Reward's A "No Show"

They helped find Ford jewels, but reward never turned up!
Atlanta area jewelers, soon to be honored, suing for $1 million

Nearly a year after two Chamblee jewelers cracked a $7.5 million Palm Beach jewel heist and helped the FBI recover a cache of gems belonging to Kathleen DuRoss Ford, they still haven't gotten a thank- you from the Ford Motor Co. heiress. Nor have they been paid a $1 million reward that Ford offered for the arrest and conviction of the burglar who stole the jewels, even though he and his fence are now in federal prison.

Instead, next month the Palm Beach County Crime Prevention Officers Association and Crime-Stoppers of Palm Beach County will honor jeweler Randy Jones and his partner Shawn Slep, along with Atlanta jewelry dealer Jeff Meyer, with a Crime-Stoppers award for their help in recovering what at one time were known as "the hottest jewels on the planet."

"It's an award, not a reward," Jones said wryly Friday night. " There's about a million-dollar difference there." And, he said, the jewelers even have to pay their own way to Florida. Jones said the trio are being commended for leading Florida law enforcement authorities to burglar Alvaro Valdez through a fence who sold the Chamblee jewelers some gems from Ford's stolen collection. Meyer, to whom Jones had shown one of the gems, was the one who spotted the Ford collection on the Internet.

Police and the FBI used the Chamblee jewelers as go-betweens, which eventually led to the recovery of an estimated $10 million in jewels stolen in more than 80 Florida burglaries. "We solved the largest residential burglary in American history, " Jones said.

But two weeks ago, the jewelers sued Ford in Palm Beach County for the reward money plus accumulating interest. "The reward was for the arrest and conviction of the people responsible, " Jones said. "They've been arrested, convicted and sentenced in prison. . . . But Ford's lawyer has not only refused to pay the reward. He has refused to talk with us or even acknowledge anything about us. . . . So we had to file a lawsuit to make them communicate with us."

"Without us," Jones continued, "Mrs. Ford would not have $8 million worth of her jewelry back. She has it back and won't pay us a measly million dollar reward."

R. Robin McDonald, They helped find Ford jewels, but reward never turned up: Atlanta-area
jewelers, soon to be honored, suing for $1 million., 10-24-1998, pp E15.