Bungling gem thief jailed after snatching £160,000 diamond

A SCOT has been jailed for 18 months after being found guilty of stealing a diamond worth £160,000 from a prestigious jewellery show in Switzerland.

James Thompson, 56, told a judge at the Criminal Court in Basel that he wanted to steal something valuable from the Baselworld Watch and Jewellery exhibition so that he could sell it to pay off his considerable gambling debts.

The court heard that Thompson drank champagne and beer to calm his nerves before snatching the diamond from a dealer’s table and slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“The booze gave me the confidence to go ahead with the plan,” Thompson said, adding that he felt “compelled” to take it.

The court was told that Thompson dressed smartly in a suit and carried fake business cards to approach the dealer.

The Glaswegian chatted to the dealer and feigned interest in buying the most expensive gemstone on the table.

He was examining the stone when he pretended to get angry and slipped it into his pocket when he thought the dealer was distracted, the court heard.

Police described Thompson as “silver tongued” and said he moved among the dealers at the show in March with “aplomb and self-confidence”.

However, the theft was almost immediately spotted.

Equipped with fake business cards identifying himself as a precious stones dealer, the Scot moved among the big players of the international gem industry. After he had pocketed the diamond, police said, “the thief then moved quickly away, hoping that the dealer would not notice the missing gemstone which, of course, he did and almost instantly at that”.

The dealer called police who arrived within five minutes.

The previous year, a gang of thieves from eastern Europe had robbed the show’s dealers of watches and gems worth nearly £7 million.

A police spokesman said: “The Scotsman was clearly nowhere in that league. He wasn’t even sophisticated.

“He just got it into his head that he could solve his gambling debts with one fell swoop.”

It is understood that Thompson had been living in Switzerland after leaving Scotland in January this year with debts in the region of £100,000, some of it owed to loan sharks.

“He said he was desperate,” added the police spokesman.

According to prosecutors, he made no attempt to defend his actions. He was appointed a Swiss lawyer, who said his client “realised the gravity of his offence but wasn’t in the best frame of mind when it was carried out”.

Thompson did not cover his tracks, police said.

He had registered at a Basel hotel under his own name and it did not take police long to go through the registration cards in the city on a police computer.

He was arrested the same day and other diamonds and fake business cards identifying him as a gemstone dealer were found amid empty bottles from a mini-bar, because he had been drinking to build up courage for his enterprise.

He told prosecutors he hoped to sell the diamond on the black market “and pay off my debts”. It is unclear whether the other gemstones found in his room were stolen from Baselworld.

Baselworld organisers go to extraordinary lengths to try to keep thieves from entering the fairground because of the wealth of the people both buying and selling wares there during the eight-day gem extravaganza.