(NEW YORK) - Jewelers of America (JA), the national trade association for businesses serving the fine jewelry marketplace, is offering its renowned Sales and Management Professional Certification exams at the JCK Show. In 2015, the number of jewelry professionals who completed JA Professional Certification increased 100% over 2014. As participation grows, so too does consumer and trade awareness of the importance of becoming certified. Benefits of JA Professional Certification include career advancement, differentiating the retail store from competitors and enhancing fine jewelry customers’ trust in the jewelry professional. Certifications are open to all jewelry professionals with no studying required as the exams validate existing skills and knowledge.

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - Imagine taking your wedding ring to be cleaned only to find out weeks later it had been sold for cash.

For customers of Ray Boone Jewelers, that nightmare is their reality.

Police arrested owner Charles Rodney Wilkerson earlier this week on charges of first degree theft of property.

Almost a year after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law to “repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas,” the state’s Republicans got a look at one proposal for what a Texas Bullion Depository could look like.

More than a year after the daring heist, where are the gold bars?

When three Miami men stole 10 bars from a courier truck at gunpoint off a North Carolina highway, FBI agents would have an easier time cracking the case than recovering the $5 million worth of gold.

In fact, agents have recovered only one of the stolen bars — from a Miami pawnbroker soon after the March 1, 2015, caper. The rest has likely been cut up, melted down and resold in the local jewelry market, according to newly released court records. The gold, which was being shipped to Massachusetts, belonged to an Opa-locka precious metals refinery.

For drug cartels, hiding the profits of their illicit sales is often as hard as getting the goods to the market in the first place.

To overcome that challenge, US-based members of imprisoned Mexican kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel decided to buy gold, have it melted down and sold, and then use fake invoices to transfer that money back to Mexico, according to court records seen by Bloomberg.

Allegations laid out in a federal-court case in Chicago describe a scheme in which Sinaloa cartel members would have couriers retrieve drug proceeds, and then use that money to buy gold bars and other scrap pieces of the precious metal at Chicago-area jewelry stores.

LAS VEGAS (KSNV News3LV) — Henderson police say a Las Vegas man was arrested in connection with the double homicide of two men.

38-year-old Brian Kleynen was arrested at his Las Vegas apartment and taken into custody without incident just before noon.

The homicide happened on April 12 in the 100 block of Treiner Drive near Mission Drive and Horizon Ridge Drive.