LONGWOOD, Fla. – A Longwood jewelry store owner said thieves stole $400,000 worth of jewelry from his store early Monday morning.
Albert Pagan owns Certified Jewelry Designs on St. Laurent Street in Longwood.
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He’s been at this location for years and said there have been other robbery attempts, but none of the alleged thieves had a plan as intricate as the most recent incident.
Pagan said that people typically try to break through the front doors and windows, but the thieves who carried out the jewelry heist Monday were not amateurs.
The plan started at Long’s Custom Tailoring, the business next door. Pagan said the thieves scaled the building and cut a hole in the roof before entering through the adjacent Longwood Shoe Repair.
“They dropped into their attic and then opened these surveillance holes to access and to survey our security system,” Pagan said.
The store has motion and heat detectors, and several surveillance cameras.
“Once they surveyed everything and saw they couldn’t access the store, they came here and cut a hole,” Pagan said.
The square hole was at the bottom of the wall and big enough for someone to squeeze through.
Pagan said the thieves crawled into the store through this hole then went on the hunt for jewels.
He said they went to the back room and found the vault.
Pagan believes the thieves knew it would be too difficult to cut through the front of the vault, so they instead cut through the wall behind it. The tool they used was able to cut through the steel and concrete of the vault.
The owner said everything in the vault was taken.
“Everything we ever worked for and saved over for many years, you know, was in that vault,” Pagan said.
He said the most shocking part is that they bypassed all safeguards and triggered no alarms.
“You have everything fortified and still, they’re able to get in and out of here in less than four hours from what we seen in the surveillance video,” Pagan said.
Pagan said he found out his store had been robbed after the neighboring business owner walked into their own store that morning.
That owner found boxes and displays on the floor and two holes cut in the walls. That’s when they called the police.
A surveillance camera caught video of someone grabbing the back doorknob briefly then walking away.
A second video shows two people walking away with bags, but law enforcement has yet to identify them.
Pagan said the good news is that none of his customers’ belongings in for repair were stolen.
He hopes vendors restock his inventory, but in the meantime, the shop will remain open.
He added that he plans to rely on jewelry repair and designs to keep the store up and running.
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