[New York Daily News]<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say employee Teresa Tambunting took 500 pounds of gold from a Queens jewelry manufacturer to her Scarsdale home.<\/p>\n
What a gold digger!<\/p>\n
A larcenous longtime employee of a major Queens jewelry manufacturer walked off with a staggering 500 pounds of gold she smuggled out piece by piece over six years \u2014 in her handbag, prosecutors said yesterday.<\/p>\n
Teresa Tambunting, 50, of Scarsdale New York sneaked the hoard out of a Long Island City vault by stashing \u201ca few ounces\u201d at a time in a false bottom she created in the lining of her pocketbook, authorities said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a very sick woman. I took the gold,\u201d she told her stunned bosses once the jig was up, according to sources.<\/p>\n
Officials at Jacmel Jewelry caught on that they were being bled dry after doing an internal audit in January and noticing they were missing as much as $12 million worth of gold, which now trades for around $900 an ounce.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendant is accused of establishing a virtual mining operation in Long Island City which siphoned off millions of dollars\u2019 worth of the precious metal,\u201d said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.<\/p>\n
Tambunting had worked for Jacmel for 28 years, joining the company shortly after emigrating from the Philippines, and had been made a vault manager in 1991. She was paid $160,000 a year and was one of only a handful of \u201chighly trusted\u201d employees who had access to the company\u2019s safe, sources said.<\/p>\n
But even those people were subject to searches by security \u2014 which Tambunting got around with the makeshift hole in beaten-up black leather, banana-shaped purse she carried for years.<\/p>\n
A few days after company officials started going over their books to see if they had made an accounting error, Tambunting walked into work wheeling a piece of luggage containing 60 pounds of \u201cfine gold\u201d \u2014 or buck-shot-sized pellets of unrefined precious metal.<\/p>\n
When asked if that was all she had taken, she said yes, but days later, she changed her tune and came in with her lawyer \u2013and a couple of dozen five-gallon paint buckets filled with 447.8 pounds of gold necklaces, rings, earrings and other jewelry. There was enough gold to fill 12 large storage bins. The size of Tambunting\u2019s haul stunned employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they walked in the first time, they were shocked and their jaws dropped,\u201d a source said. \u201cWhen she came back three weeks later, their jaws dropped even heavier.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stash took company officials nearly three weeks to inventory. During that period, they discovered some pieces that dated back to early 2004. Then they went to the District Attorney.<\/p>\n
In all, the value of the returned gold is roughly $7.3 million, meaning $4.7 million remains missing. Some of that, sources said, could have been lost in routine manufacturing processes.<\/p>\n
They said Tambunting and her husband, Edgardo, a director at Cantor Fitzgerald, appeared to be living within their means, but probers were still investigating their finances. The couple lives with their three children in a million-dollar home.<\/p>\n
Jacmel Jewelry President Jack Rahmey called Tambunting \u201ca long time employee and a trusted one,\u201d but declined to comment any further.<\/p>\n
She was released Tuesday on $100,000 bail. She faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Her lawyer did not return messages.<\/p>\n
Officials say as much as $12 million worth of gold \u2014 which trades at roughly $900 a troy ounce \u2014 disappeared. With a single gold bar weighing 400 troy ounces, or 27 pounds, that\u2019s the equivalent of 833 pounds of gold, or just shy of 31 gold bars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re different from the rest of the neighborhood. You don\u2019t see them around. They stick to themselves,\u201d neighbour Marsha Kalisch said Tambunting was released Tuesday on $100,000 bail. Her attorney did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday. Prosecutors are investigating what she planned to do with the jewelry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[New York Daily News] Prosecutors say employee Teresa Tambunting took 500 pounds of gold from a Queens jewelry manufacturer to her Scarsdale home. What a gold digger! A larcenous longtime employee of a major Queens jewelry manufacturer walked off with a staggering 500 pounds of gold she smuggled out piece by piece over six years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}