WASHINGTON –  The morning started like any other for a roving valuables salesman as he checked out of a motel in northern Virginia and placed his luggage in a car’s trunk. Then a Honda blocked him in and dual black-clad organisation in hoods emerged, crushed his windows with a pistol and attacked him of roughly $350,000 in jewelry.

It was a crime that steady itself for months as thieves operative in unison swiped millions of dollars in sell from other salesmen, in confidant and infrequently aroused heists in locations including a New York City taxicab, outward a Holiday Inn in North Carolina and during Newark Liberty International Airport.

A box in sovereign justice in Virginia underscores a perils faced by roving valuables salespeople and a desirous efforts by law coercion to locate a thieves. It’s not a new threat, yet gripping salesmen protected stays a determined plea as a rapist gangs have grown some-more worldly and violent.

“In a final decade, there seems to be a trend toward some-more worldly rapist enterprises,” pronounced FBI Special Agent Eric Ives, who’s in assign of a bureau’s vital burglary program. “It’s not a locally formed crime problem anymore.”

The crimes follow a informed pattern.

Thieves operative together box valuables stores in hunt of a salesman — mostly a well-dressed male carrying a vast box — and tail him to a subsequent destination, infrequently for hours. They confront a salesman, frequently slicing automobile tires, punching out windows, grabbing gems and maybe a courier’s phone and keys, too.

Authorities contend a 8 organisation and women in a Virginia box are partial of a supposed South American burglary group, a tag typically practical to Colombian criminals who threat salesmen. They’re indicted of during slightest 15 robberies and dual automobile break-ins totaling about $4.6 million in jewelry, mostly along a East Coast. The infancy of robberies occurred as couriers arrived during or over from hotels.

Seven were charged in Mar after an endless Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives review that relied on dungeon phone and bank records, clandestine surveillance, E-Z Pass and GPS transport tracking — even a fake salesman sent into stores to accumulate intelligence. An eighth chairman has given been indicted. They have pleaded not guilty and face hearing in November.

“It was a rarely worldly ring. It was a tight-knit group. It was a organisation that did their homework,” pronounced Neil MacBride, a U.S. Attorney for a Eastern District of Virginia, that is prosecuting a case. “They were really patient. They were intensely mobile. They could strike fast when they had to — and they were dangerous.”

Jewelry salespeople have prolonged done easy targets. Robbing a sole salesman in a parking lot is reduction unsure than holding adult a store and stolen jewelry, that can be sole on a black marketplace during marked-up prices, converted into money or melted down for destiny use, is formidable to recover. The FBI says usually 4.2 percent of valuables and changed metals stolen in 2010 were recovered, compared to 56.1 percent of stolen vehicles. In a Virginia case, authorities say, a valuables was fenced in New York by Russian brothers who owned a valuables business.

Off-premises attacks, essentially opposite roving salespeople, forsaken from 113 to 78 between 2010 and 2011, partly given of a disappearing series of salesmen and some-more assertive law enforcement, according to a Jewelers’ Security Alliance, a trade group. But a crimes have turn some-more violent, sharpening from discerning bag-snatch thefts to robberies that infrequently finish in beatings — or worse.

One salesman was killed in Huntsville, Texas, final year when thieves perplexing to shun ran him over with their car. The owners of a Connecticut valuables manufacturer was killed in Dec and an associate bleeding in what military called a targeted robbery.

“I consider that salesmen have turn distant some-more wakeful of a risks and they don’t tumble for a cunning as simply as they did in past years,” JSA boss John J. Kennedy said, explaining increasing violence. “So if a cunning doesn’t work, that’s what we do.”

Leon Rozio, 68, late after being attacked of some-more than $160,000 during a 2008 heist in a parking lot of a Boca Raton, Fla., valuables store. A organisation of organisation approached his automobile as he waited outward for his partner and destitute out a windows. One reached in and grabbed a bag of jewelry. Rozio dismissed his pistol during their car, that he pronounced attempted to run him over. One pirate was fatally wounded, yet Rozio wasn’t charged given a sharpened was deemed self-defense. He late during his family’s urging.

“I figured they were right,” Rozio said. “These people, they have guns … murdering and all of that stuff. we had to go into retirement.”

An 89-page confirmation filed in a Virginia box sum a cat-and-mouse diversion in that a suspects are purported to have played opposite roles, from coordinating with fences to notice to doing a robberies. The review suggested a turn of rapist transport smarts and sophistication, authorities say, as a suspects frequently switched cars and permit plates and done structured money deposits in several bank accounts. When they became questionable they were being followed, they began communicating with a new collection of dungeon phones.

Some salesmen were apparently held by warn even yet they were tracked for miles and opposite states. One salesman attacked in Nov 2010 outward his Rutherford, N.J., had been followed given withdrawal Philadelphia progressing in a day, with dungeon phone and E-Z Pass annals display a plant and suspects entering a New Jersey Turnpike and channel a George Washington Bridge during scarcely matching times.

Investigators countered with their possess techniques.

Besides surveillance, agents also used phone and transport annals to lane a suspects to accurate locations. Last fall, a ATF also sent a fake salesman into a Virginia Beach valuables store and waited for a clandestine representative to be followed, deploying a SWAT group to a circuitously hotel in box a suspects attempted to sack him.

Though a review was successful, Kennedy pronounced it illustrated that a attention stays dangerous.

“The risk is tremendous, and we have to be warning and security-minded 24-7,” Kennedy said. “You are not only a risk in downtown L.A. or withdrawal New York. You’re during risk anywhere.”

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Indeed, Italy doesn’t have to hook incentives to attract suitors. It’s a long-lived leader in dream-destination surveys. It ranks in a tip 5 countries for traveller arrivals. And, as any transport repository editor can tell you, slap an halcyon Italian stage on a cover, and sales soar.

So when we designed a week-long outing to Italy in May with dual long-time pals, we motionless to go for pennyless — though going broke.

The destination: Tuscany. The digs: a castle.

• PHOTOS: Italy’s castles and Chianti during a discount

Despite a mercantile woes, Italy isn’t throwing a glow sale. But a some-more auspicious sell rate (the euro is value $1.25 vs. $1.43 a year ago) means prices are rebate gasp-inducing than they’ve been in new times. And with some vital formulation and timing, we can find deals. Take a three-bedroom, 1½-bath section in Montegufoni Castle, about 20 miles southwest of Florence. The six-night tab, including engagement and cleaning fees, was rebate than $1,000, or about $160 a night.

The lodging, requisitioned by RentVillas.com, reflected a anniversary bonus (rates are aloft June-September), and an combined cost reduction. Such “specials” were unheard of in a past, says RentVillas.com owners Suzanne Pidduck, “particularly in Italy, given people are peaceful to spend whatever it takes to get there. But a U.S. marketplace has turn an critical partial of a business, and Americans were saying, ‘We need some-more of a understanding to tempt us,’ and so a business has altered as a result. If owners are worried, they dump a price.”

Shannon Graber of Houston, on a 16-day Italian journey with her father and 4 children, has opted for a outrageous three-bedroom, two-bath section in a castle. “There’s a ton of space. You can cook. You can rinse your clothes,” she says of a advantages over a required hotel.

Rustic infrequently works 

In what was once a castle’s ground-floor ballroom, Natalie Pepa of Chicago, pulls adult a chair to a list that seats 40 or so, and checks her e-mail. The self-described bill traveler is profitable rebate than $800 for a week’s stay for dual in a one-bedroom section with “a lavatory a distance of my apartment,” she says.

Money-saving tips in Tuscany

Visit in a shoulder season. You?ll equivocate crowds and compensate rebate for camp (except during holidays). Rates for a three-bedroom palace section we rented by RentVillas.com operation from $1,255 a week from mid-October to late March; $1,332 Apr 27-June 1; and rise during $1,947 in summer.

Rent a mainly located place with a kitchen to save on food costs, and use it as a bottom from that to take day trips.

Stock adult on uninformed food and internal tone during city markets. This web page lists a marketplace report around Tuscany.

Avoid fee roads. Two Euros here, 5 Euros there, it adds up. Take your time on a behind roads and suffer a scenery.

Invest in a GPS device. Navigating those behind roads isn?t for novices.

If we devise on spending several museum-hopping days in Florence, journey shopping the Firenze Card. The 50-euro pass gets we into a vital museums (including a Uffizi and Accademia galleries) in a 72-hour duration in this treasure-filled city.

If you?re shopping a single-day sheet for a Uffizi Gallery or other high-profile attractions, beware of websites that demeanour central though assign large use fees. You can haven timed tickets by job a museum direct. (From a USA, dial 011-39-055-294-883 during daytime bureau hours ? Italy is 6 to 9 hours ahead.)

To puncture low into a art and story of Florence, consider employing a guide. Antonia Lanza d’Ajeta is a British-born approved beam who has lived for decades in Florence. Kathy McCabe, whose Dream of Italy transport newsletter is chock full of ideas, recommends Walks of Italy tours.

“We’re spending about what we would (traveling) during home,” Pepa continues. “But we have to be open to adventure. Sometimes it’ll be lovely. Sometimes it’ll be hell. That’s serendipity.”

Happily, a knowledge is a former. Given a reasonable rate (and instructions to move soap and a pot scrubber, among other necessities), we’ve expected a palace will be some-more musty than fabulous. But not usually are simple equipment provided, we’re gay to find that a website photos indeed undersold a place.

True, a furnishings are some-more faded-glory than cutting-edge elegant. Floors creak. Water heat can be temperamental. But with a Venetian-plaster walls, monolithic doors, manicured gardens and mill passageways ragged sharp with age, Montegufoni boasts a claim fairytale accoutrements you’d design from a castle. Plus, it’s got an elaborate 17th-century grotto-style fountain, exuberant frescoes in some bedrooms and a nice-sized swimming pool.

Its footprint has altered little given 1650 when 7 apart buildings were assimilated around a array of courtyards and stairways, says Guido Posarelli, whose father, Sergio, bought a skill in 1972.

From a 12th century until a 1800s, Montegufoni belonged to a single, statute Florentine family. In 1910, a British baronet acquired it as a Tuscan getaway. In World War II, a palace housed 600 or so circuitously residents during Allied bombing, and for a time, was a protected repository for 261 artworks from a Uffizi Gallery, including paintings by Botticelli and Raphael.

But as any palace owners can attest, progressing a 700-year-old outpost is a lot to keep up. So in 1978, Posarelli got into a vacation let trade. The family now represents villas around Italy.

By train or behind roads 

Shortly after arriving, my friends and we crop circuitously shops for pasta, prosciutto, parmesan and other internal staples to ready in a little though well-equipped kitchen. Some nights, we try out internal eateries. Just adult a highway during Il Focolare, a recipe for pasta with porcini mushrooms hasn’t been altered in 50-odd years. Down a mountain in a little community of Baccaiano, Osteria de Molino serves a well-prepared lemon scaloppini for about $11. A bottle of important internal Chianti goes for about a same. The on-site grill serves a three-course prix fixe menu, and dessert, for about $34.

A train stop outward a palace on a track to Florence ($8 turn trip) creates for stress-free transport into a city’s auto-free ancestral center. But we’ve rented a automobile (about $60 a day pre-booked and pre-paid by Auto Europe, a let broker), that gives us a leisure to ramble — and get mislaid — on Tuscany’s mixed of behind roads.

Besides Florence, A-list spots such as Siena, San Gimignano and Volterra are within 40 miles or less. But as we journey a narrow, circuitous roads, past mill farmhouses and custard-colored villas, past rolling vineyards punctuated by mill towers rising from hilltop castles, less-bustling towns in a Chianti region, such as Radda, Panzano and Greve, beckon.

One day we try to a city of Montevarchi whose vital traveller pull is a Prada Outlet. Outside, debate buses stock a parking lot. Inside, Asian tourists are gnawing adult $800 bags by a armful. (At slightest someone’s economy appears to be going gangbusters.) We crop for something some-more in balance with a don’t-break-the-bank inlet of this trip, though can’t see anything cheaper than a span of $50 socks. We exit dull handed.

By Jayne Clark, USA TODAY

Radda in Chianti, north of Siena, retains a Gothic encampment structure, that emanates from a church of 15th-century San Nicolo.

Seeking internal value of a opposite sort, we hurl into Radda in Chianti, a poetic Gothic hilltop city in a heart of a segment eminent for a olive oil, as good as a wine. At circuitously Pornanino farm, Matteo and Francesca Robutti work alongside her father, Franco Lombardi, producing glorious olive oil regulating a cold-press process that hasn’t sundry most in 2,500 years.

Over plates of pasta during their kitchen table, a Robuttis evangelise a gospel of 100% Italian olive oil. “Olive oil is not only a condiment,” Francesca insists. “When someone says, ‘The olive oil is really good this year,’ I’m proud,” says Matteo, a former IT workman from Milan.

After lunch we travel out past several handsomely easy mill houses set nearby a olive groves. Life is good.

Matteo Robutti surveys a stage and smiles. “Under a Tuscan Sun is some-more than only a movie,” he says.

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By EMILY GLAZER

Traveling for work can be a good training experience, though it takes some navigating, generally early in your career.

While some companies might have specific manners ruling work-related travel, many employees are left on their possess to figure out a do’s and don’ts before, during and after a trip.

If your position doesn’t need travel, though it’s something you’d like to do in sequence to learn new skills or accommodate co-workers in other locations, speak to your manager. Specify that you’re open to transport opportunities and, if possible, advise a transport ask for a plan you’re operative on. Be certain to explain how a association would advantage from a expense.

Meet with your manager or tellurian resources to plead a company’s process on travel, spending manners for your particular dishes and transportation, and who should collect adult a add-on when dining with co-workers or clients.

If there are no grave rules, ask colleagues who have trafficked what a phonetic manners are, how grave meetings are and if it’s standard to consort afterward, says Cynthia Lett, executive of practice consulting organisation Lett Group. Also find out about a dress code. Keep in mind that we might be roving with co-workers, so abandon a flips-flops and sweats on a craft and opt for a business-casual look.

If we would like to hook on a few vacation days to your travel, make certain to run it by your manager before scheduling anything. You might need to switch hotels or compensate a non-corporate rate for a convenience partial of your trip.

Next, do some homework. Get a full bulletin of any events and find out a names, titles, and any applicable information of colleagues, clients or others we are assembly with. If roving abroad, investigate any practice of a nation or region, such as how to scrupulously deliver yourself, so we don’t inadvertently insult anyone.

When Joe Aphinyanaphongs travels to Paris from New York for his employer, L’Oréal USA, he knows to hail people by kissing on both cheeks, and he is prepared to extract in organisation dinners. “It’s always approaching that a group that is nod will horde a unequivocally good cooking where we can accommodate your colleagues on a personal level,” a 26-year-old selling manager says.

Also find out about expenses. It’s a rookie mistake to abuse your company’s responsibility account. Typically, transport and transportation, including airfare, hotel stays and a automobile rental, can be expensed. Meals customarily also can be put on a company’s tab, though be aware of what we order. Some employers have a per diem, a specific volume we are given daily for meals. If you’re roving with a higher and going out to cooking or roving by taxi, that chairman will expected collect adult a tab.

When holding out clients, sequence an snack in a center cost operation and don’t overdo it with drinks, says Jacqueline Whitmore, an practice consultant and author of “Poised for Success.” If we wish to spend a bit some-more to stir a customer and tighten a deal, ask for accede beforehand, she says.

To equivocate any expensing problems when roving for work, Evan Miller, a selling manager in Park City, Utah, for headphone builder SkullCandy, creates certain he has both a personal and corporate credit label with him. For instance, when a 29-year-old travels to Minneapolis he might have time to squeeze coffee with college friends—and that’s charged to his personal card. On a other hand, if Mr. Miller is during a trade uncover and needs to squeeze food for his colleagues, he’ll assign that to his corporate card, he says.

When roving with a higher or colleague, be aware of a person’s time. A craft or sight might not be a best place for a extensive career-advice session. But it’s also not suitable to be overly talkative about your personal life. Remember that we are roving though you’re not off duty.

Write to Emily Glazer during emily.glazer@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page WSJ2

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IMAGINE we are streamer to your ski residence in Aspen with a integrate of friends and a weekend’s value of luggage. The foresee calls for snow. Do we squeeze a keys to your unsentimental family automobile or mount into your Ferrari?

Trick question! You do both — if, that is, we have an all-wheel-drive four-seat Ferrari FF. Which we substantially don’t, given a FF’s bottom cost is $302,450. And you’ll never see one that cheap, given shopping a Ferrari with no options is like building a Hamptons dream residence though a outward kitchen.

Come on, man. Don’t be a skinflint.

Three hundred grand is a lot of money, though demeanour during it this way: interjection to a 2012 FF’s pleasant brew of registered opening and practical practicality, we can sell your fair-weather 458 Italia and your winter-beater Porsche Panamera Turbo S and usually expostulate this.

Honey, according to my numbers, it creates plain financial clarity to buy a Ferrari FF.

The FF’s charge is to mix a opening of a Ferrari supercar with a four-season application of an all-wheel-drive oppulance wagon. Thus a hatchback body, that identifies a FF with a once-popular category of sporting automobile famous as a sharpened brake.

Under a hood lies a many absolute engine ever consecrated in a road-going Ferrari, a 6.3-liter V-12 that belts out 651 horsepower during 8,000 r.p.m. There is a passenger-side speedometer that we might dub a nag-ometer depending on who’s roving in a newcomer seat. With a delivery in involuntary mode, a FF is a relaxed daily driver. One that can, when asked, competition from 0 to 60 miles per hour in reduction than 4 seconds.

One morning, we employed a FF’s drastic energy plant on a preschool run, my 2-year-old strapped into a automobile chair in a back. The FF was unequivocally expected a usually automobile in a propagandize parking lot that day with a quoted tip speed of 208 m.p.h. Does FF mount for “family fun”?

Actually FF stands for “Ferrari four,” a anxiety to a 4 seats and four-wheel drive. Which is indeed all-wheel drive, underneath a common definition, during slightest adult until about 130 m.p.h., when it becomes rear-wheel drive. The energy placement gets utterly complicated, though if we like transmissions you’ll adore a FF, given it has dual of them.

Like a 458 Italia, a FF’s electronic aggressiveness is tranquil around a manettino, a tiny red switch on a steering wheel. Unlike a 458, a FF’s manettino has no competition mode. Which is too bad, given on a 458, “race” sets a active empty to a many outspoken setting, and we wish to hear a FF’s strain as mostly as possible. Conventional V-12 engines are eminent for soothing, buttery power, though a FF’s flat-plane crankshaft imbues a empty note with a hard-edge malignant bark. If a FF’s 12 pistons were a jury, they’d never strech a verdict.

To a secure credit, Ferrari programs a engine-management wiring to let we rev a engine in neutral. This sounds youthful and purposeless though is something we find yourself doing surprisingly often, presumably in a garage while your children are asleep inside a house. Were napping, that is.

To improved suffer a V12′s comely song, we gathering around with a windows down many of a time. Which meant we couldn’t unequivocally hear a stereo, and that was all right, given a FF uses a same stereo and navigation complement that we find in a Jeep Wrangler (an peculiar bit of corporate synergy from a associate Fiat brand).

Of course, nobody buys a Ferrari for a stereo, though maybe someone during Bang Olufsen or McIntosh needs to make a cold call to Ferrari domicile in Maranello, Italy. Until then, I’m certain we have a choice to usually cover a thing with a good square of leather.

I get a sense that anything in a FF can be lonesome in leather, presumably including a inside of a windshield. (Just leave me a tiny portal, Signore Schedoni.) The automobile we gathering had a leather superstar and smelled like a winning lottery ticket. Which, if you’re wondering, smells like a inside of a Ferragamo store.

That leather roof was though one choice on a dauntingly immeasurable list. This sold FF in Grigio Abu Dhabi paint (what a peons call “silver”) was stocked with $74,891 in options, bringing a add-on to $377,431. That works out to reduction than $100,000 per passenger, given a FF can indeed chair 4 adults.

I’d cruise many of these equipment to be must-haves, like a competition empty complement and a height-adjustable cessation that can lift a front finish to negotiate high driveways. You’ll wish a healthy bill for fuel, too, given a sovereign total city-highway fuel economy rating is 13 m.p.g.

Other options we could live without, like a yellow Scuderia Ferrari badges on a flanks. Given this car’s Formula One soundtrack, a radical proportions, a sneering beak of an egg-crate grille, do we need additional badges to tell a universe that this is a Ferrari? What else could it be? Affixing some-more badges to an FF is like welcoming Sophia Vergara to a cooking celebration and handing her a nametag.

I never had a good happening to commander a FF by a snowstorm, though on dry cement a all-wheel-drive complement and a front-wheel torque vectoring perceptible themselves as metaphysical poise. You usually keep accelerating by a big, unconditional hook and a automobile simply goes where we aim it, faster and faster, as if there’s a black hole usually over a dilemma exit.

At some point, of course, a FF contingency relinquish a stranglehold on a pavement, though that will occur during speeds we substantially shouldn’t revisit outward your private airstrip. You might be changed to emanate warnings to your passengers, along a lines of: “You won’t consider this automobile is able of what it’s about to do. Just trust me that we’re nowhere nearby a limits.”

Before a attainment of a FF, this was a arrange of automobile that a Sultan of Brunei would have consecrated for himself, during good expense. Sure, $300,000 is a lot of money, though it’s substantially a take compared with what a Sultan contingency have paid for his tradition Ferrari 456 automobile in a ’90s. And we can expostulate it year-round, with sceptical kin or your thoroughbred Chinese cresteds (or both) along for a ride.

Put it this way: this is a Ferrari for people who aren’t shopping their initial Ferrari. Understand that, and we know a preference to step outward a protected proportions of supercar orthodoxy. Unlike a 458 Italia or a 599 GTB, any descended from decades’ value of predecessors, a FF is a new bend on a family tree. It’s a adventurous car, and we adore a certainty it represents.

Ferrari could have usually left with a throng and built a low-slung four-door like a Aston Martin Rapide. Instead it built a complicated chronicle of a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT Breadvan racecar, and brag on them for doing it. The universe has adequate Mercedes CLS clones. It doesn’t have scarcely adequate Ferrari sharpened brakes.

•

INSIDE TRACK: The initial all-season Ferrari.

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