Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: How are you ah doing well? How about you? I'm
Speaker 2: really good, look well rested?
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm not, but I'm good.
Speaker 2: You're faking it? Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how are you? Have you? Have you been sleeping?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: I gave that it's not it's not fashion.
Speaker 2: I gave it up for lent and just kept on rolling.
Speaker 3: Can never look back. Uh, do you know what's ridiculous
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 5: Friend of the show, Billy Idol, Yeah, you know you've
Speaker 5: discovered him, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well recently, just this year, he found out that
Speaker 5: he went through one of life's great transitions of menopause
Speaker 5: no becoming a father for the third time.
Speaker 3: He rocked the Cradle of Love totally.
Speaker 5: The sixty nine year old was not shocked to learn
Speaker 5: that he had a secret son named Brandt, because Billy
Speaker 5: Idols said, quote, He's had sex with millions of people.
Speaker 4: Who brand title.
Speaker 5: He also admitted that this is what I love is.
Speaker 5: He threw in all of his colleagues in the rock world.
Speaker 5: He's like, well, a lot of us probably of likely
Speaker 5: fathered children outside of our usual relationships.
Speaker 3: So did he do a roll call of most likely suspects.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 5: I wish he did, but he did say. The more
Speaker 5: I thought about it, I guess there must be something
Speaker 5: like that about learning about his child, something like that. Oh,
Speaker 5: because quote, we were just going around in the eighties
Speaker 5: and seventies just having knockdown, drag out sex with a
Speaker 5: million people.
Speaker 2: You didn't know.
Speaker 5: The first thing I like is he does eighties, then seventies,
Speaker 5: he goes backwards in time. And then also I like
Speaker 5: that knockdown drag out sex. You don't think sex is
Speaker 5: not followed knockdown drag out, Like, Billy, do you understand
Speaker 5: what sex is?
Speaker 3: You know what? He's the original route.
Speaker 2: Dude, dude, he is so ridiculous. He's front of the show.
Speaker 2: Shout out it is.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculous. And do you want to know what
Speaker 3: else is ridiculous?
Speaker 7: These naked scamming Oh.
Speaker 3: Oh, this here is a ridiculous crime. A podcast about
Speaker 3: absurd and outrageous capers, heist cons It's always ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: You damn right.
Speaker 3: I am so damn right.
Speaker 2: Look at you over there.
Speaker 3: I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I
Speaker 3: have a friend in the diamond business.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: You know him, Paul from the Dims exactly.
Speaker 5: I've talked a lot on You told me that every
Speaker 5: kiss begins with K. I will never forget that.
Speaker 3: And you know what he went to, Jared. I've talked
Speaker 3: a lot on here about stolen gems.
Speaker 2: Yes, you have. You love them?
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 3: They're light and portable, yeah, very very valuable. So it's
Speaker 3: like the perfect target.
Speaker 2: I've heard this from my friends who sell drugs, not to.
Speaker 3: Victim blank, yeah you know, but it's perfect target.
Speaker 2: They're better than cash.
Speaker 3: It's so glamorous to steal diamonds, like you don't steal
Speaker 3: them and then sell them out of the back of
Speaker 3: a van and in a gas station parking lot.
Speaker 2: No go to downtown LA to the diamond districy.
Speaker 3: You jet off to Antwerp with the diamonds in like
Speaker 3: a velvet lined briefcase and you wear you're wearing a
Speaker 3: sharp suit while you do it.
Speaker 2: Love that.
Speaker 3: Then you stay in a high end hotel and you
Speaker 3: have to go to Paris to meet up with another
Speaker 3: fence and you take a chauffeur Benz to like a
Speaker 3: gretty warehouse outside of town. You meet up with another
Speaker 3: well dressed crook.
Speaker 2: I got to get back in the gym.
Speaker 3: You do, and then the deal's done. You go to
Speaker 3: London sip a cocktail while staring out the window of
Speaker 3: a penthouse hotel room that overlooks the Tens.
Speaker 2: This is like a James Bond movie. But let people up, that's.
Speaker 3: What it seems like. Diamond theft is like based on
Speaker 3: movies or like crap TV shows. All right, one would think,
Speaker 3: But there's another side of diamond crimes.
Speaker 2: There are you about open my eyes?
Speaker 3: I'm so about to open your eyes. But I've told
Speaker 3: you this kind of thing before. This is true a
Speaker 3: diamond hoax. So yeah, remember those dudes that scattered the
Speaker 3: gems in the high desert, which there were cut gems,
Speaker 3: by the way, which is my favorite part.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh look, major cut these perfectly. They're ready
Speaker 2: for the market.
Speaker 3: So the diamonds aren't stolen, but they're part of a con.
Speaker 3: It's an accessory. And that's exactly the type of crime
Speaker 3: I want to tell you about today. It's a kN
Speaker 3: a glorious con and it all centers around Alri Numouan.
Speaker 2: If you say so, yeah, how do I spell that
Speaker 2: with a lemon? Okay, perfect.
Speaker 3: I don't have a date of birth for this guy,
Speaker 3: but I'd estimate it to be in the late mid
Speaker 3: to late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Maybe eighteen sixties, eighteen seventies earlier. His dad was French
Speaker 3: consul in Trieste, Italy.
Speaker 2: No good place to be a French console, right.
Speaker 3: And that's where he met Ari's mom, and he eventually
Speaker 3: moved back to France, to the foothills of the Pyrenees near.
Speaker 2: Tar Okay down south.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and they.
Speaker 3: Had little Alri. His dad out of the Foreign service,
Speaker 3: got a job managing a marble works.
Speaker 2: Oh seems like a step.
Speaker 3: Down, but maybe not. What did little Unri like to
Speaker 3: do as a boy in the Oxtania region?
Speaker 2: What did he like to do?
Speaker 3: Elizabeth, Well zarn. He would hop on an ox and
Speaker 3: teartail all over town at ox an ox like, ye.
Speaker 2: Haw, that's a big slow animal the.
Speaker 3: French, yeah souchon. And so this led him though. He
Speaker 3: wound up serving on the cavalry on horseback.
Speaker 2: Oh good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was like an amateur bullfighter.
Speaker 2: Oh heck, yeah, he knows ox.
Speaker 3: And he became an adventure guy basically totally all about
Speaker 3: the feats of daring do, and he went like where
Speaker 3: the adventure took him. So he traveled all over Europe,
Speaker 3: South Africa, the US of A. And according to an
Speaker 3: article from the International Gemalogical Institute, quote at fifteen, he
Speaker 3: was already selling shares in non existent companies. Thrown out
Speaker 3: of his parents' house, he frequented the arcades and repeatedly
Speaker 3: abused the gullibility of tourists. He exercised at fairs with
Speaker 3: a certain talent, the trade of illusionist. So he was
Speaker 3: a magician, yeah, Alrilemoir, Yes, teen illusionist. This fall on CBS,
Speaker 3: and this comes on right after Watson, which Paramount plus
Speaker 3: seems determined to meet me. Watch but you know what,
Speaker 3: I'd do what I want Zane. So it was around
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety eight that he got bored of being like
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century version of selling NFTs and he found
Speaker 3: a new love, which is diamonds. Diamonds were Ari's best friend.
Speaker 2: They are forever right.
Speaker 3: And so it was eighteen ninety eight that he met
Speaker 3: Maurice Coklan, an engineer, and his story of their early
Speaker 3: partnership was detailed in The New York Times a decade
Speaker 3: later he said that Ari quote was employed as a
Speaker 3: canvasser for an advertising firm. One talked very glibly, announced
Speaker 3: that he too was a student of chemistry, and offered
Speaker 3: to ally himself with the engineer. Succeeded, said the engineer
Speaker 3: in obtaining the brutal powder, which, while it was harder
Speaker 3: than Ruby's, was without the hardness of diamonds.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 3: You know, every con man has a half truth. Yes,
Speaker 3: so he's like someone who once bought a chemistry set
Speaker 3: from a toy store and these all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: he's bill ny. But people of the time like he's
Speaker 3: talking about the birth of lab grown diamonds.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: Yes, So that same engineer, very soon after he said that,
Speaker 3: he you know, he told that he was positive that
Speaker 3: Ari was making actual, real diamonds thanks to this formula
Speaker 3: he'd come up. Okay, so I should say here that
Speaker 3: scientists in the late nineteenth century were obsessed with making diamonds.
Speaker 2: The scientific alchemy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So the big dog of that was another Ari.
Speaker 3: Ari Mois Sommes. He was a French chemist best known
Speaker 3: for two groundbreaking achievements. His first was the invention of
Speaker 3: the electric arc furnace.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, yeah, and then.
Speaker 3: That was around eighteen ninety two check, and it could
Speaker 3: get up to like thirty five hundred degrees celsius. So
Speaker 3: this allowed people Hymns, particularly to study materials under conditions
Speaker 3: that weren't previously possible completely, including experiments with the synthesis
Speaker 3: of diamonds. He also discovered fluorine.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and that.
Speaker 3: Got him the nineteen oh six Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Speaker 2: Whoa big dog, Madam Carrie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So back to his diamonds, though he didn't
Speaker 3: make gem quality synthetic diamonds, but he was the pioneer
Speaker 3: who first tried systematically using high heat and pressure to
Speaker 3: crystallize carbon, and then that directly influenced the eventual success
Speaker 3: of lab grown diamonds decades later.
Speaker 5: Okay, but was he making like essentially like almost like
Speaker 5: industrial level diamonds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And so by at this time, like scientists
Speaker 3: are fascinated by diamond structure and they're like suspecting that
Speaker 3: it's made of pure carbon and that figuring like if
Speaker 3: it's under the right pressure and temperature, you know, you
Speaker 3: could create this.
Speaker 2: Artificial Roman could do it in the palm of his hands.
Speaker 3: Temperature heat there it is so son like his invention
Speaker 3: of this arc furnace gave exactly the tool to test
Speaker 3: the idea. He mixed carbons so like charcoal or sugar
Speaker 3: carbon with iron in his arc furnace. He melted the
Speaker 3: mixture at the super high heat, then rapidly cooled it,
Speaker 3: and then his theory was that the carbon dissolving in
Speaker 3: molten iron under high temperature and the rapid cooling that
Speaker 3: would be that sudden contraction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a distillation processor, they separate and then yeah.
Speaker 3: So instead of the enormous pressure of the Earth on it.
Speaker 3: He's replicating that, really love this. And he reported that
Speaker 3: he produced tiny crystals embedded in the iron globules, and
Speaker 3: the crystals were so like microscopic, but he's like, they're
Speaker 3: diamonds when you look at the microscape, the structure of it,
Speaker 3: and like later you know, when people analyzed it, some
Speaker 3: of them were diamond like carbon structure quite perfect, yeah,
Speaker 3: and so the others like carbon phases, so it hadn't
Speaker 3: gone there yet carbides yeah, and so but here's why
Speaker 3: we have moisenite.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was wondering almost diamond.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that mineral was discovered by him while
Speaker 3: he was examining rock samples from what's now Meteor Crater
Speaker 3: in Canyon Diablo, Arizona, and then they named the silicon
Speaker 3: carbide in honor of him. So anyway, this was in
Speaker 3: the zeitgeist at the time. Making diamonds was the new.
Speaker 3: As you said, the alchemy.
Speaker 2: People had notions.
Speaker 3: They certainly did, and everyone wanted to be the guy
Speaker 3: who turned carbon into cash. So there's Ali Limoim, an
Speaker 3: amateur bullfighter, soldier, traveler, basically like man of Mystery. He's
Speaker 3: got this great backstory, and that takes us to nineteen
Speaker 3: oh five. That's the year that already got in touch
Speaker 3: with Sir Julius Werner. Sir Julius was a German born
Speaker 3: British owner of South American diamond mining companies.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, good.
Speaker 3: I was the richest of the diamond guys, and just
Speaker 3: one of the richest of the guys period.
Speaker 2: Beers in them.
Speaker 3: He's like one of the owners of beers.
Speaker 4: I got you, so, Alri, he.
Speaker 3: Wanted to demonstrate this claim of his of creating diamonds
Speaker 3: to a guy who made his nut off getting these
Speaker 3: things out of the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got an easier way to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like Sir Julius, his company had that controlling interest
Speaker 3: into beers. So we're talking like mega mega rich. So
Speaker 3: Alri first approached him May nineteen oh five, but he
Speaker 3: was really sly about it. Alrie sent two dudes that
Speaker 3: Sir Julius knew and like trusted to go talk to.
Speaker 2: Him backroom meeting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're like, hey, we heard about this guy
Speaker 3: guy who made real diamonds on a commercial scale, Like
Speaker 3: they super exaggerated it, and they were like, if this
Speaker 3: is true, your company could be in serious trouble if
Speaker 3: he decides to compete with you.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: So Sir Julius is like, look, I got to bring
Speaker 3: this guy into the fold. I got to catch and
Speaker 3: kill's totally. So he's like, bring bring how Ari I'll
Speaker 3: meet with him. Stoked, He's like, Sir Jules, gonna call
Speaker 3: you Jules. He you mind diamonds, I make them. I
Speaker 3: can create real, live, actual diamonds, ones that are going
Speaker 3: to fool any gemologists. You can't tell them from the
Speaker 3: ones that are in the ground.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because once you get alatt of structure, right, it's
Speaker 5: a diamond, it's a diamond.
Speaker 2: It's a diamond.
Speaker 3: And he's like, all I need super hot furnace and
Speaker 3: my secret recipe. That's it. So Sir Julius is like,
Speaker 3: can I see this secret recipe just, you know, take
Speaker 3: a little peek, and no, Henries says, of course not.
Speaker 3: It's locked away in a safe deposit box Union Bank
Speaker 3: in London. You shall not see it, well, said Sir Julius,
Speaker 3: Can I see you make them? And you know, can
Speaker 3: I see the experiment in that?
Speaker 2: Show me the magic in action?
Speaker 3: We says Ari. So they set it up for Sir
Speaker 3: Julius to come to Ari's workshop to witness awesomeness. And
Speaker 3: you know, Sir Julius gets there and the place is
Speaker 3: all set up. The furnace is like white hot, the
Speaker 3: all fired up, ready to go. Are pulls out a crucible,
Speaker 3: you know, the vessel where you melt metals at height
Speaker 3: ten and he like turns away and adds a special mix,
Speaker 3: and then he places the crucible in the fire. And
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that they made awkward small talk for a while,
Speaker 3: and then Alri removes the crucible. After a while, he
Speaker 3: cooled it quickly, water sizzling, and then sifted through it.
Speaker 3: He lifted out with some of those long science tweezers
Speaker 3: to the end a diamond, so obviously not a cut diamond,
Speaker 3: but the rough stone. It would have been absolutely hilarious
Speaker 3: if you pulled out a cut diamond. That's just me so.
Speaker 3: But Sir Julius, He's like, I call foul. He's like,
Speaker 3: I need to see this again. I can't just see
Speaker 3: it once, and I need experts on hand to observe
Speaker 3: every detail of what's happening.
Speaker 2: I need to see the process.
Speaker 3: And A's like, no, I don't want more people knowing
Speaker 3: about that proprietary man. And he's like if they find out,
Speaker 3: then they can really easily steal the formula and says A, no,
Speaker 3: go you know what, Sir Julius, I have boundaries.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they're at an impasse. But finally Ari is like,
Speaker 3: all right, I agree, I'll do it. And then Sir
Speaker 3: Julius is like, well, I have one more request. I
Speaker 3: want to see your dangler.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sir Julius is like, you have to do this
Speaker 3: in front of all these experts, and you have to
Speaker 3: be in your birthday suit. That way, you can't hide anything.
Speaker 2: Oh no, magic up my sleeves.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's seems he literally did want to see the
Speaker 2: He wants to see the.
Speaker 3: Danglar and it seems very dangerous with like a superheateding. Well,
Speaker 3: you need clothing to protect from extreme conditions, and like
Speaker 3: naked founderies don't exist for a reason.
Speaker 5: You know, it's hot, all those long gloves and the
Speaker 5: aprons and heavy apron.
Speaker 3: No, instead, they're like get in there. But you know,
Speaker 3: so there's Alri totally nude, totally he was willing to
Speaker 3: do it totally. He puts out all the materials for
Speaker 3: the diamond and one of the expert observers was instructed
Speaker 3: to mix them together and then put the mix and
Speaker 3: the crucible and then he seals it up the expert
Speaker 3: and then they make Alred put the crucible on this
Speaker 3: shovel and load it into the furnace, likely burning off
Speaker 3: his pubic hair.
Speaker 2: Totally naked. So Joe's over there. I like to watch.
Speaker 3: He's like, this is something I've wanted to see for
Speaker 3: a very long time.
Speaker 2: I mean, have the money.
Speaker 3: I'm telling he's cooking it like multiple thousands of degrees.
Speaker 3: And his shovel handle was only fifteen feet long enough. No,
Speaker 3: so they like he you know, sticks.
Speaker 2: The thing in hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they stood around, are still naked for like
Speaker 3: a half an hour.
Speaker 2: Oh he doesn't get like a robe. Right after they
Speaker 2: on to film, Stef.
Speaker 3: Stand there want to smoke and they're like kind of
Speaker 3: looking him up and down. Yeah, And then it was
Speaker 3: time to get the crucible out, and so the expert
Speaker 3: opened it and found twenty five little diamonds in there.
Speaker 3: And then they ran the whole thing again, do it
Speaker 3: again like our man and so orson wells, and so
Speaker 3: they run all again and then this time they got
Speaker 3: thirty little diamonds. Wow, and so Alri he hands them
Speaker 3: off to Sir Julius. Sir Julius takes him to a
Speaker 3: jeweler in London. That guy determined, you know what, these
Speaker 3: are good quality diamonds all right, but I'm not going
Speaker 3: to buy him because I don't have certificates of origin
Speaker 3: on anything. Sir Julius, He's sold. He's like, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: like there you go.
Speaker 4: Even though he's.
Speaker 3: Likelius, I got them out of the dirt, like personally,
Speaker 3: I got some kids to go down there. But trust me,
Speaker 3: so of Julius is all about it. So he invited
Speaker 3: other diamond magnets to come and see the experiment, and
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that Ari was allowed to wear clothes from
Speaker 3: that point forward, so it wasn't just like some weird
Speaker 3: rich guys show that he's putting on. Each experiment gleaned
Speaker 3: larger and larger numbers of diamonds. The rich guys were amazed.
Speaker 3: Let's stop there, Let's let the furnace cool down, Let's
Speaker 3: make everyone put their clothes back on, or in my case,
Speaker 3: put more clothes on. When we come back. We're going
Speaker 3: to see what the fat cats do with this incredible discovery.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth. Okay, so where was I naked diamond guy?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Ah, re the naked diamond guy. So he convinced the
Speaker 3: rich diamond guys that he actually could make diamonds at home. Okay,
Speaker 3: he could best Mother Earth. And so they all decided
Speaker 3: that Unrie would return the formula to be locked up
Speaker 3: in the London bank and it wouldn't be opened again
Speaker 3: until he died, and at that point the recipe would
Speaker 3: become property of Sir Julius.
Speaker 2: So they planned to kill him pretty much.
Speaker 3: But for this kind of catch and kill, there needs
Speaker 3: to be compensation for this source. Yeah, of course, like
Speaker 3: if three, if he's like I'm not going to use
Speaker 3: this formula to make myself rich and then crash the diamond.
Speaker 3: I need to get my beak wet.
Speaker 2: Totally very wet.
Speaker 3: Sir Julius paid him three hundred and twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: for the whole thing.
Speaker 2: What's that? We know what that is converted.
Speaker 3: Eleven million dollars today.
Speaker 2: I still doesn't seem like enough.
Speaker 3: No, when you look at the diamond, how much it's worth? Yeah,
Speaker 3: so this would not want to have bill Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: give me like how much are you worth? Cut me half? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm terrible. So this wasn't just going to lock up
Speaker 3: the formula, right, but it would also the money would
Speaker 3: establish a lab for Allri in the Pyrenees where he
Speaker 3: could continue to discover cool stuff and like hone this formula.
Speaker 3: And then Sir Julius initially he's like, look, I just
Speaker 3: want to buy you off. But Alri he's like insisting
Speaker 3: on this lab. And he even sent the plans and
Speaker 3: like photos of it the building to the de Beers folks.
Speaker 3: I don't think they cared. They're like, gait, I love
Speaker 3: that for you, really nice, thank you. So but Alri
Speaker 3: he convinced Sir Julius that he was honing the process
Speaker 3: and he needed investments. It would all benefit Sir Julius,
Speaker 3: so he just needed to fund it, and that was
Speaker 3: Alri's logic. So over the next three years, Sir Julius
Speaker 3: he like pours thousands of pounds into this quote secret process.
Speaker 3: Alri went to other investors looking for funding for his
Speaker 3: diamond lab, and that irked Sir Julius because, like Alrea,
Speaker 3: getting outside funding would make the little secret deal public
Speaker 3: and he needed to put a lid on it. He
Speaker 3: actually took i'lrie to court and that seemed to silence
Speaker 3: him and do the trick. There was another incident though
Speaker 3: that may or may not have been related to all
Speaker 3: of this. Right after Alri made the deal with Sir Julius,
Speaker 3: someone shot at him. He was just like chilling under
Speaker 3: some trees alongside a road reading a newspaper. It was
Speaker 3: like basically a drive by. These unidentified tourists in a
Speaker 3: car drove by into the old street sweeper. Baby ready
Speaker 3: to let it go real, simmy, shimmy, Coco, what listen
Speaker 3: to it?
Speaker 2: Pound Thompson.
Speaker 3: From a revolver. They hit his coat and his newspaper,
Speaker 3: not him but here's the thing. The diamonds weren't Alre's
Speaker 3: only hustle. Remember how they said that he was like
Speaker 3: a canvasser for advertising agent. He in that work. Like
Speaker 3: he'd also kind of scammed someone on a car sale,
Speaker 3: so maybe it was like a disgruntled customer.
Speaker 2: Slash former mark.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, at some point, Sir Julius, he becomes suspicious
Speaker 3: of a Yeah. Alri was like constantly asking for money
Speaker 3: for this, and.
Speaker 5: That I want to do a title mosaic floor in
Speaker 5: the laboratory.
Speaker 3: We need upgrades. And the more time passed, the more
Speaker 3: some of the people who were there for like the
Speaker 3: big reveal were able to reflect on everything and really
Speaker 3: think about how feasible was this.
Speaker 2: The man was naked making diamonds right well.
Speaker 3: Francis Oates, chairman of de Beers, who attended the experiments,
Speaker 3: he was one of the ones who's like, you know,
Speaker 3: the more I think about it, he went to Julius
Speaker 3: and he was like, I think this whole thing is hinky,
Speaker 3: Like step back, look at it as an outsider one
Speaker 3: like Allri and his story and his demands just don't
Speaker 3: pass the smell test.
Speaker 2: Was he not asking for enough for them to believe it.
Speaker 5: Perhaps, you know, sometimes where people don't think you really
Speaker 5: had something, you'd be asking for a whole lot more could.
Speaker 3: Be so Oates and Julius they decide to road trip
Speaker 3: it and they pay a little visit to all Re
Speaker 3: at his diamond factory in Jelais, Like, let's go to Arsela.
Speaker 3: So you're filthy, rich captains of industry doing like shoe
Speaker 3: leather detective in the absolute middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: With like baskets of food.
Speaker 3: They're getting their hands ward three different guns of olive oil.
Speaker 3: So I like to imagine them getting there like on
Speaker 3: a map like Indiana Jones Dash. So they get to
Speaker 3: France because they're they're in England and then they go
Speaker 3: to Arjelais and they're all keyed up to confront Ari
Speaker 3: and his mad scientists layer. So they make it to
Speaker 3: Lords and that's you know, the closest big and then
Speaker 3: they took a carriage a bit south to Arjelais. They
Speaker 3: arrive in this small town and they ask everyone they meet,
Speaker 3: like do you know Alri? And they're talking about him,
Speaker 3: like do you know him? You know where I can
Speaker 3: find his lab? And everyone's like I don't know. So
Speaker 3: they pull out into a photo of like this impressive
Speaker 3: large factory nestled into the foothills, like surrounded by a
Speaker 3: lush forest, and the landscape looked right, but like people
Speaker 3: are like, I don't I don't know what that is exactly.
Speaker 3: One person after another's just like shrugging. They're like, I
Speaker 3: don't know what you're talking about. And then they go
Speaker 3: to like the baker and the like, you know what,
Speaker 3: you should go to the police station. That's a good idea,
Speaker 3: like if they know how to find.
Speaker 4: Anyone, you know, cab drivers or cops, right.
Speaker 3: And so their closure eyes, Oh yeah, I want you
Speaker 3: to picture it. Oh, you are a gendarmes in jelais
Speaker 3: like your father before you. You are, for the time,
Speaker 3: very tech savy. You like to have all the latest innovations,
Speaker 3: and you often travel to Lords or even tarb to
Speaker 3: get copies of international papers and magazines looking for news
Speaker 3: of this exciting new world. You are especially fascinated by
Speaker 3: the innovations in transportation. The hot air balloons don't really
Speaker 3: do it for you, but the cars. You have a
Speaker 3: buddy who moved to Paris a decade or so ago
Speaker 3: to work at Renault. He got you a line on
Speaker 3: one of their new mass produced taxi cars, petroleum powered.
Speaker 3: You keep it in your barn, covered in a tarp.
Speaker 3: There isn't access to fuel here, so you have to
Speaker 3: ration what you get and it kind of freaks people out.
Speaker 3: Everyone in town knows you're eccentric, but you try not
Speaker 3: to push things in their faces. So there you are
Speaker 3: sitting at the counter in the Gendarmerie reading an engineering magazine,
Speaker 3: learning about new fabrication techniques used in factories. In the
Speaker 3: back room, the captain is practicing his accordion. It's only
Speaker 3: charming because it's so muffled, but there's a town festival
Speaker 3: coming up and he wants to make sure his performance
Speaker 3: is perfect. There you see two men walk in and
Speaker 3: speak to a colleague of yours. He hears what they
Speaker 3: have to say, shrugs in that beautifully French way, and
Speaker 3: then points to you. I believe he can help you.
Speaker 3: You hear him say to the men. They shuffle over
Speaker 3: to you. Their beard games are impressive, big hefty beards
Speaker 3: that come to a point. Distinguished. One asks you in
Speaker 3: French if you speak English, I do you assure them
Speaker 3: you're one of the few in town who do. The
Speaker 3: man tells you that this French is passable, but he
Speaker 3: needs to provide detail that he's not sure how to translate.
Speaker 3: You read scientific journals in English all the time. You
Speaker 3: tell them please proceed. He tells you, in a lyrical
Speaker 3: English accent, that they are there to locate enrie l'umoin.
Speaker 3: You explain that you don't know of such a man.
Speaker 3: They produce so photo. You recognize it. It's in arah Onladon,
Speaker 3: a small village not too far away. But you tell
Speaker 3: them and that you aren't sure that's the building they're
Speaker 3: looking for. They assure you it is and begin to
Speaker 3: debate each other as to how to get there. They
Speaker 3: ask you how far it is. You tell them it's
Speaker 3: about four kilometers away. They ask you where they can
Speaker 3: hire a carriage to take them to it. They'll pay
Speaker 3: whatever's asked. I'll do you one better. You say, I
Speaker 3: can drive you by motor coach. They look stunned. You
Speaker 3: tell them you have a Renow taxi. Unbelievable, one of
Speaker 3: them says, follow me. You tell them. You get out
Speaker 3: onto the street, leaving the station in the accordion behind you,
Speaker 3: nod to shopkeepers as you pass, and head two blocks
Speaker 3: down to your cottage with its barn out back. The
Speaker 3: men follow you and watch as you creak open the
Speaker 3: big barn door, then whip the heavy canvas cloth from
Speaker 3: a car. One of them whistles. Very impressed, you turn
Speaker 3: and raise one eyebrow. This whole thing is turning out
Speaker 3: so much cooler than you could have ever imagined. You
Speaker 3: crank the front of the engine. It roars to The
Speaker 3: men climb in the back of the carriage, and you
Speaker 3: take your spot behind the wheel. Can it be protecting
Speaker 3: you from the sun? As you roll out into the afternoon,
Speaker 3: You pilot the car down the cobblestones of the town
Speaker 3: streets and onto the hard packed dirt road leading to
Speaker 3: a La Lavedan. You jostle along the road, trees shading
Speaker 3: the lane and birds singing in the air. You round
Speaker 3: a corner and come to a stop. Towering above you
Speaker 3: is the building from the photo. It's massive. It's impressive.
Speaker 3: The men climb out of the taxi and stare at
Speaker 3: the building a dog. The building is producing a low hum.
Speaker 3: How do you get in there? They ask? Oh, you
Speaker 3: don't really. You tell them that it's a power station
Speaker 3: that supplies electricity to all the surrounding villages.
Speaker 4: What they are irate?
Speaker 3: Are you sure it's not a laboratory? One asks? Of course,
Speaker 3: you tell them, can you take us to the closest
Speaker 3: train station that'll get us to Paris the fastest? They
Speaker 3: ask you. You tell them you think you have enough
Speaker 3: gas to get them to a train station, provided you
Speaker 3: stop back in town to pick it up. Of course,
Speaker 3: one tells you, while the other shoves an enormous wad
Speaker 3: of francs in your hand. This is a matter of
Speaker 3: utmost legal importance, one says, Do you have a way
Speaker 3: for us to contact national security in Paris? You can
Speaker 3: use the telegraph at the gendarmerie, You tell him Ali,
Speaker 3: He yells and hops into the car. You climb behind
Speaker 3: the wheel and whip a U turn on the dirt road.
Speaker 3: Dust sprang up behind you.
Speaker 4: Best day ever.
Speaker 3: So when they get to Paris, Julius told the French
Speaker 3: National Security Office that quote, by means of tricks and press,
Speaker 3: digitation and.
Speaker 4: Conjuring magic, comes back that Alrie.
Speaker 3: Had succeeded in inducing him to part with three hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty thousand dollars for the purpose of setting up
Speaker 3: this special laboratory. When they did the calculations. Auri took
Speaker 3: the De Beer's diamond company for about one point six
Speaker 3: million francs. Nice And when Julius told the whole story,
Speaker 3: the authorities were like, how could Henri have possed simply
Speaker 3: faked the diamonds when he was watched so closely and
Speaker 3: was totally naked, and you know, with Allri and the wind,
Speaker 3: Julius and Oates had sent someone to investigate the original
Speaker 3: lab and found that the crucible that a re used
Speaker 3: had a false spot.
Speaker 2: He's a magician bottom.
Speaker 3: Everyone was distracted by this from Ari's real bottom.
Speaker 2: Because he was he was showing, so.
Speaker 3: Look at the real bottom, missed the false spot.
Speaker 2: It's the classic distraction is al Re.
Speaker 3: And that's I think why he then realizes when they'd say, look, oh,
Speaker 3: you have to be naked, and he's like, yeah, all
Speaker 3: right exactly. So Alri he gets arrested for obtaining under
Speaker 3: false pretenses the money from Sir Julius, and then the
Speaker 3: newspapers ate the story up. I bet they did everything
Speaker 3: from like the snooty intellectual papers to tabloids ran stories
Speaker 3: daily about it. Oh yeah, Allri. He hired Fernand Labori
Speaker 3: as his lawyer. I don't know if I'm saying isn't
Speaker 3: the last name right, But he was the defense attorney
Speaker 3: with an impressive roster of clients, like impressive.
Speaker 2: Clarence Darrow of He.
Speaker 3: He defended Emil Zola in eighteen ninety eight in the
Speaker 3: Dreyfus trial, like the whole Jacquus, and then he defended
Speaker 3: Captain Alfred Dreyfus himself at his court martial in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Nine, just always like I'll take you on this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He was also lawyer for none other than Friend
Speaker 3: of the show Terrey Sumbert, the gal who pretended to
Speaker 3: be an heir of an imaginary American millionaire Crawford. That's
Speaker 3: who Alri got to defend him, Like he's going up
Speaker 3: against de beers. He's like, I need a heavy.
Speaker 2: Hitter, Johnny Cochran.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: And so with the press watching like salivating over the drama,
Speaker 3: Alre stuck to his story of being this torture genius
Speaker 3: who became a pawn of the diamond fat cats, and
Speaker 3: he kept saying he could really make his own real diamonds,
Speaker 3: you guys. He begged the court and the press to like,
Speaker 3: let me s ow you this is true. Let me
Speaker 3: show you how I do this. Give me another opportunity
Speaker 3: to get naked meat magic. So there was this huge
Speaker 3: public debate, like is he a mad, misunderstood scientist? Is
Speaker 3: he a scammer? Like you got to prove it. So meanwhile,
Speaker 3: according to The New York Times, Allrey Quote accused Sir
Speaker 3: Julius of conspiring with him to force the De Beer's
Speaker 3: company to buy the secret for twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 3: It was alleged, on the other hand, that Lemoit was
Speaker 3: preparing to make money by buying De Beer's shares as
Speaker 3: soon as they dropped on the publication of the stories
Speaker 3: about his success.
Speaker 2: He's gonna short them, uh huh.
Speaker 3: It came out that before he went to Sir Julius Werner,
Speaker 3: Lenoir had obtained money from Edgar Cohen, one of the
Speaker 3: directors of Herod's stores in London, and had also gotten
Speaker 3: two thousand dollars out of an American named Segmuent upon
Speaker 3: the same pretext. So he's just playing everybody off of everybody, Yes,
Speaker 3: and he keeps asking for an opportunity to prove himself
Speaker 3: with an experiment. But then it came out that like
Speaker 3: his diamonds. Even the raw had very small jewelers marks
Speaker 3: on them. Oh, they'd been bought in Paris and came
Speaker 3: right from De Beer's own South African.
Speaker 2: Minds, Like, look what I made?
Speaker 3: You made? Does this look familiar to this Parisian diamond
Speaker 3: dealer comes forward and it's like, there's this jeweler, Bordier,
Speaker 3: who bought a bunch of rough diamonds for me. And
Speaker 3: then they did all this tracking and it turns out
Speaker 3: that Bordier is Ari And then like, but then there's
Speaker 3: the envelope, one of the envelopes.
Speaker 2: What are the Elizabeth's take great questions?
Speaker 3: We come back, We're gonna go searching for that envelope,
Speaker 3: much like with Teres Umbert right Zaren.
Speaker 5: Yes, these names are killing me. I can't repeat them
Speaker 5: back to you. I'm like, I'm just gonna let.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Dear France, I am sorry. So I just want
Speaker 3: to say I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5: No, no, I would you don't want to say I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Henry Lemon was saying.
Speaker 3: Dear my ancestors. So anyway, he said that he was
Speaker 3: making diamonds, which turned out to be false. He said
Speaker 3: he had a special secret formula for them, which was
Speaker 3: locked up in the London bank totally. So this formula, right,
Speaker 3: Sir Julius is like, I want the envelope, like does
Speaker 3: he really have it? And he's hiding it, Like I
Speaker 3: can't trust this because he could bring the beers down
Speaker 3: with this, And so he's.
Speaker 5: Like, as long as that envelope is out there floating
Speaker 5: around its bread to the stock price, yes.
Speaker 3: And so he's desperate to open it up and see
Speaker 3: what secret lives inside, already determined to keep that from happening.
Speaker 2: Not even that's all I kept thinking about.
Speaker 3: It's like the Coca Cola rest, it's KFC. So in court,
Speaker 3: the judge said that he's like, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: really have jurisdiction in London, so my hands are tied.
Speaker 3: Aure was thrilled, but then he doubled down. Like so,
Speaker 3: according to the New York Times quote, Lamoin brightens up.
Speaker 3: He takes a step forward and talks with great seriousness
Speaker 3: as follows. I undertake to realize upon the whole of
Speaker 3: my property, including my household furniture, and to the amount
Speaker 3: thus obtained, I will add one hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars worth of shares, which I will place, and the
Speaker 3: keeping of the magistrate is a guarantee. I will then
Speaker 3: carry on my experiments witnessed by experts selected by the Magistrate.
Speaker 3: If I fail, Monsieur le suges, you are at liberty
Speaker 3: to hand the whole of the guarantee fund to Sir
Speaker 3: Julius Werner. If I succeed, I shall ask that he
Speaker 3: pay me the sum mentioned in the contract, in addition
Speaker 3: to damages for defamation. But in order to do this,
Speaker 3: I demand, first of all, to be released on bail.
Speaker 3: Like I can prove it to you.
Speaker 2: Just let me take these cups off for a moment.
Speaker 3: Sir Julius fully opposed to bail, and the judges, like
Speaker 3: I too, am fully opposed to bail.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: But while Alri couldn't get out of jail to get
Speaker 3: to the bank and get the letter, his wife certainly could.
Speaker 3: He's married, so she high tailed it to London to
Speaker 3: keep the bank from delivering the sealed envelope to the court.
Speaker 3: Sir Julius gives Chase he wanted to get the envelope
Speaker 3: first before she could bring an injunction. And then while
Speaker 3: Alri he didn't get bail, but he did get permission
Speaker 3: to send a telegram, and here's what he wrote to
Speaker 3: the bank. Quote, this is to inform you that a
Speaker 3: registered letter follows forbidding you formally to hand to Sir
Speaker 3: Julius Werner or any other party, any branch or agency
Speaker 3: of your bank the sealed envelope deposited with you on
Speaker 3: June eighth, nineteen oh five, and to inform you that
Speaker 3: I have taken all legal measures to prevent you from
Speaker 3: authorizing the removal of this envelope.
Speaker 2: That's a long telegram, super long. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this held for a little while, but eventually the
Speaker 3: English court told the bank to cooperate with the French court.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, I was wondering about that, the international cooperation
Speaker 5: between At that.
Speaker 3: Point they're like, yeah, fine, alri. He told the judge
Speaker 3: that quote, he had no objection whatsoever to manufacture diamonds
Speaker 3: to prove his ability to the court, but he could
Speaker 3: not consent to have his secret formula read and published.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The judge is like, I'm intrigued. I like this.
Speaker 3: Take your clothes off. I want to see science happen.
Speaker 3: Take your clothes off.
Speaker 2: So he granted nothing but mustache wax and just stand
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 3: Corner of the courtroom. I've heard a lot about you.
Speaker 3: So anyway, he's like, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 3: release you on bail for two months. And here's the thing, though,
Speaker 3: you have to grow a gigantic synthetic diamond in that time.
Speaker 3: It has to be bigger than anything on the market.
Speaker 3: It has to blow my socks off. Wow, judge, and
Speaker 3: you and you have to be naked, and you have
Speaker 3: until June ninth, nineteen oh eight to do it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So he's just like you keep saying, you keep begging
Speaker 3: to do this experiment. All right, you got two months,
Speaker 3: but it has to be mega. According to the New
Speaker 3: York Times quote on June Night's remember he had by
Speaker 3: June ninth, nineteen oh eight to do it. Quote On
Speaker 3: June ninth, he appeared in court and announced that unforeseen
Speaker 3: circumstances had prevented the success of his experiments. He professed
Speaker 3: still the utmost confidence and asked for an extension of time.
Speaker 3: He was granted another week.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think he's going to get that.
Speaker 3: A week went by, there was no diamond. There was
Speaker 3: also no only he'd done a runner.
Speaker 2: So he's in Russia.
Speaker 3: Do you know what was there the envelope. Oh so,
Speaker 3: sir Julius, he's very eager to get this baby open.
Speaker 2: How does he know it's the envelope because.
Speaker 3: It came like it was seized.
Speaker 2: By British court then brought in.
Speaker 3: Ok he's just like squirming in his seat, all riggling
Speaker 3: and like drooling.
Speaker 4: Mouth is wet.
Speaker 3: So the paper inside was read and there are conflicting
Speaker 3: reports as to what was in it. Pretty much everyone
Speaker 3: was like it was just kind of this like jumble
Speaker 3: of gibberish. There are varying reports and it's somewhere in between.
Speaker 3: There are three. I'm going to read them to you, Okay.
Speaker 3: So the first one was his formula quote iron boron
Speaker 3: animal charcoal equal thirty fifty five fifteen one hundred. I
Speaker 3: placed this mixture in a crucible, which I then into
Speaker 3: an electric furnace before turning on. The current passed through
Speaker 3: the crucible for a certain time carbonic acid CO two
Speaker 3: so as to drive out all the oxygen. I then
Speaker 3: turn on the current, continuing to pass carbonic acid through
Speaker 3: the mixture. The time of heating depends on the quantity
Speaker 3: of the mixture used.
Speaker 2: It's like close enough, you might believe it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Second option to make diamonds, it will suffice to employ
Speaker 3: the following process. One take an electric furnace. Two, take
Speaker 3: some powder of carbon obtained from sugar. Three, place this
Speaker 3: carbon in a crucible. Four deposit it in a furnace,
Speaker 3: and raise the temperature from fifteen hundred degrees to eighteen
Speaker 3: hundred degrees with a tension of one hundred and ten volts.
Speaker 4: Five.
Speaker 3: When this temperature is attained, to apply pressure through the cover. Six.
Speaker 3: The diamonds are now ready, and it only remains to
Speaker 3: take them from the furnace. Signed Lee.
Speaker 2: I've heard like bread recipes that I have more detailed
Speaker 2: than that.
Speaker 3: My favorite report is the one that said the paper
Speaker 3: in the envelope red quote, it is very difficult to
Speaker 3: manufacture diamonds. You can try by crystallizing carbon, which you
Speaker 3: must subject to the desired heat and pressure.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: That's it, good mind, not, that's some that I like.
Speaker 3: It's like so basically, you know, you probably could do it,
Speaker 3: but you'd have to, like.
Speaker 2: You need a heats carbon like this, like a planet.
Speaker 3: Would you'd have to put it inside planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then that's probably.
Speaker 3: The best way to do it. So the cops like, okay,
Speaker 3: so all Rey's gone. They read this garbage. The cops
Speaker 3: are desperate to catch him. He's high. It's like the
Speaker 3: whole thing is high profile. And then you get these
Speaker 3: wealthy victims because like, that's how it works. Are you new,
Speaker 3: here's Aaron That's how it works.
Speaker 2: It's not my first rodeo. I've ridden an ox before.
Speaker 3: Yo. So some were like, you know what, I think
Speaker 3: he went to Romania like that was like.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing Eastern Europe with Russia.
Speaker 3: Others were like, I heard he went to Greece. And
Speaker 3: still others were like, you know what I hear he's
Speaker 3: in Egypt.
Speaker 2: Oh he likes the weather.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like he has all these kind of exotic places.
Speaker 3: His wife was meanwhile, like you know what I heard.
Speaker 3: I'm not married to him anymore.
Speaker 4: He divorce.
Speaker 3: She's like, guess what I'm done. And then he was
Speaker 3: found guilty and sentenced in absentia for his crimes. He
Speaker 3: had ten years. That's a fine, Okay, it's good things.
Speaker 3: She ditched April nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 4: They got him where rusted?
Speaker 3: Where in the world did they find him?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where is this Carmen San Diego?
Speaker 3: Where did these professional trackers finally nab him.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing America Paris. He had he was inis on
Speaker 2: the left back.
Speaker 3: He was just the press reported of his quote, freely
Speaker 3: showing himself on the streets naked, That's what I want
Speaker 3: to know. And in the music halls with no other
Speaker 3: disguise than a shaven chin and a mustache trained upwards.
Speaker 3: He's like plowing it up totally.
Speaker 2: He's got a little fresh mustache wax.
Speaker 3: And they caught him with the guy who used to
Speaker 3: be his assistant, and then at least like he pretended
Speaker 3: to be as much back in the day. I don't
Speaker 3: know if it was like an accomplice like another, like
Speaker 3: he didn't resist. In fact, they're like he's like, may
Speaker 3: we yes, what do you want? Hey? But he hadn't
Speaker 3: been in Paris that long, like just a few days.
Speaker 3: He was staying at a hotel. He was using the alias.
Speaker 4: Hans Lightna, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: A London merchant. My name is Hans the London.
Speaker 5: Of Dutch or German origin, but of special magic origin.
Speaker 3: And he only had twenty francs on him.
Speaker 2: That's it. Wow.
Speaker 3: He told authorities that after he ran from Paris, he
Speaker 3: went to Sofia. Yeah, and then he went to Budapeste
Speaker 3: and then Vienna and then Trieste, you know where his
Speaker 3: parents met. Beautiful.
Speaker 4: Then he hit up London, took a river up the Danube.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and then he went back to Paris. He's like,
Speaker 3: you know, just scooted around for a year. He'd been
Speaker 3: given a ten year sentence, but they moved it down
Speaker 3: to six and apparently served it. And where he went
Speaker 3: after is anybody's guests. There's no record of anything after that.
Speaker 3: He would likely have been forgotten were it not for
Speaker 3: Marcel Proust.
Speaker 4: Why Marcel Pruce, Captain of Memories.
Speaker 3: He was so himself because yes, he was so fascinated
Speaker 3: by what he called, quote the prestige of a momentary diamond,
Speaker 3: that he wrote about the whole fiasco in a series
Speaker 3: of pieces for La Figaro. Oh yeah, February March of
Speaker 3: nineteen eight.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he was doing like deep magazine dives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he wrote and then he wrote this book
Speaker 3: of creative nonfiction. Yeah. It was collected in a book
Speaker 3: called The Lemoin Affair that, according to its Penguin Books summary,
Speaker 3: was quote inspired by the real life French scandal involving
Speaker 3: aure Lemoit, who claimed he could manufacture diamonds from coal
Speaker 3: and convinced numerous people, including officers of the De Beer
Speaker 3: Diamond Company and Proust himself, to invest in the scheme.
Speaker 3: In a series of pastiche imitations written in the style
Speaker 3: of other writers, Pruce tells the story of the embarrassment
Speaker 3: rippling across high society Paris in the wake of the scandal,
Speaker 3: poking fun at himself. In one story, a character declares
Speaker 3: that Marcel Preuss is so embarrassed he's suicidal, while lampooning
Speaker 3: some of France's greatest writers, including Flaubert Balzac and San Simon.
Speaker 2: H interesting, so he seems like a literary exercise.
Speaker 3: He's like, this is fantastic.
Speaker 2: I love the magic.
Speaker 3: I love it that I fell for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the biggest one. I almost killed myself.
Speaker 3: And what of sir Julius, what of sir Jay Well,
Speaker 3: Sir Julius died. I mean, we all do. But he
Speaker 3: did it in nineteen twelve. In nineteen fourteen, he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine he was yet agen.
Speaker 3: In nineteen fourteen, his estate was valued at more than
Speaker 3: fifty seven and a half million, which was at the
Speaker 3: time was the record for South African businessmen. That's one
Speaker 3: point eight billion today. In two thousand, Christie's auctioned off
Speaker 3: his silver collection and they described it as quote the
Speaker 3: late Medieval and Renaissance silver a mass decades ago by
Speaker 3: a diamond millionaire, Julius Werner. The New York Times wrote,
Speaker 3: quote the collection was a mixed bag which included outright fakes.
Speaker 3: A beaker in the form of an owl with a
Speaker 3: body made from a coconut, fitted with silver gilt head,
Speaker 3: wings and legs, looked like a spoof of late Renaissance silver.
Speaker 3: Another vessel shaped as a parrot perched on branch was
Speaker 3: just as unconvincing. Several other pieces of that ilk peppered
Speaker 3: the catalog. Trickier than outright fakes were pieces that gave
Speaker 3: the impression of having been tampered with. A German cup,
Speaker 3: made from a turbo shell with parcel gilt mounts, was
Speaker 3: topped by a monster head that clashed with it and
Speaker 3: failed to convince connoisseurs, such as the London dealer Charles Truman,
Speaker 3: formerly of the Victorian Albert Museum. The catalog dated the
Speaker 3: object circuit to sixteen thirty it made one hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty eight, seven hundred and fifty pounds. Did the buyer
Speaker 3: choose to ignore the problem raised by the cover? Possibly?
Speaker 3: Other buyers were certainly willing to buy nineteenth century imitations
Speaker 3: described as such by Christie's at the price of an
Speaker 3: authentic piece. The coconut and silver gilt owl mentioned above
Speaker 3: went up to a staggering one hundred and two thousand pounds,
Speaker 3: and the parrots sold for thirty two nine hundred pounds.
Speaker 3: Nor were those isolated cases. An Ostrich, estimated by Christie's
Speaker 3: to be worth three thousand pounds to five thousand pounds,
Speaker 3: climbed to ninety one thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 3: It was as if esthetic perception had ceased to function.
Speaker 2: Great kicker that he's been a of like.
Speaker 3: Being snarked on by the New York Times. Yeah, God bless.
Speaker 3: But here's my thing is, does that not also scream
Speaker 3: money laundering to you?
Speaker 2: I'm just about to say any time you hear about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I still buy that.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but they're just doing it to like the estate, right,
Speaker 5: So are they trying to curry favor?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and that was like, you know, that's
Speaker 3: in the year two thousand, so oh right, so this
Speaker 3: is like descendants of.
Speaker 4: His Yeah, doesn't that it's I don't you.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm taking just like Diamond, just like him
Speaker 3: back in the day. I'm taking a step back. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at it seems hanky.
Speaker 2: It does seem hanky.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go investigate the laboratory, Zaren, what's your
Speaker 3: ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 5: I love like this whole story. It reminds me of
Speaker 5: the Prestige, the story about the magicians, and then around
Speaker 5: this period of time. I love this time because it's
Speaker 5: people are scientific, but they're not quite to the level
Speaker 5: of science. They can always prove everything, but yet they're
Speaker 5: so into it that they can be both conned but
Speaker 5: also convince themselves because science and magic have not quite
Speaker 5: separated yet. So there's still in like a medieval Renaissance
Speaker 5: period of thinking where it's like, well, you know, da
Speaker 5: Vinci had a way to make gold out of like,
Speaker 5: they can be told anything as long as it has
Speaker 5: the patina of science on its exact Really, it's always
Speaker 5: still just magic underneath, and magic is ultimately a con
Speaker 5: well I.
Speaker 3: Love so magical and it's and especially if you don't
Speaker 3: quite understand the whole thing, how quickly things happen or
Speaker 3: you know, things seem incongruous and then it comes together.
Speaker 5: It's intoxicated, and then Einstein comes along in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 5: It just makes everything like we don't know anything, but
Speaker 5: trust me, it's still magical.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Take on exactly good one. I need to talk back Dave,
Speaker 3: please and thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh God, I love you.
Speaker 6: Hi, Zaron, Hi, Elizabeth High Team. I just got off
Speaker 6: of listening to your re release of an episode where
Speaker 6: you talk about Jack Shepherd and Spittlesville, and I wanted
Speaker 6: to come and let you know that my parents live
Speaker 6: in the town of slate Lick, which is in western
Speaker 6: Pennsylvania and is named after deer licking salt off of
Speaker 6: the road. They licked the slate and they got to
Speaker 6: be in the name slate Lick, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: Look it up a little fun fat.
Speaker 5: Yes, one of the greatest states.
Speaker 2: In the nation.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to name a place.
Speaker 2: That's more things should be named after animals licking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and not like you know, Pleasant Valley.
Speaker 2: That's not pleasant or like pig knuckle.
Speaker 3: I feel about it. That's what happens. The deer lick
Speaker 3: the salt. Hooray for them there, thank you. That's my takeaway.
Speaker 3: That's us for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime dot com. Zarah, I have good news for you.
Speaker 3: We've been nominated for an MTV Music Video the category
Speaker 3: Dream is Happening Juiciest Booty. So keep your fingers crossed.
Speaker 3: We'll find out.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram.
Speaker 3: We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email
Speaker 3: us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and then
Speaker 3: you can leave us a talk back on the iHeart app.
Speaker 3: It's free, Please do it reach out. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited
Speaker 3: by Sir Dave Kusten, CEO of de Beers in the Fridge,
Speaker 3: starring Amalie Rutger. Research is by Blood Diamond shamer Marissa Brown.
Speaker 3: The theme song is by Naked ironworkers Thomas Lee and
Speaker 3: Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred.
Speaker 3: Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive
Speaker 3: producers are Hapless Diamond Vending Machine investors Ben Bohlen and
Speaker 3: Noel Brown.
Speaker 6: Ridicous Crime Say It one more Time Piquious Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts.
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