Criminals Cash in as Gold Prices Soar

The price of gold is soaring. And it's not just jewelers and the public who are aware. It's also criminals.

So says Scott Guginsky, executive vice president at the Jewelers' Security Alliance (JSA) and a former NYPD Det Sgt who led a team tackling smash-and-grabs, consignment memo fraud, jewelry-related kidnappings, shootings and homicides

He was discussing the increases in violence robberies and sophisticated thefts, which were highlighted in the JSA's newly-published Annual Crime Report 2025.

He said gold has become very attractive to criminals - more so than diamonds which each have their own fingerprint and are harder to fence.

"It's very easy to fence stolen gold," he told IDEX Online in an interview this week.

"You melt it down. Fencing-wise you're not getting 10 or 15 cents on the dollar like you would for finished jewelry.

"Go to the Diamond District, Hill Street, California, or the Seybold building in Miami, you're going to get 80 cents on the dollar for gold. And whoever's purchasing it is going to make 20 cents on the dollar for doing nothing."

That, in part, is driving the increase in the use of firearms, mace and bear sprays, and vehicles smashing into  storefronts.

The new JSA crime report shows jewelers in the US lost a total of $144.7 million to crime in 2025, a 1.5% increase on the previous year.

The total number of crimes committed was down 13% drop, which means each crime was higher value.

But more worrying than the financial loss is the fact that more than a quarter of robberies (27.1%) involved violence against jewelers.

"When you look at the crime report, it might show crimes down a certain percentage. But we're seeing more violence now with the robberies," said Guginsky.

"So the violence is very concerning. Last year, we had a father and son jeweler in Chicago that were the victims of a robbery homicide.

"Somebody was arrested and is being prosecuted for that case. The year before we had four homicides.

"It's the violence that's a concern, it's the use of guns, it's the use of mace or bear spray during the commission of smash-and-grabs.

"And it's also the use of vehicles on the West Coast where a jewelry store is open for business with customers and employees inside and somebody takes a stolen car and drives right through the front of the store.

"With that you'll have 10 or 20 people jump out with sledgehammers and guns and then pretty much clean out the store.

"In south Sacramento a couple of weeks ago we had somebody take a stolen car through the front of a jewelry store and unfortunately ran over one of the jewelers and he's in critical condition fighting for his life.

"In 2024, we had zero robberies where they used the vehicle. And the crime report will show we had 13 vehicle smashes in California alone last year.

"When that car goes through the front, it's flash mobs of 10, 20, 30 people. So it's well planned out.

"They use three or four stolen vehicles, and everybody has a role when they hit that jewelry store.

"Somebody's holding a gun, somebody has bear spray and then will spray the employees.

"That just happened in Texas where a flash mob, a group of six or eight, went in with a canister of bear spray - which is used to take down a bear - and they sprayed that right in the face of the sales associate."

Guginsky also addressed the other big trend in jewelry crime - super-sophisticated burglaries, also known as " Ocean's Eleven", after the classic heist movie.  

"They go through a common bathroom, they go through a roof, they come down on a ladder, they pry a back door, they use cell phone, Wi-Fi jamming devices to jam the cellular backup and the radio signals going out to the alarm company," he said.

"They use GPS trackers on the manager or the owner's car, and they track their movements a week before the burglary.

"They also put cameras in front of a jeweler's house so at two o'clock in the morning -  when they've cut the power and they jammed all the cellular sites - they can see if that jeweler is going to respond to the store after an alarm code is activated.

"For the most part what we've seen with that type of crime is that 98% of the individuals committing that crime are from Chile.

"They're here illegally. They're here on an ESTA program where there's no visa necessary in Chile to come to the United States.

"They might take an Airbnb and stay in town for a week leading up, doing surveillance, counter surveillance, renting storage facilities.

"They're cutting the safes with angle grinders and with torches so they need to stockpile equipment in order to commit that crime."

JSA has plenty of practical guidance that jewelers can use to protect themselves, their staff and their businesses.

At the end of our conversation Guginsky zooms out: "There's three letters that we utilize. LLP. The most important is life. The second is your livelihood. And third is the property.

"In that order. Most important is your well-being, your life, the safety of your employees. Everything else can be replaced. But if you're injured or killed, you can't replace a life.

"A livelihood that your family built up, the business and the property can be replaced, if you have proper insurance."

Have a fabulous weekend.