Retired Mafia Detective Gary Jenkins tells how Mafia gangsters set up and rob jewelry salesmen. You may not know, but every day in the U.S., thousands of honest, hardworking salesmen load up their sales cases and hit the road to show their samples of gold, silver, or platinum jewelry with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, or other precious stones embedded.  Mafia associates gather intelligence constantly on these salesmen. Gary tells about a gang working for the infamous Chicago Police Superintendent William Handhardt and gives an example from his own experience in Kansas City.

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Transcript

Guy Altabello dealt with Hanhart second command a guy named Joseph Basinski. Ultra Bella will provide the names addresses car descriptions and license numbers and schedules of the various salesman that called on his son how to rob a jewelry salesman I happen to see on Facebook this morning, Mike Byrne up in Chicago, puts out Chicago Tribune articles and he put one out about William Hanhart. And some of his juries that gang he had a big gang of Chicago outfit kind of a lot of associates and professional criminals up there that went around robbing jewelry salesmen in jewelry stores. So how to rob a jewelry salesman in every major American city, jewelry salesman ply their trade by the hundreds of 1000s throughout the country, carrying jewelry samples around in jewelry salesman cases and call on independent Europe jewelers, and you know, they just travel around like any independent traveling salesman does. They travel in cars, they stay in hotels, they eat on the road, they stopped for gas, they use the bathroom, they do all the other normal roadtrip activities, which makes them kind of vulnerable to these guys mak es them a soft target.

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Professional Jewelrey. The professional jewel thief needs intelligence on these guys though. So when the FBI broke up this jewelry theft ring of Chicago police superintendent William and heart a lot of these trade secrets were revealed and we kind of knew what they were but they got some solid information. When they when they took this whole crew down. There’s in this article and Tribune they had a guy learned they had a guy named Guy Ottobello of Elmhurst. And he worked in his son’s jewelry store which was called Altabellos. And it was in Wheaton, which is a far west kind of Chicago, small town suburb, and Guy Altabello dealt with Hanhart second command a guy named Joseph Basinski. Alta Bello will provide the names addresses, car descriptions and license numbers and schedules of the various salesman that called on his son or his son’s store, he could even give him approximate time of how long they would be in the Chicago area and when they came and when they might come back. And example this was real specific was one day in 1996 Altabello passed along the description of a salesman’s rental car that called on his store that day Hanhart then used the police aboard that you know, a called a sergeant a Sarja you know, as Commander Hanhart you know, would you find out about this cards and rental company cards, so they found out everything they could from rental company, and they get more of a fix on the guy and and then they start trying to find the guy that see where he goes next or where he’s staying what hotel he’s in, and, and and they know that he’s gonna have maybe $100,000 worth of jewelry or less or more, they’re gonna have he’s gonna have a lot. Now,