THIEVES ROB RICH ‘INSTAFLAUNTERS’

MILAN: You couldn’t quite call them modern-day Robin Hoods, but a bunch of audacious thieves in Italy has been striking a few blows for people sick of seeing super-rich Instagram “influencers” boasting about their perfect lives and expensive designer possessions.

The group, dubbed the “acrobat thieves”, monitored the Instagram pages of Milan’s rich and famous in order to ransack their homes.

The group examined celebrities’ and influencers’ posts to find entry points, using tagged locations to find out where they lived and party details for when they would be out. Footage released by officials shows the robbers scaling apartment buildings.

Among the victims were glamorous TV host Diletta Leotta and Inter Milan football star Achraf Hakimi.

One suspect was arrested in January, and three others on Wednesday this week, including a 17year-old who will face a juvenile court.

The first robbery took place on June 6 last year, when the group stole about €150,000 ($235,000) worth of belongings from Leotta — including jewellery, designer handbags and Rolex watches. Six months later, in December, they used the same methods to break into the home of Eleonora Incardona, an influencer and Leotta’s former sister-in-law.

The robbers have been dubbed the acrobat thieves because of their skill and agility in climbing the outsides of buildings. As well as using geolocation data from the victims’ Instagram posts, police believe the group examined the photos in order to determine what kind of windows their victims had, in order to plan their entry.

CCTV footage released by police shows one man scaling an apartment building, as an accomplice keeps watch.