Gem raiders fly in from Chile to ransack TV chef’s £7m home
Gang marked Wareing’s house with orange dots – then stole £33k of valuables
MARCUS Wareing’s family home was ransacked by a sinister gang who stole £33,000 of valuables after jetting in from South America and staking out the property.
The ‘burglary tourists’ smashed their way into the MasterChef judge’s £7million house after its back fence was marked with three orange painted dots – in a chilling sign it was being watched by criminals.
Wareing and his wife Jane were on holiday when the four-man gang struck, days after flying in from Chile in the latest example of pre-planned burglary tourism carried out by raiders recruited from abroad. They smashed through first-floor patio doors before ransacking the six-bedroom house in Wimbledon, southwest London as they hunted for valuables, a court heard yesterday.
Wareing, 49 – a judge on the BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals – lost two Omega watches worth more than £12,000 and a gold Rolex. The burglars also made off with an expensive timepiece engraved with the words ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ in reference to Gordon Ramsay, with whom Wareing once worked.
Mrs Wareing, 48, lost earrings, bracelets, a £1,500 Cartier watch, a pair of £520 Christian Louboutin shoes and a locket containing pictures of her father and uncle.
Prosecutor Christiaan Moll told Kingston Crown Court that £33,711 of items were stolen. The couple had left the property – which has six bathrooms, a designer kitchen, a cinema room and landscaped gardens – for their second home in Kent when the raid took place on the night of October 11.
Mr Moll said: ‘The master bedroom was broken into and their possessions strung out all over the floor. There had been an untidy search of that room, which is on the first floor. A double patio door which leads to a large balcony was smashed and there was glass on the bedroom floor.’ Danko CarvajalDonaire and Claudio Donoso, both 20, Jorge Rojas, 22, and Nicolas Portilla Astorga, 27, were arrested four days after the raid as they travelled to another planned burglary.
Rojas was wearing a stolen gold pendant belonging to Mrs Wareing, and detectives also found a photograph of Carvajal-Donaire and Astorga posing with some of the jewellery they had taken.
Sentencing each man to three years, four months in prison, Judge Jonathan Davies warned other homeowners to beware of the spraypainted orange dots that signalled criminals were watching the property. He added: ‘I mention that so others are made aware to be on their guard if they see such markings.’
The judge said the gang ‘heaped misery’ on the Wareings, who married in 2000 and have three children. He said: ‘Each of you came to this country with one purpose – crime. No other reason for your visit to the UK has been offered to me.’
The burglars were caught when their car was stopped by police in Redhill, Surrey, as they made their way to another property they were hoping to ransack. Detectives then discovered they had been staying at a property in Thornton Heath, south London, which they were
‘Smashed glass on the bedroom floor’
using as a base after being recruited to fly to the UK to commit crime.
The four pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle and going equipped to steal. They are likely to be deported after finishing their sentences. In a victim impact statement Mrs Wareing said the loss of the jewellery and watches was ‘deeply upsetting’.
‘Burglary tourism’ typically involves thieves being recruited in their home country and given tickets to fly to Britain. They are then given information on how to by-pass security systems and alarms – and often leave the country a few days after their crime spree.
More than 75 Chilean burglars have been arrested since 2016 over raids in Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and London. One burglary netted the gang £400,000. Once members are arrested they all give ‘no comment’ interviews and plead guilty to serve as little UK jail time as possible before being deported.