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Mar
16
Arkansas Diamond Fraud
Filed Under Fake Minerals on eBay, Fake Minerals on the Internet, Fraudulant Claims
Written By Justin Zzyzx and Brandy Naugle for FakeMinerals.com
(Reporters please note-Get your facts in order by calling the writer of the article, Justin Zzyzx at 323-284-8360 - Available for interviews)
Investigative Reporting by Hal Guyot
Arkansas is known for something very unique.
The ONLY public access diamond mine in the entire world. For a small fee, anyone can go to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro Arkansas and search for diamonds in the giant open dirt field.
While it is certainly no easy task to unearth a diamond here, amazing finds have been reported and tracked through time. The average diamond found at the “Crater” is far less than a carat, most weighing in at under 10 points (that’s 1/10th of a carat) (TINY!). Finding a nice big fat stone over a carat is something people work for years and don’t find!
Diamonds at the Crater come in several shades, 70% of them being white, with brown coming in second and yellow is a close third.
The state park registers all of the diamonds that people find at the park, if they are willing to register it. Some don’t because they want to keep it private, while many want the nifty card that you get when you register your diamond with the park. They even keep track of everyone’s finds on their website, www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com.
Diamonds from Arkansas are also special because of a very important fact. They are worth some SERIOUS dollars! They are so special and unique, plus they tend to be among the hardest diamonds known to man. They have a unique form and often look like sleek drops of glass, rather than crude cubes and rough diamonds of so many African locations. So, an Arkansas diamond is going to be one of the most expensive diamonds you can get, but rightfully so!
Now that you know all about the important facts about diamonds from the “Crater of Diamonds State Park”, learn about how someone almost came up with a perfect scam. Almost.
You certainly couldn’t take any diamond into the park and plant it on the ground. Or at least no one thought you could. A diamond from Africa, Brazil, Russia, et al. would not produce diamonds that look like the ones from Arkansas. But someone found a source that could pass for Arkansas diamonds. A source in India that imports diamonds from the Panna Mines.
Photos of diamond lots sent to Eric to examine prior to purchase.
India produces hundreds of thousands more diamonds than the US, therefore, the diamonds from India are much cheaper than their American counterparts. A man named Eric Blake (www.arkansasdiamondjewelry.com) figured out he could make some money by purchasing diamonds from India then take them into the park and “find” them. A brown diamond from India costs around $100 per carat, while a similar diamond from Arkansas costs $1000 -$2000 per carat. A profit of more than 1000%.
In late October of 2007, Eric Blake and his family took a trip to the “Crater” and found an amazing amount of LARGE BROWN DIAMONDS!
It was no coincidence that he also placed a rush order for an assortment of Indian diamonds to be delivered no later than October 18th.
On 10/6/07 Eric sent the following message from his girlfriend (and accomplice) Susan Gabrielson’s email account.
Hello (Name Withheld),
I may have deleted your last mail by accident. As I have not gotten a response from you. We are eagerly awaiting your mail. The stones must be received no later than October 18, 2007. Anything you can do to expedite this shipment would be greatly appreciated.
Regards, Eric
Over the span of 5 days, Eric and his three assistants “found” over 16.5 carats of diamonds at the park, including a whopping 3.92 carat stone! What great luck, eh? Out of all of the recorded finds they had that week, 60% of them were brown! What an interesting thing, because usually only around 20% of the finds are brown in color.
Screen captures of from the park diamond find archive for Eric Blake, Susan Gabrielson, Sarah Gabrielson, & Sayde Gabrielson
Eric also owns a website called ArkansasDiamondJewelry.com which sells diamonds and jewelry, reported to come from the “Crater”, complete with certificate of authenticity issued by the Arkansas State Park. However, some of the diamonds on the site are proven to be Indian in origin. FakeMinerals.com received paperwork which shows Eric Blake importing diamonds from India in early October.
Kimberly Certificate
UPS Tracking code, screen captured from UPS.com
If that isn’t damning enough, photos taken by the salesperson in India which clearly match up with diamonds for sale on ArkansasDiamondJewelry.com
In addition, Eric sells “Arkansas Diamonds” on eBay (sayde1garcia) and has successfully sold some of his Indian diamonds to mineral dealers here in America as originating from Arkansas.
Private sources have indicated that they have been onto Mr. Blake for a few months now, but they have lacked the evidence to be sure that he was “salting” the diamond field.
One regular digger at the “Crater” met Mr. Blake in 2006 when he first tried out his scam. At that time he only registered a few diamonds. Mr. Blake offered to let the regular digger search his hole when he was done. It wasn’t much surprise that the regular didn’t find anything else in that hole. In 2007 Mr. Blake and his family were digging in an area that is known to be the dumping ground for gravel that was trucked in 1924 to put in a road. This gravel is completely free from diamonds as it is not from the diamond field, however they found a remarkable 32 diamonds! Mr. Blake then offered the hole to another family when they were leaving and while the family moved quite a bit of material, no more diamonds were forthcoming.
Mr. Blake. The diggers at the “Crater of Diamonds State Park” would like you to know that you are persona non grata.
With this information MOST, IF NOT ALL of the Diamonds sold by Mr. Blake are not from Arkansas and should be labeled as coming from the Panna Mine in India.
It is amazing that someone could think they would get away with trying to scam these finds, especially since there are dozens of people who stare, poke and prod at the numbers of the finds on the Crater’s website. 32 diamonds is an impossible number of diamonds to be found by two adults and two children during 5 days at the park.
Additionaly, As recently as January 2008, Eric has sent emails trying to “match” certain stones. And while there is nothing wrong with that in itself, in this context, it is more than a little suspicious.
I leave you with this parting thought… What is the Travel Channel’s most promoted collecting location on their “Best Places to find Cash and Treasures” series? Yep, you guessed it! Crater of Diamonds State Park! Could this be the beginning of the inevitable backlash associated with promoting this “get rich quick” mentality to mineral collecting? I guess only time will tell.
Fake Minerals and Scams are all around us. If you catch wind of something fishy, send to us here at Justin@the-vug.com
Thanks again to Hal Guyot (GeoSleuth@gmail.com) for all your hard work on this story!
Special Extra Thanks goes out to the HONEST INDIAN DEALER, Malay Hirani of Soni Tools (www.sonitools.com) for being willing to help stop fraud!
UPDATE!: Just google Eric Blake’s name on Google and you will find AP News report after AP News report about his 3.92 carat stone find in October of 2007. Not only did he scam the public, the state park, but he also scamed the media. What a guy!
UPDATE!: As soon as Eric heard about this website, he removed the photos that match up above and got rid of his “Dealer Lot” section, well, those diamonds matched up perfectly!
UPDATE!: Actually, this will be the last update to the article until formal charges are made in this pending case. It turns out that Mr. Blake and his associates are actually ALL career criminals, with Eric having been convicted of Fraud over 20 times in the state of WISCONSIN (Eric M. Blake and Eric Blake, Outagamie County). Two of them were Felony charges. What is shameful is that he took the young kid with them when doing this scam, making her an accomplice, knowingly or unknowingly we don’t know. Not a good family values lesson to be teaching!!! However, Eric Blake did learn this from his parents, as they have multiple fraud charges against them as well. Shameful. These matters take time to get going, so unfortunatly, we will not have another update for some time, however, when something moves in this case, you will hear about it! So much more evidence has been POURING out, with customers in multiple sales working with this case. More diamonds have been matched from the original pictures, more documents have been discovered.
And here is a picture found on Google of Eric Blake holding his “famous find”. Pretty smug looking, don’t you think?
Way to catch this jack ass! The mineral world has enough problems as it is, we dont need people like this adding to them.
This guy should be prosecuted just like any other criminal.
Eric Blake denies these allegations. I emailed him for an explanation. He replied as follows:
” This article has been completely blown out of context. I have never denied that I purchased diamonds from India. However, these diamonds were used in a necklace for a friend’s wife, not brought into the Crater.
The article that mentions these stones is not very accurate. Yet, I should not be surprised when it is the sole purpose to look for anything to discredit. Ironically, Mr. Hirani is still selling the exact diamonds I supposedly registered at the Crater. This is an interesting fact. Much like many facts that were overlooked in writing this article.
As for my website and the e-bay posting, they are legitimate diamonds from the Crater. I’m sure you have taken a look at them, they are not the diamonds in the article. At this time I am trying to have all diamonds verified as originating from the Crater. When I have this, the appropriate actions will be taken against these slanderous authors.
Never was there any intention, nor did I ever market the diamonds I purchased from India as Arkansas Diamonds. I was simply doing a favor for a friend. This favor has cost me dearly as it seems.”
Are there any records of the exact weights of the individual diamonds sold to Eric? In the interest of fairness, I am interested in investigating the validity of any of the details that Eric has provided above.
I was on a trip to Tulsa, OK with Kim and Charles when we heard the news of the 3.92 brown Eric Blake find. I was excited for him at that time. I was eager to get back to the mine to dig after hearing that so many diamonds were found in a small area. I asked Charles if he would like to dig with me in the area that all the diamonds were found. I have the most efficient method of ore extraction on the park which allows me to move alot of diamond bearing gravel. So we dug 10-15 five gallon buckets of the same material that Eric Blake dug. We processed the ore and did not find any indicators of the diamond matrix. Both Charles and I realized that there was no way that diamonds could have come from the area that he dug. I’m glad that you have pursued the suspicious nature of the diamonds that Eric Blake supposedly found at the Crater of Diamonds. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Denis Tyrrell
I have watched Denis Tyrrell work extremely hard at the Crater of Diamoneds State Park for an entire year now. He digs and processes a lot of gravel and finds diamonds. He knows how to read the gravel that will bear diamonds and the gravel that won’t. This entire fraud scheme that Eric Blake perpetuated enfuriates me. It places suspicion on, and thus devalues, all of the hard earned, genuine diamond finds by honest diggers. It is a shame that this dark cloud has moved over to darken this bright spot for genine gem hunting.
I would say you should be careful with this accusation. Eric and Sue correctly explained how to look for diamonds to me. At least correctly enough for me to find a 1.22 carat yellow. I was not digging with them but they explained diamond-bearing gravel so I could find it. I did also have the help of Al Flabster in terms of smaller size and I ended up with a day when I found 4. Granted they were 21 point white, 30 point cognac, 55 point brown and the 1.22 carat. They also were kind enough to sell me a necklace with an Indian diamond for my niece. They were very clear about what I was purchasing. I am not saying you are entirely wrong, I am just not convinced you have compelling evidence.
I mean from my perspective, the person helped me identify where to dig for diamonds in a way that led to success, they sent me pictures that compared African, Russian, Arkansan and Canadian diamonds so I knew what to look for. When I asked for a less costly diamond to give my niece (who is 16 so it may not end up lost but you know it didn’t hurt to be cautious and give a valuable, but not priceless stone) they suggested an India diamond, making sure I understood it would not be the as valuable.
So, I am just suggesting that it would take more evidence than you provided. I see some people talk about how hard it is to recover diamonds and I believe that aspect of what they say. It took me a full day to find the ones I did and everyone told me that was amazing. So understand that my experience with Eric is significantly different than you are suggesting. He helped an experienced Montana sapphire and garnet digger have a great day digging diamonds. His description of what to look for was good enough that he was in Wisconsin during my trip and I still found them. So either it was just dumb luck on my part or does he give good advice? And if he gives good advice is it possible that his find was genuine?
Scott,
Are you the supposed friend of Eric’s for whom he bought the Indian diamonds to make a necklace?
If so, please provide a detailed description of the necklace, as well as provide time lines for when it was made and when you purchased it (i.e., physically received it).
Thanks, Jim
Geez, I guess I could also say that Eric is a great guy and would never enter into fraud for profit. Yeah right! I could also say that Eric is a criminal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Whatever!
I do know what I have seen and also researched and there were some of the same diamonds purchased from India that were listed as Arkansas finds from the crater, which lends credibility to the fraud story.
Why is it that a “novice” can locate a slew of stones when other people (some who are more experienced), cannot find a thing?
Is it only a STRONG coincidence that Eric had to have his India shipment BEFORE he went to the crater? Now we bring into light Eric’s fraudulent past and again, something smells really foul!!! Once a con artist, always a con artist! If Eric were indeed the best stone collector at the crater, why even mess with the stones from India? Could it be a 900% markup due to the claim that stones were crater origin? That could be it!
Go get him Johnny Lawman, and put this criminal down!!!
I was his supplier from Antwerp,but….what comes around goes around…don’t forget this Eric!,sold him his “famous find”.