MIAMI BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Police have arrested a man accused of stealing more than $1 million in high-end jewelry that was inside of a safe at a Miami Beach hotel during Super Bowl weekend.
Jordan Shaw, the attorney for celebrity jeweler Eric Mavachev, also known as Eric The Jeweler, said his client brought a collection of high-end jewelry to the area in order to sell it over the weekend.
“He’s coming down with the purpose of selling it,” Shaw said. “The safe was taken. The safe was ripped out of the wall.”
On his Instagram page, the celebrity jeweler could be seen posing with some of his A-list clients, such as rappers Sean “Diddy” Combs and Drake.
According to the arrest report, when Mavachev and his girlfriend left their room at the Mondrian South Beach Hotel Saturday night and returned at around 5 a.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, the couple saw their room had been ransacked. The room’s safe, filled with over $1.5 million in jewels, handbags and cash, had been stolen.
“They went to a high profile place in Miami Beach,” Shaw said. “They expected to be safe. They expected that their materials, their property, would be safe.”
Xandi Garcia, the alleged thief, was arrested at the Seybold Building in downtown Miami after, police said, he tried to sell a stolen ring.
Police said they received information from an anonymous source and caught up with Garcia, who allegedly had the ring in his pocket.
Garcia’s defense attorney argued that he was locked up due to hearsay, but Judge Mindy S. Glazer disagreed with him.
“All of these assertions are being made by an anonymous source,” Garcia’s attorney said in court.
“He has the ring,” Glazer said. “He handed it to the detective outside the Seybold Building.”
Shaw said although Garcia was caught selling the stolen jewelry, he does not believe the theft was a one-man job.
“I’m not convinced that he was the only person involved,” Shaw said.
The attorney also added that the hotel’s security could have done more to prevent the theft from occurring.
Garcia has been charged with burglary, grand theft and dealing in stolen property.
He remains behind bars pending trial. Garcia also has another pending criminal case regarding a separate theft.
7News has reached out to the Mondrian South Beach Hotel for comment but have not received a response.
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