Visitor from Brazil declared nothing of value at Miami airport. Feds found lots of diamonds
When an American man flew from Brazil to Miami International Airport in November, U.S. Customs agents stopped him for questioning upon arrival.
Guilherme Cipriani told them that he wasn’t carrying anything purchased abroad into the United States.
But U.S. Customs agents found that Cipriani was holding 14 loose, cut diamonds and 53 rough, uncut diamonds, authorities say. They seized his undeclared cache of gems but let him go — until this week.
On Wednesday, Cipriani, 41, was arrested at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, according to Homeland Security Investigations. The following day, he was released on his own recognizance by a federal judge in Phoenix.
Cipriani must appear May 24 in federal court in Miami to face an indictment charging him with smuggling goods into the United States and making a false statement to a federal agency.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Cipriani “lied” to Customs and Border Protection agents at MIA that he bought nothing of value abroad, according to a news release issued Friday.
The indictment doesn’t say how much the diamonds are worth. The Miami Herald obtained a U.S. Customs document estimating their value at $25,750.
Cipriani’s defense attorney, Frank Quintero, said that as a result, his client faces between zero and six months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines — even though the smuggling count carries up to 20 years and the false statement charge up to five years.
According to published news reports, Brazil’s black market for diamonds has faced sharper scrutiny by authorities there in recent years — not unlike prior crackdowns on the illicit gold trade in several South America nations, as reported by the Herald in a series published in 2018.
The smuggling of contraband, ranging from precious metals to drugs, is commonplace at Miami International Airport, authorities say. But unreported cash by travelers leaving from or arriving at the airport happens practically every day.
Miami International Airport trails only New York’s JFK and Chicago’s O’Hare airports for federal seizures of funds from travelers who don’t fill our the right customs form. The sum taken from travelers at MIA totaled $91.5 million between 2000 and 2016, according to a report by the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based law firm that specializes in efforts to recover civil seizures by the U.S. government.
Under federal law, travelers can carry as much money as they want into or out of the country, but if it’s more than $10,000 they have to declare the amount to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
This story was originally published April 28, 2023 at 12:01 PM.
