Globetrotting jewelry thief caught after swiping nearly $300K from NYC Cartier, Tiffany shops

A globetrotting jewelry thief suspected of ripping off swanky stores in Beverly Hills, Miami and South Korea is now behind bars following heists at Cartier and Tiffany in New York City, The Post has learned.

Yaorong Wan, 49, was busted in Manhattan last week after he allegedly jacked diamond rings — which had a combined value of nearly $300,000 — from the world-renowned jewelry stores, prosecutors said.

His sticky-fingered crime spree included the theft of an $18,000 watch from a London Jewelers in Manhasset on Long Island last month, according to the criminal complaints.

Authorities are also eyeing Wan — who has a red notice out on him from Interpol — for similar heists at a Tiffany’s in South Korea, an Hermes store in New Jersey and Cartier stores in Beverly Hills, Calif. and Miami, Fla., law-enforcement sources and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.

The NYPD’s Major Case Squad tracked Wan to a Queens apartment building on 40th Road on Friday, where they arrested him and slapped him with two counts of grand larceny for the Manhattan thefts, police sources said.

The arrest appears to have ended Wan’s years-long criminal caper, which took him halfway around the world and left his pockets heavy with stolen rings and watches, police sources said.

His wild jaunt appears to have started in September 2018, when he hit a Tiffany’s in the South Korean capital of Seoul and made off with a $330,000 diamond ring, sources said.

He took a few years off, then came to the US last December and quickly began fleecing stores throughout the country, according to the sources.

In January, he allegedly strolled into a Cartier store in Beverly Hills and left with a $48,000 diamond ring and a watch worth $10,000 that he conveniently forgot to pay for, sources said.

Then he came to the Big Apple, where he allegedly hit the Tiffany & Co on Fifth Avenue in Rockefeller Center on March 4 and the Cartier store at 20 Hudson Yards on March 12, according to the complaints.

At Tiffany’s, Wan waltzed in at about 3 p.m. that day and asked the woman behind the counter about several pieces of jewelry, the court documents allege.

He eventually settled on a diamond ring, which was valued at a whopping $255,000.

Wan allegedly held the ring, looked it over, handed it back and left the store, the complaint said.

But the ring he returned wasn’t the same one the employee handed him — even though she thought it was.

About a week later, the store was doing a routine inventory when workers found out the allegedly genuine ring was, in fact, a counterfeit cubic zirconia stone mounted on 18-carat white gold, the complaint said.

That was a far cry from the pricey original, which was a natural diamond mounted on platinum that was engraved, hallmarked and had a unique code attached to it, according to the complaint.

When investigators watched surveillance footage from that day, they saw the defendant examine the ring — then allegedly slip it into his palm in a bit of sleight-of-hand trickery and offload the cheaper fake.

Store workers had photographed the ring on March 5, and none of the engravings or hallmarkings were present, the complaint said.  

On March 12, he allegedly engineered a similar magic trick on an employee of the Cartier store in Hudson Yards.

That day, Wan walked in at about 1:30 p.m. and asked to look at two engagement rings and two watches, investigators said.

The employee handed him the diamond rings, then got distracted, according to the complaint.

That’s when Wan allegedly handed back one of the rings, but slipped the other — valued at about $25,000 — into his pocket before taking off.

The caught-on-camera heist was his second big score in just eight days.

Sources said he then went to Miami, where he allegedly lifted a $16,000 watch from a Cartier store on March 24.

Then he came back to the metropolitan area, where he pilfered the glitzy watch from Manhasset on April 19 and two watches — worth a combined $17,000 — from the Hermes store inside the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford on April 26, sources said.

In the Long Island case, investigators say Wan was perusing watches at the London Jewelers on Northern Boulevard when he slid a Chopard watch into his left jacket pocket, the complaint said.

Then he strolled past the registers and out the door, according to the complaint.

When he was arrested, Wan allegedly had three watches that he stole from Manhasset and New Jersey, as well as the fake stones he used to swap with the legitimate pieces, sources said.

He pleaded not guilty at his Saturday arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, and a judge cut him loose on supervised release, according to the complaint and police sources.

But afterward, authorities sent him over to Nassau County, where he was locked up on $500,000 cash bail for the watch theft and an outstanding warrant out of East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Wan pleaded not guilty to a charge of third-degree grand larceny in Nassau District Court on Sunday morning, according to online court records. His next appearance is slated for Tuesday morning.

He’s also scheduled to be back in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 14, according to court records.

Neither the Miami Police Department nor the East Rutherford police responded to requests for comment Monday.