Selling Stolen Watches ‘More Lucrative Than Drugs’ article

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The article does feature Paul Thorpe who is a bit of a geezer and mainly looks to build the Paul Thorpe brand.
I did meet him at a London watch show (we all survived the travel unscathed) and he was a fun and friendly character.

Paul Thorpe was one of the UK's leading and most established independent watch dealers. Now retired, he is a full time Watch Journalist, Vlogger and is ……
I remember watching one of his YouTube videos a couple of years ago in which he was banging on about how hard it is to get a SS Rolex at retail and all the games one has to play, and yet there he was flaunting what looked like a Sub on his wrist. He lost all credibility with me that day. Later on he made another video about how his Rolex was stolen and that Rolex head office in Geneva wouldn't alert him if the watch was sent in to one of their service centres. He was pretty pissed about that.
 
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I must admit, I only recently realised how high end watches were perfect cross border money moving devices. If you can buy a Richard Mille in cash for say 500k in one province, get on a plane and sell it (legitimately) in another province for more or less the same price, without raising much suspicion, you can see why those high value pieces are in demand. Watches are excellent, highly portable money moving devices. At the high value end anyway.
I assume that platinum and white gold sport/dive watches are good for this. Far less obvious too.