Nine members of a crime ring that pulled off its final heist at a Bend jewelry store last May are in custody and facing charges related to nearly two dozen brazen robberies across the country.

Over the course of a year, the suspects hit jewelers in five states, netting millions in diamonds and jewelry that are believed to have been sold to a jeweler in Philadelphia.

Nearly all of the robberies were conducted in a fashion similar to the robbery at Saxon’s Fine Jewelers in the Old Mill District on May 20, 2011.

The man who robbed Saxon’s, believed to be 26-year-old Georgia resident Jack Cannon, was somewhat familiar to employees. Two weeks before the robbery, he’d visited the store, leaving behind a business card.

The day the man returned to the store was the Friday before Pole Pedal Paddle, and the Old Mill District was unusually packed. While inspecting a diamond ring and loose diamonds, he pocketed them and ran, climbing into a getaway vehicle parked a short distance away with a second man waiting in the driver’s seat. The van, which had been stolen in Tigard the day before, sped off and was abandoned about half a mile away. The two men escaped with goods valued at an estimated $151,200.

Acting on tips provided by a former member of the gang, Portland police arrested Cannon less than two weeks later, and authorities began rounding up the rest of the group.

Ron Henderson, co-owner of Saxon’s, said it’s satisfying to know that the crime spree came to an end at his store.

“To see this kind of thing continue and emotionally scar and damage other people, it’s a terrible thing, so we’re happy they were finally caught,” he said.

“Certainly the FBI and the U.S. Marshal’s Office had been on their trail for a while. They’d just been kind of tightening the noose, I think. After the information that was provided by us and the Bend Police Department and previous robberies, that’s what helped dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

Cannon is being held in Florida, where he is awaiting sentencing on a robbery carried out several months before the Saxon’s heist. He is expected to be transferred to Oregon to stand trial for multiple robberies in the state.

The business card Cannon left behind at Saxon’s helped Bend police identify Ernest Remor, 36, believed to have been Cannon’s partner in the Bend robbery.

Police traced the phone number on the card to a disposable cellphone that had recently been sold at the Bend ShopKo and were able to obtain surveillance video of a man they believe to be Remor buying the phone.

Remor is being held at the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland and is due to go to trial on Dec. 4.

A North Carolina woman associated with the crime ring pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of justice this spring, becoming the first conviction in the case.

Brittany Ladd, 23, offered to pay an undercover officer to assault Victor Lupis, a former gang member who had been providing information to investigators and was a likely witness in the diamond theft trial.

Ladd is due to be sentenced in June and, like Remor and Lupis, is being held at the Multnomah County Detention Center.

Henderson said while last year’s robbery was a traumatic experience for employees at Saxon’s, he’s thankful nobody was hurt. Security at the store is largely unchanged, he said — with such small and valuable merchandise, jewelers are an obvious target for theives.

“There’s very little you can do for a grab-and-run theft unless you were to put someone in possible jeopardy, and that is not an option,” he said. “I think with every situation in life you learn from the positive and the negative experiences of life, so certainly we’ve learned a little bit, but there’s not a lot you can do to change the type of theft we had.”

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