A couple shopping for an engagement ring in Maplewood bought a stone worth $12,000 with a bogus credit card and split from the jewelry store before the merchant realized what had happened, police said Monday.
The pair and the diamond have yet to be located since the two walked out more than five weeks ago with the 1.2- carat loose stone from Jared on White Bear Lake Avenue, just south of Interstate 694.
“They presented themselves as shopping as a couple,” police officer Alesia Metry said Monday. They looked at diamonds, chose two and purchased one.”
The problem with the transaction: It was made with a cloned credit card.
A female name of east Asian ethnicity was on the card that the woman handed over to the clerk on the afternoon of Jan. 8, but the account was traced by Jared to an Asian man, Metry said.
Authorities on Monday released descriptions of the pair, both of east Asian descent. She is in her early 20s, about 5 feet 4 inches tall with a thin build. She was wearing a pink ski cap and a dark jacket with a fur-lined hood. She also had a pink wallet. This woman used a cloned credit card to buy a loose diamond, police say.
The man is about 30 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall with a thin build. He was wearing a black puffy jacket and a black-knit ski cap with a white logo on the front.
Metry said the woman had been in that same Jared store in November “and tried a number of credit cards” to make a purchase. The officer said all of the cards were rejected.
“Maybe they were cloned, also,” Metry said.
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