Chey Tenenboim jailed for cash-for-gold shop that bought from thieves

A valuer involved in buying stolen jewellery through a cash-for-gold business, melting it into gold bars and selling it, will spend 12 months in prison.

Chey Tenenboim, 39, was an employee of Gold Buyers Melbourne in Collins Street in Melbourne’s CBD, where he and owners Alejandro Mendieta Blanco and Julio Mendieta Blanco operated the dodgy scheme until they were arrested.

He had previously pleaded guilty to 42 instances of handing over cash for goods he knew to be stolen, condensed into one charge of handling, receiving or disposing stolen goods.

When sentencing Tenenboim on Wednesday, Judge Scott Johns of the County Court of Victoria said the sentimental value attached to many of the stolen items that Tenenboim and his co-offenders bought on the spot “would have been priceless”, but the service appeared to be offered “to all comers.”

The gold items were likely snatched during domestic burglaries, he said.

Judge Johns said the business was doing well outside of its dealings with stolen jewellery and that it was “purely a greed-driven offence”.

The judge said Tenenboim’s father had been a gold dealer and was the victim of an armed robbery in which his “life savings” were stolen from his store. Soon after, he was found floating in Sydney waters, with a coroner determining he had taken his own life.

Judge Johns said it was a “shame” that experience did not dissuade Tenenboim from associating with thieves later in life.

He said Tenenboim was born into a religious Jewish family in Sydney and attended Vaucluse High School, before learning the trade from his father, studying diamonds in Israel and obtaining a diploma of gemology in Australia.

Even though he was not the owner of the store he was an “integral and essential” part of the scheme because he was an “experienced valuer”, Judge Johns said.

He said Tenenboim knew he would probably not be caught because the stolen gold was “unlikely to be identified” after it had been melted down.

“You thought you could do it without getting caught, so you did,” he said.

The court heard Tenenboim has a wife and four children, and the family had suffered “significant” financial loss as well as anxiety from the high-profile arrest, which has caused him “shame and humiliation.”

He was arrested on a Jewish holiday in front of his family, Judge Johns said.

The offence was serious because it “encourages theft”, the judge said.

Tenenboim was sentenced to 12 months prison followed by a two year community corrections order with 200 hours of unpaid community work.

Alejandro and Julio Mendieta Blanco have each pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentence.