Two charged in diamond theft
York Regional Police arrested Vaughan couple in connection with Saint John, N.B., heist
Police have arrested a couple in the Toronto area in connection with a brazen diamond theft earlier this month in New Brunswick that was captured on surveillance camera.
Saint John police said Thursday morning that their counterparts in York Region had arrested 70-yearold Grigori Zaharov and Natalia Feldman, 44, in Vaughan on charges of theft. The arrest came following a Canada-wide warrant for the couple’s arrest.
A spokesperson for the York Regional Police, Const. Andy Pattenden, said the couple was arrested at a condominium complex and are in custody.
They were to appear Thursday in a Newmarket courthouse and are expected to be transferred to Saint John.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Wayne Smith, owner of W. Smith & Co Fine Jewellers in Saint John, N.B. “Because of our tape, we were able to bring something to light.”
Smith told the Star Thursday that after he decided to release the footage of the robbery to the public, he was contacted by an informant who recognized the couple and was able to identify them.
He passed that information along to the police, who, according to Smith, were able to determine that a couple with the same name had stayed overnight at the Delta Hotel, which is directly upstairs from Smith’s jewelry store.
Zaharov has a number of previous criminal charges in Ontario going back decades.
In January 2004, Zaharov, then 57, was reportedly charged after police found cash, gems, silverware, blank credit cards and allegedly altered Canadian passports.
The discovery was made while police were investigating a home invasion and brutal beating that sent Zaharov to hospital.
In August 1994, the Windsor Star reported that Zaharov, then 47, had been arrested for allegedly “capping his bets”— an offence in which a gambler increases the size of a blackjack bet knowing that he or she possesses a winning hand — at the newly opened Casino Windsor.
In 1992, Zaharov appealed a robbery conviction at the Ontario Court of Appeal, arguing that police had illegally searched his vehicle following the robbery of a Radio Shack store.
According to the court’s Oct. 27, 1992 judgment, police found six pairs of surgical gloves, a “jimmy” tool, lock picks, a bent clothes-hanger, two bolt cutters, a wire cutter, a mini-crowbar, a pry-bar, a 14-inch spike, a screw head and fencing pliers, among other tools.
Police also found a map with X’s indicating a hotel where Zaharov had stayed and the store where the robbery was committed.
The Crown prosecutor in the appeal hearing argued that there was evidence indicating the man was a “professional thief.”
In dismissing the appeal, the judges wrote: “We agree.”
The court judgment described Zaharov as “an immigrant” and “a welleducated man and conversant in English.”
Property records show that Feldman transferred half of the value of the couple’s $453,899 Vaughan condo to Zaharov — described in the document as “my spouse” — in October 2011.
According to Saint John Police spokesperson Sgt. Charles Breen, the couple is also suspected in similar theft investigations in Charlottetown and Fredericton.
Earlier this week, Charlottetown police released surveillance camera images of a couple suspected in the Oct. 12 theft of diamonds valued at about $20,000.
A spokes person for the Fredericton Police said the force was unable to comment on any possible investigation that may be linked to the arrest.
On the surveillance-camera video, a couple can be seen looking at necklaces, earrings and other jewelry before being presented with the loose cut diamonds.
While the sales representative walks away to grab a mirror for the couple, the man switches the real cut diamond for a fake that he has received from the pocket of his female accomplice.
With the switch done, he stuffs the gem into his back pocket.
Smith said that his crystal-clear surveillance footage of the robbery had allowed investigators in Saint John to determine that the couple were not passengers on a cruise ship as they had led his sales associate to believe, but were instead travelling in a car. With files from the Toronto Star Library