Joan is the story of Joan Hannington who was the Britain’s most notorious diamond thief, published by Ebury Spotlight, London, UK, 2002, republished in 2024.

Often times on police shows, you will hear the phrase inside job, because to rob a store, you have to have a reasonable idea of what to steal, the value of the item to buyer, the security inside the store and the ability to escape undetected. All of them you will need some information to pull off the heist. The more information you gather and know, the better the thief you will become.

In the book by Joan, she was working in a jeweler store and was doing her job and learning about the retail process. Her manager and more senior staff had access to the vaults in the back. It happened her manager was caught stealing to pay for his mistress, and Joan was given access to the vaults where the uncut diamonds were kept. She swallowed some diamonds and took them home. Joan also knew if she started to change her lifestyle, where she lived the local police would be curious, she hid the diamonds.

Often when there is a lifestyle change, people wonder how they afford it? If you steal and keep the same lifestyle, then there are less questions, but what will you do with the money? For example, many people know about cars, if you changed your car from a Honda Civic to a Rolls Royce, the dealer would sell you the car, but you would likely have to move because a Rolls Royce would stick out in your neighborhood. Note many people will sell you the lifestyle changes, but eventually there could be inquiries to how?

Joan worked at a variety of jewelry stores before she left the retail world, and before she met someone to take her to the next level. Joan would swallow the diamonds and rings, she was good at nicking them. She would take the jewels to a dealer who would weight them and give her a price she could accept or reject. Often times she accepted. The reality was the dealers were underpaying her, until she knew the value and could bargain with confidence and authority.

Hint: if you want more money, always take out the stones from the rings or sell them separately. The rings or gold bands will tend to be marked, while the stones were not.

One thing she became good at was going in a shop looking like she had a lot of money or dressing the part and do a bait and switch with a fake ring. A partner and Joan would come into a shop, Joan would chew gum, take the real ring and use the gum to attach it under the counter, she would hand back the fake ring with real gold bands to the jeweler who would put it back. She would use a stolen AMEX to make a deposit on the ring. Then 10 minutes after she left the store, a third person would come into the shop, go to the area where Joan stuck the ring under the counter, he would look at rings and find the ring and gum and leave with the real ring. Note all this takes planning and co-ordination to be successful.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, eventually Joan was caught and served time in jail, although she is out of prison. Most of us do not want to go to prison, but everyone to be successful has to become knowledgeable in their field. You need to learn about what is valuable and what is not, in investing how not lose money is a very important lesson to learn. In the stock market there are value traders, they examined stocks selling for less than others and what is the expected time they will rise to the same multiple or more. Knowing value is important to good investing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.