Stay classy, Scarsdale: In the same week that the Mad Mom roadside abandonment story made headlines, another Scarsdale mom is in the news for stealing an estimated $12 million in gold from the Queens jewelry manufacturer where she worked as a vault manager. And according to her own confession, she did it one piece at a time over the course of six years! 50-year-old Teresa Tambunting's gold-hoarding hobby went unnoticed until January, when auditors at Jacmel Jewelry's Long Island City headquarters reported losses over the normal 3% rate.
The ensuing investigation apparently worried Tambunting, who had been with the company for over a quarter century, and in February she confessed, dragging rolling luggage bags filled with roughly $868,000 in gold. Jacmel president Jack Rahmey tells the Daily News, "The first time, she returned one bag with eighty pounds of fine gold. Then, on another occasion (one week later) she came back with another bag." Investigators say she admitted to slipping the gold inside the lining of her purse and stockpiling it in her Scarsdale home.
In all, she's believed to have hoarded over 500 pounds of gold. In a statement, Queens DA Richard A. Brown said, "With gold trading at nearly $900 an ounce, the defendant is accused of establishing a virtual mining operation in Long Island City which siphoned off millions of dollars’ worth of the precious metal from her employer." Tambunting was released on $100,000 bail Wednesday, and if convicted faces up to 25 years in prison. A source tells the News her lawyer is expected to argue that she has a form of obsessive compulsive disorder.
