Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced on the 23rd that the Chinese thief Yaorong Wan (Yaorong WAN, phonetic translation), who was suspected of committing crimes in many countries and stealing expensive diamond rings from famous jewelry stores in Manhattan, pleaded guilty to a second-degree grand larceny.
According to court documents, on March 4 last year, Yaorong Wan was at a Tiffany & Co. jewelry store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and lied that he wanted to see a diamond ring worth 225,000 yuan. After getting the diamond ring, he used a special technique to hide it in his palm, and then took out a counterfeit zirconium oxide that was highly similar to the real thing and returned it to the clerk without anyone noticing. It was not until a week later that the victim store discovered that the diamond ring had been swapped during an inventory. On March 12 of the same year, Wan Yaorong went to a Cartier store in Hudson Yards again and used a similar method to steal a diamond ring worth 24,000 yuan.
According to previous reports, after committing the crime in Manhattan, Wan Yaorong went to Miami, Long Island and New Jersey to steal many high-end watches. Relevant records show that Wan Yaorong stole jewelry worth more than 330,000 yuan from a Tiffany store in Seoul, South Korea in 2018, and then disappeared. Interpol issued a red warrant for him. After years of silence, Wan Yaorong “took a route” to the United States in December 2023, and then resumed his old business, stealing a diamond ring worth nearly 50,000 yuan and a watch worth 10,000 yuan from a Cartier store in Beverly Hills, a wealthy area in Los Angeles.
According to media reports, after entering California, Wan Yaorong met a Chinese woman living in Queens, New York, and then came to New York and lived in her home. According to the woman, Wan Yaorong was very good at sweet offensive, but never paid her rent. Wan Yaorong’s former cohabiting girlfriend revealed in an interview with the media that his identity background was mysterious. He claimed to be Chinese, spoke Chinese, and used WeChat, but the police believed he was from South Korea. In May 2024, the police found three unsold stolen watches and a fake diamond ring used for the substitution scheme in the woman’s residence. Subsequently, Wan Yaorong was arrested in Nassau County, Long Island.
Wan Yaorong was charged with four felony counts by the Manhattan prosecutors, but according to the plea agreement, he was only convicted of one second-degree felony theft charge and is expected to be sentenced to three to nine years in prison. The court will announce the verdict on July 14 this year. He also faces lawsuits in Nassau County and other states.
