The extraordinary sleight of hand that switched gems for pebbles
Hunt for gang members who helped Romanian thief steal £4.2m diamonds from Mayfair jewellers
THIS is the moment a 60-year-old female confidence trickster from Romania used sleight of hand in a Mayfair jewellers to switch £4.2 million in diamonds for a bag of pebbles.
Posing as “Anna”, a highly qualified gemologist acting for wealthy Russian investors, Lulu Lakatos pretended to examine the precious stones while being “watched like a hawk” by the staff of Boodles. But the grey-haired thief managed to swap the locked purse of diamonds for an identical package she had hidden in a secret compartment in her handbag.
Lakatos, who was part of a well drilled gang, then walked out of Boodles with the gems and was on a Eurostar train out of the country within three hours. She was eventually caught in France and extradited to the UK, but in a startling twist claimed her younger sister, Liliana, who was killed in a car accident in Romania in 2019, was the guilty party.
The diamonds have never been recovered and police believe they may have already been cut and sold on.
Yesterday at Southwark Crown Court, Lakatos sobbed as she was found guilty of theft and jailed for five and a half years.
But the hunt is continuing for two women who were also part of the gang and are believed to have fled the country shortly after the theft.
The raid took place in March 2016 after Nicholas Wainwright, the chairman of Boodles, was approached by a man claiming to be a Russian investor wanting to buy £9.4million in gems.
After the deal was arranged over dinner at a Monaco hotel, Lakatos then visited the Mayfair store to examine the stones,
Mr Wainwright admitted “Anna” had not been what he had expected, describing her as “unattractive” and “overweight”.
He said: “She was dressed most extraordinarily. She was wearing the sort of thing a Russian dancer would wear. She had enormous boobs and you could see her cleavage. It was most unattractive.”
After examining the gems, they were to be placed in a padlocked purse and held in the store’s vault until funds were transferred.
When Mr Wainwright was called upstairs to take a call from the fictitious
Russian buyer, Lakatos took the opportunity to place the locked purse into her handbag.
She was quickly warned by Boodles’ own gemologist, Emma Barton, to remove the bag, but in doing so she managed to switch it for the collection of worthless pebbles.
The duplicity was only discovered the following day when the jeweller became suspicious that the funds had not been transferred.
Lakatos had denied conspiracy to steal, while two other gang members, Mickael Jovanovic and Christophe Stankovic, earlier admitted the charge and were jailed.
Lakatos, born in Arade, Romania, claimed her sister, Liliana, had admitted her part in the theft months before she died in a car accident. She was killed in October 2019 after her car crashed into a lorry in the eastern Romanian resort of Constanza.
Liliana had been accused of performing a similar theft involving €400,000 on Oct 15 2014 from AEK Bank in Oberhofen in Bern, Switzerland.
A woman swapped an envelope containing eight bundles of euro notes for a similar envelope containing bundles of paper while AEK executive Reta Hartmann was distracted by a phone call during their meeting in a Swiss bank vault.
Swiss police later identified the woman who swapped the envelopes as Liliana Lakatos, although she was never arrested or charged.
There may now be questions about whether Lulu had a role in that raid but used her sister as a stooge.
Sentencing Lakatos, Judge Emma Goodall QC, said: “You have been convicted of conspiring to steal diamonds, the jury having rejected your defence it was your deceased sister and not you who perpetrated the offence.
“This was a highly sophisticated and audacious offence in terms of planning, risk and reward, an offence in respect of which you played an integral role.”
She added: “You spent almost an hour in the Boodles London showroom exploiting their trust, which allowed you to engage in a brazen deception and through sleight of hand you stole seven diamonds valued at £4.2 million.”
Acting Det Sgt William Man of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad said: “This was an audacious theft, carried out in plain view of experienced and professional staff at a renowned jewellers. The meticulous planning and execution of this theft reveals to me that those involved were highly skilled criminals.”
He added: “While she played a key role in this theft, it is clear she did not work alone and enquiries remain ongoing to identify all those involved.”
‘This was an audacious theft, carried out in plain view of experienced and professional staff at a renowned jewellers’