Lies, Intrigue, Lawsuits: the Last Battle for a ‘Cursed’ Giant Emerald

The Washington Post / Terrence McCoy

17:57 JST, October 31, 2024

RIO DE JANEIRO – Many extraordinary stories have been told about the Bahia Emerald, a large portion of them false.

It has been asserted that panthers, or some other ferocious beasts, attacked a mule-drawn cart that was transporting the rock through a Brazilian jungle. It has been claimed that Brazilian warlords – or perhaps it’s the Brazilian mafia – are in violent pursuit of what’s believed to be the world’s largest emerald.

One story even held that the giant stone was swallowed by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.

That one is actually true.

So it has always gone with this great sphinx of a rock. Truth and mistruth. Claim and counterclaim. Crude, misshapen, mysterious, frustrating: the emerald defies convention. The minifridge-sized rock, studded with green crystals, doesn’t dazzle; it bewitches. Many have coveted it. Some have died coveting it. A few have been sent to prison over it.

People, particularly journalists, like to call the thing cursed. Since it was wrenched from a Brazilian mine in 2001, the value, significance and ownership of the Bahia Emerald have been in dispute.

Some say it’s worth nearly $1 billion. Others say it’s worth next to nothing. Some say it weighs 840 pounds. Others contend 752.

But now, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, at least one matter is on the verge of resolution: Who owns it. A decade-long legal battle has pitted the nation of Brazil against a small consortium of fortune seekers who are trying to thwart a diplomatic petition to return the rock to its native land.

Brazil contends it’s the victim of a crime. The rock was mined illegally and smuggled out of the country. Government lawyers, in an echo of Indiana Jones, say it belongs in a museum.

“We aren’t moved by any financial interest,” said Boni de Moraes Soares, a federal prosecutor who specializes in international disputes. “We want to send a signal that we will go after Brazil’s national property where it is found and hold to account international traffickers, so they’ll think twice before committing a crime so brazen.”

On the other side are three American gem speculators who have claimed to be the stone’s rightful owners for more than 15 years. The victors in a separate ownership dispute, they say they had nothing to do with its importation but acquired it legally in a transaction confirmed by a Los Angeles civil judge.

One is Jerry Ferrara, a Florida man who deals in real estate and gems. For 16 years, he has tried to cash in on the emerald. He’s faced down the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, a cadre of small-time gem hunters, financial ruin – and come no closer to realizing his ambitions of fortune.

“I always tell people, ‘I’m the richest poor man you’ll ever meet,’” he said.

But now he and his consortium, FM Holdings, are facing their most daunting adversary: the Federative Republic of Brazil.

The land of giant emeralds

The semiarid mountain range of Carnaíba in northeastern Brazil holds one of the world’s largest emerald deposits. But the stones found there are different from those of Colombia or Zambia. They’re cloudier and, as a result, sell for less. But some are also much bigger.

The Carnaíba mine has produced five “giant emeralds,” according to Brazilian media, each weighing hundreds of pounds.

One merchant was Alderacy de Carvalho. “Older, tough, had the nickname ‘The General,’” friend Osmar Santos said of him. Behind his house, The General kept, what the news program Fantástico described in 2012 as, a “rare collection of rocks.”

None were rarer than the Bahia Emerald. A block of black schist and green crystals, it looks less emerald than meteorite. The General, Fantástico reported, bought it for $1,700.

“We are unaware of a piece so rare and unique, with the emerald crystals so well formed,” a geologist hired by the Brazilian mining ministry would report. “It should be sent to a mineral museum so that Brazilians and foreign tourists can get to know the riches produced in Brazil.”

Instead, court records show, the General sold it for $8,000 to two gem prospectors. They took it to São Paulo and stored it at a cluttered car repair shop, where mechanic Antonio Luiz Fernandes de Abreu said it spent years “literally in the way.”

In 2005, the prospectors shipped it to the United States in hopes of finding a buyer.

‘Unlike anything I had ever seen’

In America, a succession of amateur gem speculators – one lived in a trailer with his elderly mother; another was a plumber in Pasadena, Calif. – tried and failed to land a big buyer.

Next up was Ferrara, who was granted the emerald’s deed with a promise he’d split proceeds from any sale with the plumber, Larry Biegler.

At the time, Ferrara says, he was broke and homeless, reeling from the housing market crash. The emerald “was unlike anything I had ever seen,” Ferrara wrote in his unpublished memoir. “To me, it was the equivalent to being in a room with the Ark of the Covenant.”

But relations between Ferrara and Biegler turned acrimonious. Ferrara teamed with Idaho businessman Kit Morrison, who put up $1.3 million for a stake in selling it.

Biegler told police the rock was stolen and claimed the Brazilian mafia was after him. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department found the rock and seized it. Ferrara and Biegler disputed its ownership. A judge in Los Angeles sided with Ferrara and Morrison in 2015.

Biegler didn’t respond to a request for comment.

As the men fought over the stone, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Brazilian officials about it. The country, which has lost more than 900 cultural relics to traffickers and has seen its own natural riches paraded by wealthier nations, is sensitive to the issue. It opened a criminal probe.

Authorities, court records show, found that the first license to mine the site that yielded the Bahia Emerald wasn’t issued until years after its discovery. That the speculators who sent the rock to the United States identified it falsely in exportation documents as “bitumen and asphalt.” That a São Paulo gem expert had told them it was worth $372 million, but they estimated its value at $100.

A court found speculators Elson Alves Ribeiro and Rui Saraiva Filho guilty of smuggling and usurpation of public property and sentenced each to prison.

“We are not a colony,” Judge Valdirene Ribeiro de Souza Falcão wrote. “We are a sovereign country. Our riches cannot be distributed to innumerable countries at modest prices.”

Efforts to contact Ribeiro were unsuccessful. Saraiva has died.

Brazil ordered the gem’s forfeiture and invoked the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, a diplomatic accord that compels signatories to assist in criminal matters. In 2015, the United States petitioned the D.C. federal court for its return to Brazil.

The final chapter

Despite the emerald’s supposed value, no one has ever made much off it.

Morrison, co-owner of FM Holdings, expects it will always be that way. He’d spent 16 years and more than $2 million in pursuit of the emerald. But when he answered the phone Wednesday, his voice betrayed resignation.

Nine years after Brazil sought U.S. help in recovering the stone, a decision is finally at hand. U.S. Judge Reggie B. Walton announced this week he’d soon issue his ruling. The gem is poised to depart the custody of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. But Morrison, who established his ownership credentials in the California court, doesn’t think it will be coming home with him.

“I won and was deemed the bona fide good purchaser of the emerald,” he said. “But in life, you can win, and not win.”

He’s been under the stone’s spell for long enough.

“If it’s truly a national treasure it belongs in Brazil,” he said. “That’s where I’m at right now. I have to look at the reality.”

Ferrara doesn’t want to hear it. There’s still a chance. The Bahia Emerald can still be theirs.

“Do I want to continue to fight?” he asked. “Yes, absolutely. I didn’t put 16 years of my life into this for nothing.”