in the ordinary course of business, maybe monthly or every six months.”

She also said businesses need to have multi-factor authentication (MFA) in place, even if employees find it annoying.

“It’s cost-effective and not hard to implement,” Mulvihill said. “There is something called ‘MFA fatigue’ out there that exists when you have to keep putting in passwords and [personal identification numbers]. But it’s worth it. It’s a very easy next step to just ensure that the person who’s accessing that data is authorized to do, and that’s what cybersecurity is about.”

The best defense against a ransomware attack is to store data in the cloud, Mulvihill said, though she suggested making sure the cloud provider has encryption protections.

Finally, she advised jewelers to be careful about emails from vendors, especially if they seem unusual.

“Verify and hover over that sender’s email address very carefully to make sure it’s legit,” she said.

The panel was moderated by the author of this article.

(Photo: Getty Images)