Watch Industry SITREP - February 2025

FBI Breitlings, Iran Holding British Couple, Luxury Watch Scammer Sentenced, Pro-Russian Paramilitary Leader Assassinated, & New Stats For Swiss Watches

By Benjamin Lowry

At Watches of Espionage, we take a holistic approach to our understanding of current events, regularly scrolling mainstream news outlets, sketchy conspiracy theory sites, social media, and anything else that falls within our purview. Once a month, we take all of that roughly digested information and distill it into something we like to call the SITREP (Situation Report), a brief synopsis of recent events related to watches, crime, espionage, the military, and anything else we think you’ll find valuable or entertaining. No marketing fluff. No celebrity endorsements. Only the good stuff.

This past month, there was a lot to unpack. From a fraudulent Beverly Hills watch dealer getting his comeuppance to a pro-Russia paramilitary leader dying in a mysterious explosion to British nationals accused of espionage (sketchy Breitling content included) to some surprising watch theft stats, it’s been a big February. On top of all that, one of the more important statistical analyses of the watch industry was recently released, serving up several intriguing insights. Hold onto your hats, it’s time for the SITREP.

The Timepiece Gentleman Sentenced For Mail & Wire Fraud

At this point, our fascination with watch-related crime is well-established and some would say borderline unhealthy. After pleading guilty back in October, Anthony Farrer, who operated a Beverly Hills watch consignment business based on an online persona known as “The Timepiece Gentleman”, was recently sentenced for mail and wire fraud to the tune of about 5.6M US doll hairs. According to court documents, after advertising a relatively straightforward consignment-style business in which he would retain a percentage of proceeds after selling a watch on behalf of a client, Farrer would instead keep all of the money, using the ill-begotten funds to maintain a lavish LA lifestyle including luxury apartments and cars.

As we have discussed in our piece looking at watches as tools of money laundering and other illicit activities, timepieces are easily transferable units of value. That aspect, combined with the dramatic rise in the value of brands and vintage watches, means bad actors looking to make a quick buck will increasingly look to watches for nefarious purposes. However, in the long run, crime doesn’t pay, and the ironically named Timepiece Gentleman will have almost six years in federal prison to consider whether all of the Richard Mille Instagram wrist shots were worth it.

US Secret Service Breitling On The New Deputy Director Of The FBI

Dan Bongino in his USSS days wearing a Secret Service Breitling “Unit Watch” while providing close protection to President Barack Obama.

As discussed in our look at the watches of the Trump Administration, the White House has no shortage of Breitling content. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, wears a 46mm titanium Breitling Cockpit B50 with the White House seal on the dial, part of a special run of White House Breitling models ordered in the past few years. Not to be outdone, Trump’s pick for the FBI’s deputy director spot, former Secret Service agent and conservative media personality Dan Bongino, has also been spotted wearing a Breitling.

Former USSS Acting Director Ronald Rowe wearing a USSS Breitling that could be the same as Bongino’s.

Rather than the White House version, Bongino’s Breitling appears to be the seldom-seen older USSS Colt GMT with the Service Star on the dial that we’ve also spotted on former Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe. Remember, when it comes to sketchy dudes and Breitling, we don’t make the rules. We simply observe and discuss.

Pro-Russia Paramilitary Leader Dies In Moscow Explosion - Wearing A Richard Mille?

Moving from white-collar watch crime to the world of espionage, Armen Sarkisyan, the founder of a pro-Russia paramilitary group, was assassinated on 03 February following an explosion in central Moscow. The founder of the “Arbat Battalion”, a paramilitary organization that fought for Russia against Ukraine in several key engagements, has been described as a criminal mastermind and was once allegedly responsible for overseeing Russian prisons where he recruited fighters for the Russian war effort.

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine has yet to comment on the explosion but with a history of targeted killings including the assassination of Russian Naval Commander Stanislav Rzhitsky carried out in Russia using Strava data, it would not be a large logical leap to imagine Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency was involved. Getting back to watches, Sarkisyan has been photographed wearing what appears to be a Richard Mille chronograph, potentially the RM 50-03 that will set you back $1M, as well as an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore chronograph. Whether this is real or not, we can only speculate, but we would not be surprised either way.

Serving as a prominent private military contractor for Russia appears to have good watch implications but is also bad for your health. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group had been spotted wearing a Ulysse Nardin before he turned against Russia and—coincidentally, maybe—died in a plane “crash” a couple of months later.

British Motorcycle Tourists Detained In Iran & Charged With Espionage

A pair of British motorcycle tourists, Craig and Lindsay Foreman, have been detained and charged with espionage in Iran after traveling to the country as part of a Middle Eastern motorcycle tour. According to the Iranian government, the couple, “...entered Iran under the guise of tourists and gathered information in multiple provinces of the country.” According to The Guardian, since 2010, at least 66 foreigners and dual citizens have been detained by Iran on a wide variety of charges often related to espionage.

Despite a photo of Craig Foreman wearing an old-school Breitling Colt, we would be shocked to learn the couple was involved in clandestine activities, and it’s far more likely they are the victims of so-called “hostage diplomacy”, the taking of hostages for diplomatic leverage. That said, the naivety of Western travelers never ceases to amaze, and we would argue people need to start taking responsibility for their actions. It might sound like fun to rollerblade through Iran, play basketball in Russia, or teach Somali kids yoga, but these decisions have real geopolitical consequences, with the US and UK governments often making significant concessions to get people like Craig and Lindsay home.

Morgan Stanley’s Watch Industry Report For 2024 Is In

Likely the most-referenced guide to the overall health of the Swiss watch industry, Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult’s annual report was published earlier this month. We try to stay away from pure industry news, but an overarching statistical analysis like this is worthy of your time, showing numerically which brands are growing in revenue and market share, which are in decline, and how the Swiss watch industry as a whole is faring, all free from the influence of brand marketing dollars.

The revelations this year are straightforward. Rolex continues its reign, accounting for an astonishing 32% of the Swiss market share and over 10.5B CHF in turnover based on sales of 1.24M units. Those numbers—which are estimates for a private business like Rolex—are not so different from last year but worthy of a second glance when you consider the massive delta between the Crown and Cartier down in second place with an 8% market share and 3.1B CHF in turnover based on 660,000 units. More broadly, the report indicates the overall health of the industry could be better, with a 3% decrease in Swiss watch exports from 2023 to 2024 and only eleven of the top 50 brands recording growth. Despite these metrics, nothing here amounts to doom and gloom for Swiss watch lovers or indicates we are any closer to being able to walk into a Rolex AD and grab a brand spanking new GMT-Master II right out of the showcase.

Watch Theft Tops $2B Globally In 2024

Richard Mille accounted for the ten most valuable stolen watches in 2024. (Source: BBC)

Once again revisiting the seedy world of watch theft, new reporting from LBC based on data from The Watch Register claims the global value of stolen watches in 2024 topped £1.6B, or approximately $2B, with some £60M ($75M) worth of luxury watch theft coming from Britain alone. In most cases, stolen watches are sold internationally after being networked through transnational criminal organizations that also often deal in illicit narcotics and human smuggling, using luxury watches as another increasingly lucrative income stream. Rolex remains the most commonly stolen brand, though the top ten stolen watches in value were all from Richard Mille, which makes sense given Richard Mille’s average per-watch cost in 2024 was an astronomical 275,000 CHF, again referencing Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult’s report.

As the potential upside for criminal organizations increases, these robberies have become more brazen, sophisticated, and violent, with some perpetrators surveilling potential victims in luxurious shopping areas or watch boutiques before identifying targets, following them to a more secluded area or even their residence, and relieving them of their timepieces, sometimes violently. We’ve discussed luxury watch theft in detail and provided some of our recommendations for avoiding becoming a victim of this growing trend. Suffice it to say that situational awareness is always key and flexing your Batman GMT in Mayfair is never worth catching an ass-whooping and losing your $11k watch.

W.O.E. In The Press

While it is never our intention, our discussion of Watches of Espionage occasionally finds itself referenced outside the traditional boundaries of our community. When we penned our open letter to Vice President JD Vance asking him to cease his Apple Watch-wearing ways, we had no idea the response it would elicit in mainstream media, including a write-up in The Daily Mail entitled, “Espionage expert's chilling plea to JD Vance”. In addition, W.O.E. was called out in The Financial Times for our discussion on the watch-wearing habits of Ahmad al-Sharaa, the defacto president of Syria who has been spotted with an ascending watch game that quickly escalated from no-name quartz to Patek Philippe. Finally, we haven’t had a chance to listen to the entire (five-hour) thing, but W.O.E. also got the nod in a popular podcast called Acquired in a Rolex-focused episode.

Final Thoughts

With Watches and Wonders and the majority of new watch releases looming at the end of April, there is typically something of a slowdown for watch news in the early days of Q1. Looking beyond our usual dose of watch-related crime and the recent illuminating report on the Swiss watch industry, that was precisely the case this past month, which is where espionage comes in, with yet another high-profile assassination of a Pro-Russian paramilitary leader as well as the unfortunate story of a British couple being detained in Iran, supposedly for spying. This blend is exactly what the SITREP is meant to be, a one-pager providing a high-level overview of recent events related to any aspect of our community, whether that’s watches, espionage, NatSec, or the military.

Whatever your reason or path of entry into our community may be, we’re here for you, but we still wouldn’t recommend motorcycle touring in Iran.

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