Mike Marsland
LONDON—Scotland Yard busted the gang behind the largest house invasion theft in English authorized historical past after one of many thieves couldn’t resist sending a dick pic to a member of workers at a finances resort.
The saga started with a luxurious way of life Instagram submit. Simply earlier than Christmas in 2019, Tamara Ecclestone—the mannequin heiress daughter of diminutive ex-System One boss Bernie Ecclestone—introduced that she and her household had been jetting off to Lapland for the vacations with an image of her daughter, Sophia, in entrance of a personal jet.
On the evening they left, a gang of thieves broke into the household’s house positioned on a road known as “billionaire’s row.” The group had been capable of swipe round $30 million in money, watches and diamonds from the property. That was even though a safety guard truly caught three unmasked males in flagrante at round 11pm inside Ecclestone’s dressing room—often known as “the vault”—after its six-inch metal door had been left unlocked. The thieves shoved previous the guard and escaped the palatial mansion via a window.
Cops from the Met’s Flying Squad—the crack crew that investigates London’s robberies—didn’t have a lot to go on at first. Safety digicam footage from the property’s backyard confirmed the trio hot-footing it previous a $12,000 reproduction of the primary home utilized by Sophia as a playhouse. CCTV pictures then confirmed the group stepping into one in all London’s well-known black cabs. Detectives set about contacting the 1,006 taxi drivers who’d labored within the space on the evening of the theft, asking in the event that they remembered selecting up a bunch who matched the burglars’ description.
One driver stated he had, and offered data which led the investigation to a finances resort referred to as TLK Residences. Detective Constable Thomas Grimshaw visited the resort in January 2020 and requested the receptionist if she remembered a bunch of younger males staying there in mid-December.
The probabilities of remembering explicit company had been low, however she informed the detective there was one group of potential suspects she remembered very clearly certainly.
One of many group had despatched her colleague a string of lewd messages on the resort’s out-of-hours iPhone—one in all which was a dick pic. Workers on the resort even saved the person’s quantity as “Weirdo.”
“As soon as I knew this, I felt like we’d recognized the best group of individuals,” Grimshaw informed the BBC.
The resort had made a photocopy of his photograph ID when he checked in, which gave cops their first suspect within the case: a 23-year-old Italian referred to as Jugoslav Jovanovic. As soon as that they had his id, police had been capable of piece collectively Jovanovic’s actions after coming into the U.Ok., and even discovered that his look matched that of a person caught on safety cameras throughout the robberies carried out on the properties of different excessive profile celebrities, together with a $70,000 housebreaking at a property belonging to Premier League coach Frank Lampard and a $410,000 job on the townhouse of late Leicester Metropolis soccer crew proprietor Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
The investigation finally led to Jovanovic being arrested in Italy in October 2020 earlier than being extradited to Britain in April final yr. He and his associates Alessandro Maltese and Alessandro Donati—who had been additionally arrested in Italy and extradited to the U.Ok.—pleaded responsible to conspiracy to burgle and had been jailed in November 2021. The alleged mastermind of all of the burglaries—recognized by over a dozen aliases—is claimed to be nonetheless dwelling as a free man after Serbian authorities refused extradition requests.