Kirkland securities broker, target of probe, tries to sell jewelry

The woman who came into Doug Davis' Bellevue jewelry shop last Saturday seemed in a hurry. She said her name was Rhonda, and she wanted to sell a "huge" amount of gold and silver jewelry.

It was just before closing, so Davis asked the woman to leave the gold, come back Monday and he'd tell her what it was worth.

It seemed odd to Davis and his partner at Elegante Jewelry — which specializes in purchasing estate items — that so much of the jewelry seemed new and apparently unworn. Monday morning, Davis said, they retrieved the woman's full name from their answering machine and sat down at their computers.

The seller was Rhonda Breard, the Kirkland securities broker who is under investigation by the state Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) and federal authorities after investors complained that millions of their dollars were missing. ING Financial Partners, the Dutch-based investment giant that licensed Breard, pulled her brokerage certificates Feb. 10.

Breard's attorney, Ronald Friedman, said the 47-year-old woman had gone to the jewelry store in hopes of getting cash that could be turned over to reimburse her clients. Friedman, who until recently was a white-collar prosecutor, said Breard is openly cooperating with federal prosecutors and the FBI.

He says he expects his client will be charged.

"She was hoping that some of this might be available later to help," Friedman said of the money Breard hopes to raise by selling her property.

Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, declined to comment on the case. DFI officials did not return calls Friday.

The day Breard visited Elegante Jewelry was 17 days after ING had yanked her brokerage license and she had closed the Kirkland offices of Breard & Associates Wealth Management. ING has said some customers appear to have received altered statements showing investments that did not exist.

DFI opened its investigation around the same time. Since then, its Division of Securities has identified as many as 20 investors with losses as much as $8 million. A number of them have retained lawyers, and several firms have said they are contemplating lawsuits against Breard and ING for allegedly not supervising her.

Lawyers for some of the clients have complained that state regulators and law-enforcement agencies have done nothing to protect what assets Breard may have that the alleged victims might recoup.

Breard lives in a $2.6 million home on Lake Washington and has $1 million-plus homes in Duvall and Bellevue, along with numerous luxury cars, according to property records.

Jeweler Davis said the woman had called his store earlier that Saturday, then came in around 3 p.m. He said he closes at 4 p.m. on Saturdays.

"After looking over a large amount of seemingly unworn jewelry (gold and high-end silver rings, earrings, pendants and bracelets) we asked that she leave the gold items for us to evaluate and make her an offer," Davis wrote in an e-mail to The Seattle Times.

"It was a huge amount of stuff for one person," he said later in a telephone interview. "There was no sob story. Just talk about how much it was worth."

Davis said he took 17 gold items, but that he never came up with an offer because once he learned who the owner was, he decided he didn't want to buy.

"Our economy today has presented many challenges to all of us, and in our business we have found ourselves dealing with people that are having financial difficulty, but we could not in good conscience purchase her jewelry," he said.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com