Two men posing as Federal Express employees breezed through security
at a tightly guarded building in the city’s diamond district
yesterday, rode the elevator to the sixth floor and robbed a jewelry
wholesaler of goods valued at $4 million, the police said.
Sporting dyed red curly hair and dark sunglasses, one of the robbers
held out a gun while his pudgy accomplice tied up five employees and
two customers at Doppelt & Greenwald Diamond Inc. at 580 Fifth Avenue
during a brazen lunchtime holdup that brought two blocks of Midtown
Manhattan to a virtual standstill.
According to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, one of the robbers
carried a package that was too big to slide under the door at Doppelt
& Greenwald. The robbers said it had to be signed for, the
commissioner said, and when the door was opened, they showed the gun.
The robbers spent at least five minutes in the wholesaler’s office
and did not fire a shot. Instead, they filled a duffel bag with
diamonds and other jewelry and calmly walked away, slipping out of
the building through the employee entrance on West 47th Street, the
police said.
A worker at Doppelt & Greenwald, one of the 1,700 wholesale
companies that cram the diamond district, managed to free himself
from his restraints and alerted a building security guard, who called
911 around 12:50 p.m., Police Capt. Stephen Hughes said.
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