Luxury jewellery retailer Vashi Dominguez orchestrated a £170 million diamond investment scam by directing shop staff to impersonate customers, creating the illusion of a thriving business to attract new investors, a BBC Panorama investigation has revealed. The deception collapsed in 2023 when the company’s purported £157 million diamond inventory was valued at just £100,000, leaving investors with total losses.

Dominguez, once hailed as a charismatic industry figure who appeared on ITV’s This Morning and supplied diamonds to high-profile clients, used glamorous retail fronts and fabricated demand to secure millions from investors.

Former store manager Will Hayward described him as the “Pied Piper of jewellery retail,” leveraging charm and spectacle to build credibility while masking financial troubles.

Despite the scale of the fraud—described by one investor as “bigger than Hatton Garden, Brink’s-Mat, and the Great Train Robbery combined”—both the Metropolitan Police and Serious Fraud Office have declined to investigate.

Dominguez has disappeared, and liquidators examining company records found no evidence of large-scale offshore transfers, deepening the mystery surrounding the missing funds.

Investors like advertising executive Michael Moszynski and businessman Mark Schneider remain devastated, with no recourse for recovery. Schneider expressed uncertainty about whether the scheme was intentionally fraudulent from the outset or a desperate attempt to salvage a failing business.

The case highlights gaps in regulatory oversight for high-value investment ventures and raises questions about accountability in the jewellery industry, where subjective valuations and opaque supply chains can facilitate deception.

Dominguez’s disappearance underscores the challenges victims face in pursuing justice when complex financial crimes cross international boundaries.

Source: BBC