Jewel thief swallows fake diamond as part of a ‘brilliant’ scam

Police are still looking for the real one that went missing

A Sri Lankan thief may have been trying to pull a page from an Ontario man's book when he stole a diamond by swallowing it.

Police arrested Chou Wan, 32, after someone complained he swallowed a diamond at a jewelry show last week. Chou was taken to the hospital where X-rays confirmed the presence of the gem. He was given a laxative so the authorities could recover it.

[ Related: Swallowed diamond gives Windsor police dirty job ]

But it appeared Chou's efforts were for not when the National Gem and Jewelry Authority examined the diamond and found it to be a fake. That's when police determined his work was part of a bigger scam — that Chou may have swallowed the fake diamond as a diversion while an accomplice stole the real one.

Police Spokesman Ajith Rohana told The Associated Press that investigators believe another Chinese man may have stolen the actual diamond, which is worth about $13,000. One person at the exhibit thought two men were trying to switch fake stones for real ones and one swallowed a diamond while the other ran away.

"We suspect that as habitual offenders, this group were in the habit of swapping real stones for fake ones," Rohama told the BBC.

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This isn't the first time someone has tried to steal a jewel by swallowing it.

In May, a thief in Windsor swallowed a $20,000 diamond after switching it for a fake one while in a store. A woman working in the store noticed what was happening, wrote a note to a co-worker to call police and stalled the thief until the police arrived. He was taken to the police station and one officer got the dirty job of waiting for it to pass.

And in July, a woman in Utah swapped a diamond ring for a fake one and then swallowed it. She later pawned the $4,000 ring for $600. For the sake of the buyer at the pawn shop, hopefully it was cleaned well.

NBC News' Body Odd blog reports that while swallowing something can be a good way to hide it, sometimes it can prove quite painful.

According to a Walter Reed Army Medical Center paper, pointy diamonds will pass through your system without any sort of pain about 65 per cent of the time. One Sri Lankan man was not so lucky in 2010. He swallowed more than 2,000 diamonds in several condoms worth a reported $670,000. When he was caught, he complained he was suffering from inflamed hemorrhoids.

(Photo courtesy of Reuters)