Rolex gangs, seeking valuable top-end jewellery, are attacking high-profile business people in greater Joburg's affluent suburbs.

Ladragh Cozens, executive chairperson of The Cozens Recruitment Group, said both she and her husband, Michael Gunko, had been robbed of their watches in two separate incidents this year. Gunko's gold Rolex was stolen about six weeks ago at their office in Glenhove Road after a meeting at the Rosebank Mall. Cozens was robbed of her diamond Cartier watch in March at the Damelin parking lot in Randburg.
Rolex gangs, seeking valuable top-end jewellery, are attacking high-profile business people in greater Joburg's affluent suburbs.At least five attacks have been recorded in upmarket Hyde Park, Houghton, Sandton and Glenhazel since March. In the latest incident, at 11.30am in Glenhazel on Friday, a businessman was accosted as he left his Mercedes-Benz in Sunny Road and was robbed of his Rolex watch. The man didn't wish to speak to the Saturday Star, but his associate, Lionel Stein, the former chairperson of the Johannesburg Community Policing Forum area board, said the man had been approached by four armed gunmen. He believed he had been followed.
"He is certain he was being watched for the past few days, and they waited until he was at his most vulnerable. He drives a Mercedes and they only took his Rolex. They came back for his wallet. But the main thing was his watch," Stein said.
The cheapest entry-level Rolex wristwatch is the ladies' Oyster Perpetual in stainless steel, retailing at R37 800.Friday's robbery comes three months after reports of Discovery Holdings chief executive Adrian Gore being robbed of his Rolex watch and personal belongings by armed robbers in his Bentley outside his Houghton home. At the time of the attack, he said several of his friends, who live in Houghton, Illovo and Inanda, had been targeted.Gauteng police, however, are adamant that the Rolex gang doesn't exist. Their denial came after a guard was shot and wounded in the basement of a business park in Illovo during a robbery in which an armed gang stole a man's Rolex watch. Last week, police Superintendent Eugene Opperman said two Mercedes-Benz cars being stolen on the same day in different parts of the city did not prove the existence of a "Mercedes gang".
This week, socialite Edith Venter was accosted in the driveway of her Athol, Sandton, home and robbed of the jewellery she was wearing.Commenting on the spate of robberies, Stein criticised police, saying it was "pretty obvious" that syndicates were at work but that police intelligence had perhaps not yet picked it up.
Cozens, who drives a Jaguar XK8, believes she was followed from her house in Hyde Park until she made her next stop. "What I thought thoroughly extraordinary is that they never bothered to take any of the jewellery around my neck, fingers or wrists, but merely asked for my watch. There is no doubt that they know what they want. They put a gun in your face and all they ask for is your watch," Cozens said.
Sandton Community Policing Forum chairperson Judith Taylor said there was definitely a trend. "We haven't had an exceptionally large number of cases but we do know that a few have happened because of what has been said when attacks happen. We suspect that they are targeting high-profile people wearing very valuable, easily sold jewellery," Taylor said.In one incident, a woman had hidden her ring in her handbag, but when she was approached, she was told by the robbers that they wanted the ring she had been wearing on the finger they pointed to.In two other incidents, the victims believed they had been followed from the Hyde Park area. Security company ADT's Joburg managing director Roy Rawlins confirmed that ADT had noticed an increase in the number of incidents involving contact crimes and said it was definitely more noticeable in affluent areas. Alexandra police spokesperson Constable Neria Malefetse said there had been reported incidents in the Sandton, Sandringham, Midrand and Bramley areas in the past month.