As Loretta Savery’s longtime private jeweler, Nelson Holdo remembered the little details: birthdays and anniversaries, where her sons went to college, their majors and if they had girlfriends.
“He ingratiated himself knowing that one day, he could use that information to defraud clients of thousands of dollars, eventually totaling in the millions,” Savery said Monday in a Santa Ana courtroom.
Standing in a holding pen for inmates, wearing orange jail attire, Holdo looked back at Savery almost admiringly, at times bowing his head.
Last week, Holdo pleaded guilty to three felony counts of stealing from his clients and on Monday was sentenced to five years in state prison.
Prosecutors say Holdo, 66, stole more than $1.7 million from his clients, taking their money but never delivering the Rolexes, diamonds and other jewelry they paid for. In some cases, he took their valuables to resell but never gave them the money.
As part of the plea deal, about three dozen counts were dismissed. Deputy Atty. Gen. Sterling Winchester, with the California Department of Justice, declined to comment on the agreement.
Holdo did not make a statement at his sentencing, and his public defender, June Woo Chung, declined to comment.
In an interview at an Orange County jail in June, Holdo told The Times that he was “100% innocent” and confident he would be cleared after presenting the facts to a jury.
Holdo has racked up a long history of complaints since the 2000s, when he operated a jewelry store in San Marino. The store, Asanti, filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and his wife started a new business, Mimi et Cie, LLC, which he eventually took over.
In 2023, LA Gems Private Jewelers was formed, and Holdo organized a new business called Brivetti in a quaint office along East Coast Highway in Corona del Mar in 2024. The Mimi et Cie store closed in late 2024.
The Times has interviewed more than a dozen clients and investors who said they were cheated by Holdo. Some said they wired him tens of thousands of dollars for Rolexes, diamonds and other pieces.
But when it came time to settle up, Holdo was full of excuses. Shipping delays. The piece was in a friend’s safe. His dealer was in Paris for the Olympics, then contracted Covid, then had to fly to Florida to see his mother. His wife was sick, he was sick. His daughter was getting married and the wedding tapped him out.
In each case, the gems never materialized.
Savery told The Times that her husband gave her a diamond ring from Holdo’s store for their 20th wedding anniversary in 2008. She contacted him last year looking for a gift for her future daughter-in-law.
Savery selected a pair of ruby earrings and paid him $5,000. As time went by, he blamed delays on the manufacturer’s summer vacation. Then a wrong shipping address. When he failed to provide the earrings by her deadline, he promised a refund. She never got the earrings or her money back, she said.
“It would have been more honorable to have been an anonymous thief in the night,” Savery said at Monday’s hearing. “He cultivated relationships to make us think we were his friends … He violated our sense of safety and order — that is the most insidious kind of threat.”
After Savery finished her victim impact statement, a handful of other victims and observers in the courtroom applauded. The judge joked about whether the applause was for him, and Holdo let out a little laugh.
Holdo was ordered to pay back the more than $1.7 million that prosecutors say he took, including in cases stemming from the charges that were dismissed.
