Red Sox Player David Ortiz Loses the Bling

The Dominican-American professional baseball player, David Ortiz, is reportedly suing a Californian jeweler for selling him allegedly fake jewelry and refusing to return the money paid when the Red Sox slugger discovered the deception.  According to the Boston Globe, Ortiz purchased his bling from the Anaheim based store, Randy’s Men’s Wear in 2010. The civil suit brought against Randy Hamida shows that Ortiz spent $127,000 on “a Breitling watch with diamonds and white and yellow gold, a diamond bracelet, and a set of black diamond earrings, a necklace, and a bracelet.”

The suit alleges that Ortiz, better know as Big Papi in baseball circles, went to have the goods appraised for insurance purposes, where he was told by the professionals that the jewelry was imitation or of extremely low quality.

Hamida is well known in MLA circles for providing jewelry to players, and is regularly seen targeting professional players in a bid to get them to purchase from him.  The civil suit goes on to say that Ortiz met Hamida at the Red Sox team hotel in Seattle in 2010, presenting him with “allegedly custom-designed jewelry of the highest quality gold, diamonds, and other precious gemstones.”  Ortiz claims that after avoiding him for some time, Hamida finally agreed to meet him and admitted that the jewels were fake.  Despite the fact that he promised to repay Ortiz for the imitation jewels, the baseball player was finally forced to take legal action when it was clear that this would not be the case.

Ortiz’s lawyer, Jonathan Davidoff said about the incident: “When he realized that the jewelry was not authentic, and not what Mr. Hamida purported it to be, he very nicely said, ‘Make good on it,’ with the big David Ortiz smile. Mr. Hamida gave him a song and dance, and that’s why this ended up in litigation.”

38 year old Ortiz is nine time All Star champion, as well as a three time World Series champion.