Pair convicted over £500,000 armed heist at Gleneagles Hotel.

Career criminals await sentence for hotel raid

A pair of career criminals are facing prison after being convicted of carrying out a £500,000 heist at one of Scotland’s most exclusive hotels. Richard Fleming,42, and Liam Richardson, 30, were part of a threeman team which stole dozens of Rolex watches from the Mappin & Webb boutique at Gleneagles Hotel in June last year. The High Court in Edinburgh heard how staff at the resort thought Fleming, his sidekick Liam Richardson, 30, and another man were carrying out a “terrorist attack”. Jurors heard Mappin & Webb staff members say that the trio were dressed in black. Fleming, of Dulwich, London, personally threatened employees Louis Hutchison, 48, and Euan Wishart, 36, with a gun, a machete and hammers. After a raid which lasted approximately two minutes, Fleming and his sidekicks escaped from the scene in a high-powered Audi sports car which they dumped nearby. They had taken 50 out of 51 Rolex watches which were on display at the Mappin & Webb boutique. The watches had a total value of £516,750 and have never been recovered. The trio then drove to Glasgow in a Range Rover Evoque which had been stolen earlier from London. It is perhaps inevitable that, at some point during this two-week-long trial, at least one witness would claim they thought they were watching a movie being shot. The brazen raid by Richard Fleming and Liam Richardson had all the ingredients of a classic heist drama, featuring scenes of clandestine meetings in abandoned warehouses and a dramatic getaway along the A9. But this was no movie set, it was a real-life attack on one of the world’s best-known hotels. The gang struck at mid-morning Fleming and Richardson thought they had escaped justice. But police tracked the pair down after finding their 4x4 getaway vehicle burned out in a cemetery in Glasgow’s east end. After finding the car, detectives pulled “tens of thousands of hours’” worth of CCTV recordings and studied mobile phone records which placed Fleming and Richardson at the crime scene. Fleming maintained he was innocent of any wrongdoing and claimed that, while the robbery was taking place, he was buying drugs in the Parkhead area of Glasgow. Richardson, of London, pleaded guilty to armed robbery at the start of his accomplice’s trial last month. However, a jury did not believe Fleming’s claims and, yesterday, they returned verdicts of guilty on the three charges which Fleming faced. Prosecution lawyer Jane Farquharson told judge Lady Carmichael that Fleming’s criminal career started in 1994. In February 2007, Fleming was convicted at the Old Bailey in London and given a nine-year sentence for possessing a firearm. Richardson’s offending began in 2008. He has convictions for dishonesty and violence. Judge Lady Carmichael deferred sentence for the court to obtain reports. Fleming and Richardson will be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on October 24 2018. when the five-star venue was bustling with guests and staff. It was right in the middle of the second Gleneagles International Pro-Am, a three-day tournament that was guaranteed to secure a global audience. In fact, it was the worst time to rob the hotel. But Fleming and Richardson clearly didn’t care how many eyes were on them. They were in and out of the place within a couple of minutes, leaving witnesses’ heads spinning. Many visitors were oblivious to the scene-stealing drama which had unfolded just hours before. Throughout the afternoon, there was an element of dark humour at the hotel, with guests joking about daylight robbery at Gleneagles – “have you seen the price of their teacakes?” – but it’s important not to forget how terrifying this ordeal would have been for the jewellery shop staff and other witnesses.