A California man is trying to prove he owns a 380kg emerald dug up in the Brazilian jungle, but a group of businessmen say he’s nothing more than a tourist who had his picture taken with it.
It’s up to a Los Angeles judge to determine if Anthony Thomas really owns the US$400 million Bahia Emerald, which has spent the past 10 years on a mysterious journey across the US.
Thomas testified on Tuesday that he bought the gem in 2001 for US$60,000, but he said he never received it. Instead, he claimed, the Brazilian miners who sold it to him kept it and told him the shipper lost it so they could resell it.
After that, the rock turned up in New Orleans, where it was housed in a bank vault that flooded during Hurricane Katrina. It was also reported stolen from a storage facility in Los Angeles before authorities finally seized it in Las Vegas.
Thomas’ attorney introduced 25 photos of Thomas with the stone while it was still in Brazil.
However, attorney Andrew Spielberger, representing a handful of businessmen who say they bought the gem for US$1.3 million, dismissed the photos as little more than tourist snapshots.
Thomas said the photos were taken at a celebration commemorating his ownership of the gem. He said he also received a bill of sale but lost that when his house burned down.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS