To be honest, I'm having a little bit of a hard time feeling too much sympathy for the victims:
"A succession of high-wattage thefts in New York has uncovered a bizarre pattern involving women who target wealthy men at nightclubs, accompany them home and then disappear with tens of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry.
The police have offered no evidence that the thefts are related. But they were all apparently aimed at men wearing flashy watches, especially Rolexes, among them a 24-year-old power forward for the New York Knicks, Derrick Williams.
On Wednesday night, the police released a video of two women who are wanted in the theft of items valued at $617,000 from Mr. Williams’s downtown Manhattan apartment around 5 a.m. on Saturday. The women spent about 90 minutes in his apartment, the police said, and stole a Rolex, a diamond bracelet, a necklace and a Louis Vuitton bag.
The surveillance video shows the women at the Up & Down club before the theft, with one of them walking downstairs to retrieve a black jacket and the other standing near the entrance looking at her cellphone.
In a separate case, a 19-year-old woman from New Jersey, Alexandra Martinez, was arraigned on Wednesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court on grand larceny charges in two incidents in which she is accused of having accompanied men home from bars, mixed them drinks that made them lose consciousness, and stolen watches and cash, according to a criminal complaint.
A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said Ms. Martinez typically found men at bars or restaurants wearing a Rolex, and then went to their hotel room or apartment, ostensibly for a drink and possibly sex.
The criminal complaint against Ms. Martinez says that in one incident, in September, she and another woman prepared a cocktail at a man’s Brooklyn home that knocked him out. When he awoke, he realized they had taken three Rolexes and a Breitling watch, valued at over $38,500 in all, as well as $4,500 in cash. The other incident, in November, involved the theft of a $10,000 Rolex and $800 in cash, after Ms. Martinez and another woman made a cocktail for the victim around 4 a.m., the complaint says.
The other woman has not been taken into custody. Ms. Martinez was released on bail on Wednesday, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said. Information about her lawyer was not available.
The arrest was Ms. Martinez’s third in recent months, all in connection with grand larcenies targeting wealthy men at bars or restaurants, the police said. She was arrested on Dec. 15 in two thefts in Manhattan. In one, in July, she took a taxi to a man’s residence near Greenwich Village after they drank together at a bar, the police said. When they arrived at his home, she decided to stay in the taxi and continue to her home; the man later realized that his wallet was missing from his pocket, the police said.
Another arrest in September followed a man’s report of having brought Ms. Martinez and another woman back to his Midtown hotel room in August. He said he fell asleep and then woke up to the realization that his Rolex, $3,000 in cash and his iPhone were missing.
The women suspected of stealing the Rolexes may have been outdone in the rarity of their loot by two women the police said accompanied a man from the Sapphire New York club on Manhattan’s East Side to his room at the Baccarat Hotel New York this month.
The man told investigators that he put about $5,000 in cash, his watch and his driver’s license in a safe inside a closet after he returned to the hotel early in the morning, but did not remember locking it, the police said. He took one woman into the bedroom while the other stayed in the living room; after they both left, he discovered the items gone.
The police did not identify the value of the watch, but one timepiece the man recently posted on his Instagram page — a Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon 30° Technique — sells for almost $600,000."
