Kriti Mehrotra
Directed by Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos, Netflix’s ‘High End: The Watch Theft Ring’ (or ‘Alta Gama: El Caso Relojes’) is a documentary film revisiting the high-profile Caso Relojes scandal. This scandal concerns the discovery of a suitcase filled with luxury watches and jewelry at Santiago Airport in Chile, which led to the uncovering of a vast illicit underground smuggling network. At the center of it was Estrella Arsenia Dinamarca Sanchez, who officials believe led the entire operation by receiving stolen products and arranging their modification and resale.
Estrella Dinamarca First Stepped Foot Into the Jewelry Market By Chance to Provide For Her Family
On September 25, 1958, Estrella Dinamarca was born to an Evangelical Christian named Arsenia Rosa Sanchez Fonseca and a Romanian named Juan Audomiro Dinamarca Gonzalez. She primarily grew up in the wondrous small town of Malloa in the Cachapoal Province of O’Higgins Region, Chile, where her parents showered her with affection, kindness, and support. According to her own account in the documentary, her early years were thus incredibly happy, especially because her family also ensured they spent as much quality time with her as possible.
Estrella even expressed that she was always fascinated by her father’s passion for tricks, including how he allegedly made tarot cards float in the air or pulled drinkable wine from trees. However, everything turned upside down a short while later when Juan reportedly abandoned the family, driving her to decide she would never depend on a man for anything again. Her resolve only grew stronger when her own marriage ended in divorce years later, following which she and her young daughter, Carla Venegas, relocated to the Santiago area for good.
Estrella initially took on various jobs to provide for her little family, but an unexpected opportunity arose after she offered to make her daughter a necklace with her daughter’s name on it. Her piece attracted so much attention that she started receiving inquiries from neighbors, parents of Carla’s schoolmates, and strangers alike, leading her to establish a small business. She had no idea at the time that her venture would take off to the point that she would soon open her own jewelry store, Galería Santo Domingo, in the local market.
Estrella Dinamarca’s Engagement in Illicit Activities Dates Back to the Early 2000s
While Estrella’s original vocation was opulent homemade jewelry, she claims it transformed into a buying-and-selling trade of luxury items after she began operating Galería Santo Domingo. She asserted in the film that she was fair to all clients, so word spread about her practices, her knowledge, and how she rarely asked questions about the origins of the items being traded. That’s when, she claimed, jewelry snatchers, small-time criminals, and thieves began coming to her with the pieces in their possession to cash them out without worrying about being caught.
Estrella alleged she didn’t want to get on anyone’s bad side or lose any business, so she traded with everyone who came to her shop without interrogation – she focused on the items alone. Little did she know this would soon catch up to her as she was convicted of receiving and dealing in stolen property in 2003, followed by a conviction for accomplice to a robbery in 2006. She eventually spent almost a year in prison, during which her clientele only grew as she utilized her people skills to build connections with her fellow inmates and their networks outside. As Estrella herself admits in the documentary, her commercial circle came to include antique dealer and businessman Marco Antonio Lopez Spagui, better known in the industry as Parived.
They subsequently began working together, the details of which came to light after she was caught at Santiago Airport in 2017 while returning from an international “vacation.” That’s because she was in possession of at least 5 or 6 bags containing luxury jewelry, high-end watches, and other similar products, which she hadn’t disclosed to customs at any point. Although she was permitted to leave the terminal without immediate detention after speaking with inspectors, an extensive investigation was opened to gradually uncover the full truth. Authorities alleged Estrella was a leader of an underground ring, responsible for smuggling stolen goods into Chile, modifying them to remove identifiable marks, and then reselling them for profit.
Estrella Dinamarca Has Faced the Consequences of Her Actions
It took Chilean law enforcement some time to act on what they had discovered, as they needed to be sure of their suspicions, resulting in January 2023 as the breaking point. That’s when they simultaneously executed 36 search warrants across multiple properties in the Santiago area, including one at Estrella’s home and one at her shop, Galería Santo Domingo. Less than a month later, she was formally charged with illicit association, international customs-related offenses, money laundering, receiving stolen goods, smuggling, and tax violations. However, while she acknowledged in the documentary that she is not an “innocent victim” and handled merchandise without verifying its legal origin, she has vehemently denied the allegations that she was running the international crime ring.
In fact, Estrella stated in the documentary that if she was the leader of the underground network, things would’ve been different because she could afford “the best lawyers, like the others did.” Instead, she believes she got the harshest treatment during her prosecution and the harshest sentence out of everyone apprehended, tried, and convicted in connection with the ordeal. According to records, her defense team maintained that she was not the mastermind behind the wider syndicate; she was eventually sentenced to five years of intensive supervised release, with credit granted for around 8 months of pre-trial detention she served. From what we can tell, the now-disgraced jeweler is currently under state supervision as a parolee, so she prefers to lead a quiet life well away from the limelight. All we know for certain is that she remains a resident of beautiful Santiago, surrounded by her loved ones, including her friends and her daughter.
