Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning on April 15, while the community of Niverville slept, a band of thieves carried out a sophisticated heist at 88 Carats Company located at 290 Main Street.

Travis and Danielle Wiebe are the co-owners of 88 Carats Co. Their personal loss will be somewhere in the area of $300,000. It was the first time in Travis’s 26 years in the jewellery business that he’s experienced anything like it.

“The timing was just not on our side on this one,” Travis says. “We’ve been working on 30 or 40 wedding or engagement rings at any given time. Gold is at an all-time high right now. It’s like $4,500 per ounce. So when you have all this gold and everything is taken, it’s just really bad!”

Missing, as well, is a collection of gold that was being readied to send away for refining.

Equally devastating is the loss of thousands of dollars in client jewellery that was in the studio for alteration or repair.

Danielle gets especially choked up when she thinks about those customers.

“The customers who will have the biggest loss are the ones who left sentimental things with us that can’t be replaced,” Danielle says. “Those have been the tough phone calls because your heart breaks for them.”

The break-in occurred on the west-facing side of their second-floor studio, located just above Pizza Hut.

According to Travis, the thief or thieves will have scaled the side of the building using exterior venting ducts on which to brace themselves. They broke the upper storey window and climbed through.

The couple’s son was the first to arrive on Tuesday morning and witness the carnage. There was glass on the floor and every door and drawer had been opened and ransacked for goods.

Even the oven, where metal casting is done, had been opened and a hot flask removed. Since the oven runs at a temperature of 1,400 degrees, Travis says it’s evident that the thief must have had some pretty significant gloves on.

Left behind were some telltale signs that the heist was a premeditated job carried out by one or more people who were familiar with the interior of the 88 Carats Co. studio.

When the Wiebes arrived on Tuesday morning, they noticed that the thieves had turned the oven off—a task which isn’t easily done unless, Travis says, a person is familiar with the machine.

The thieves didn’t take everything. They left behind a display of jewellery that is gold-plated and of lower value than the missing goods, suggesting that they had some knowledge of quality.

Somehow, strategically, the thieves also managed to avoid the interior video cameras, revealing the fact that they were familiar with their locations.

For the Wiebes, this narrows down the possibility of who the perpetrators could be.

This is because the Wiebes don’t operate a traditional jewellery store. Every client who walks through their door to discuss custom jewellery does so by appointment only. The single door of their premises is always locked, opened only for customers as they come and go during their appointment times.

For this reason, the Wiebes were immediately suspicious that the thief had been a recent client, or posed as such, in order to stake out their premises.

Travis and Danielle have poured through hours and hours of video footage taken during their open hours as customers have come and gone. Not a single face that’s come through their doors has gone unrecorded, they say.

On Thursday, April 17, the couple posted a video to social media asking for the public’s help in finding the perpetrators.

Within a short period of time, individuals were reaching out to them, suggesting that a certain man living within the region was likely behind the crime. The name is not unfamiliar to the Wiebes. He had, in fact, been in their studio in recent weeks.

But for all the sleuthing and questioning that’s being done, Travis says it’s mostly he and Danielle who are doing it.

Apart from a visit by the RCMP on the morning of the crime, where some forensics were carried out, the police have been basically silent. It’s Travis who’s been going around to local homes and businesses asking to see video surveillance footage.

“I’ve been phoning the RCMP detachment and leaving messages for the last two days and have had no calls back,” says Travis. “I’m emailing and getting no response, so I don’t know what’s going on. I’m like, ‘Guys, this is a huge hit, and a huge wakeup call for the community!’”

The Wiebes have now taken it one step further by offering a $50,000 reward for the recovery of their merchandise. If a portion is returned, they’ll pay out a portion of that reward.

“The reward that we’re offering is probably about the same or more than what the thieves would get on the street for the merchandise,” Travis says. “The thief can reach out to us and, if they want to, we’ll do a deal.”

In the meantime, the couple has been working hard at beefing up their premises to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

They are a resilient couple and believe they will bounce back, whatever it takes. They’ve been through tough times before, not the least of which were the COVID-19 years that almost put them out of business. During that period, they took a quarter of a million-dollar hit in lost revenue.

As for the clients who lost merchandise in the robbery, Travis says he understands how scared or frustrated they must feel right now. He wants to assure them all that 88 Carats will take care of them. Everything will be replaced without additional cost to the customer.

“I’ve operated with integrity in this town for 26 years,” Travis says. “I’m not going to stop now.”

For clients whose weddings are just around the corner, it’s been a matter of finding them temporary replacement rings until new ones can be crafted.

Danielle, who’s been making most of the difficult calls, says that the customers have been incredibly supportive and understanding so far.