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Retailer pleads guilty to buying stolen jewelry
John Dasher, owner of The Diamond House in Topeka, Kan., pleaded guilty to buying jewelry that he knew had been stolen in home invasions.
Topeka, Kan.--The owner of a jewelry store in Topeka, Kan. pleaded guilty last Wednesday to knowingly buying jewelry that had been stolen in home invasions.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas, John Dasher, 53, of Silver Lake, Kan., pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in Topeka to one count of transporting stolen goods.
In his guilty plea, Dasher admitted that he purchased stolen goods between 2010 and 2013 while he owned The Diamond House in Topeka.
He bought the jewelry for only a fraction of its actual value then he melted it down to create scrap gold and mailed it through the U.S. Postal Service to gold wholesalers Pop Gems International, Gold Empire and Coinex Inc., netting more than $430,500.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that Dasher’s sentencing will be set for a later date. Both parties have agreed to recommend a sentence of 12 months and a day, followed by two years on supervised release and a forfeiture money judgment against him of $130,000.
While the phone number listed for The Diamond House is no longer in service, local news reports from Dasher’s indictment in the fall said that the bank had taken possession of the store and that it was holding a sale to liquidate all inventory.
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