High-living Tiffany exec stole $1M gems: feds, A Tiffany & Co. executive helped herself to more than $1 million worth of diamond-encrusted bling before getting laid off by the famed Fifth Avenue jewelry company, the feds charged yesterday.Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun, who formerly oversaw product development for the blue-box bauble business, hit hot-rock bottom when she was busted by the FBI on fraud and stolen-property charges at her lavish home in ritzy Darien, Conn.
The loot included “numerous diamond bracelets in 18-karat gold; diamond drop and hoop earrings in platinum or 18-karat gold; diamond rings in platinum; rings with precious stones in 18-karat gold; and platinum and diamond pendants,” court papers say.
“As alleged, Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun went from a vice president at a high-end jewelry company to jewel thief,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said.
The investigation into her alleged five-finger employee discount was dubbed “Operation Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” a source said.
According to the feds, part of Lederhaas-Okun’s job involved ensuring that various jewelry designs could be mass-produced, and she had authority to “check out” prototypes to obtain cost estimates.
Between January 2011 and February of this year, she allegedly checked out more than 165 pieces that were never returned.
Instead, a Manhattan federal court complaint says, she and an unidentified woman from Sag Harbor, LI, sold the gems to “a leading international buyer and reseller of jewelry in midtown Manhattan,” which surprisingly forked over $1.3 million for about $1.2 million worth of Tiffany merchandise.
Court papers say payment for the 74 separate transactions went to either Lederhaas-Okun or her husband, Robert Okun, who runs a small hedge fund in Darien and has not been charged in the case.
Lederhaas-Okun, 46, kept the scheme going for more than two years by targeting items worth less than $10,000, because Tiffany policy requires daily counting of checked-out pieces worth more than $25,000, authorities said.
But when the company announced a “full physical inventory review” in November, she allegedly reported that the jewelry she checked out had to be written off as damaged or otherwise unusable.
After being laid off in February, she “gave false explanations for what happened to the missing jewelry,” including the claim that she left it “in a white envelope in the vicinity of her desk,” court papers say.
Lederhaas-Okun appeared stunned in court yesterday afternoon, and later broke down in sobs while waiting to be released on a $250,000 bond.
She, her husband and her lawyer all declined to comment, as did a Tiffany spokeswoman.
Title: High-living Tiffany exec stole $1M gems: feds
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