The Daily Telegraph

Woman accused of £4.2m Mayfair diamond robbery says dead sister was the real thief

- By Martin Evans Crime Correspond­ent

A WOMAN accused of using sleight of hand to carry out a £4.2million diamond heist has claimed it was her now dead sister who carried out the raid.

Lulu Lakatos, 60, allegedly stole seven precious stones from the Mayfair jeweller Boodles in March 2016 by surreptiti­ously swapping them with garden pebbles hidden in her handbag. But giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court she insisted that the real thief was her sister, Lilian, who died in a car accident in Constanza, Romania, in October 2019.

Jurors were also told that traces of her late sister’s DNA as well as her own was found on the stolen gems and that a witness picked out Lilian in a police identity parade.

The prosecutio­n alleges that Ms Lakatos stole the diamonds while posing as a gemologist called “Anna” who claimed to be working for a wealthy Russian buyer.

The gems, which included a 20 carat heart-shaped diamond, valued at more than £2.2million, and a £1.1million three carat pear-shaped pink diamond, were placed in the suspect’s handbag for just seconds before a member of Boodles’ staff told her to remove them.

But when the suspect removed the bag of gems she allegedly used sleight of hand to swap them for an identical decoy containing worthless pebbles.

Ms Lakatos, who was born in Romania but has lived in Saint-brieuc, France, since 1984, denied she had been involved in the conspiracy but said her sister had confessed to her that she was part of the heist. She claimed Lilian had told her she had used her passport five times to travel to the UK – including in March 2016 when the gems were stolen.

The jury was shown CCTV footage of a grey-haired woman at a north London hotel and in a pub near Victoria station.

Ms Lakatos claimed it was not her, telling the jury: “This is my sister, Lilian Lakatos.”

After playing the footage to the jury, prosecutor Philip Stott suggested her story was “all a lie”. He said the greyhaired woman in the footage could not have been Lilian, who was nine years younger, because photos of her around the time suggested her hair was brown. “You would agree, wouldn’t you, that the woman we see in the CCTV looks an awful lot like you, doesn’t she?” Mr Stott asked.

Ms Lakatos replied: “It looks like, but it’s not me.”

She has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to steal. Two others, Christophe Stankovic and Mickael Jovanovic, have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal.

The trial continues.

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