- Thomas Mackintosh
- BBC News
4 hours
image source, PA MEDIA/GETTYIMAGES
The houses of Frank and Christine Lampard; Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha; and Tamara Ecclestone and her husband were robbed in December 2019.
On a rainy followingnoon in January 2020, Detective Thomas Grimshaw walked into a cheap hotel on a nondescript street in South East London with a hunch that he might be able to help him solve a big case.
Grimshaw asked the receptionist regarding the guests who had stayed there in mid-December.
She told him regarding a group she remembered vividly: one of them had sent a colleague inappropriate messages on the phone, including a picture of his penis. She booked her number as “weird guy.”
It was the big clue Grimshaw was looking for.
Finding that phone number helped police identify their first suspect in the largest domestic burglary in English legal history.
Christmas 2019 was less than two weeks away when Tamara Ecclestone, her husband Jay Rutland and their daughter Sophia traveled to Lapland.
The daughter of former Formula 1 chairman Bernie Ecclestone posted a photo before his departure on Instagram.
That night, a security guard at his London mansion discovered three bare-faced intruders shortly following 11pm. They were inside Ecclestone’s dressing room, known as the vault: its six-inch reinforced steel door was unlocked.
They escaped through a small window with more than 25 million pounds ($30 million) in cash and jewelry, including diamonds and watches.
The investigation was named Operation Oakland, but the only thing found was two disposable phones and a screwdriver in one of the rooms.
From taxi to taxi
Security cameras captured three figures getting into a black taxi.
Detectives tracked down all the black cabs that had operated in the neighborhood that night; they identified 1,006. They asked the taxi drivers if they remembered picking up three men from Eastern Europe.
A taxi driver, Terry, told them that he had taken them to the back of a Hilton hotel.
Another security camera captured three men carrying bags, later found to be from Ecclestone and Rutland, then getting into another taxi.
image source, Met Police
Security camera footage showed the suspects getting into a taxi.
That taxi then got lost in the night. Detectives tracked down the driver, Jimmy, who mightn’t remember exactly where he had dropped off the passengers; but it was agreed that there was a distinctive arched bridge.
This allowed detectives to narrow the search to the suburb of St Mary Cray and they began reviewing security cameras in the area.
One video showed figures walking down a small lane.
Across from a police station was a cheap hotel called TLK Apartments. Grimshaw followed her hunch that she should visit him and was told regarding the penis photo.
“Once I learned this, I felt like we had identified the right group of people,” the detective said.
The front desk staff had photocopied the man’s ID when he checked in. His name was Jugoslav Jovanovic, a 23-year-old Italian citizen.
Tthey sent their initial suspect.
luxury robberies
More suspects would soon be identified, but first police uncovered evidence that the Ecclestone robbery had not been the only celebrity heist carried out by the thieves.
Another high-level robbery had occurred in West London on December 1. Over £60,000 ($72,000) worth of luxury watches, cufflinks and bracelets belonging to former soccer player Frank Lampard and his wife Christine had been stolen.
Security camera footage revealed a man similar in appearance to the one on Jovanovic’s ID.
The police widened their search: how many luxury robberies were there in London between December 1 and 18? They quickly found another on December 10.
More of 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) worth of household items of the late owner of the Leicester City football club, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, had been stolen.
image source, Getty Images
A Cartier bracelet was among the personal items stolen from Ecclestone in the robbery.
His house had not been touched since his death in 2018 and had become a place of prayer and mourning for his family when they visited London.
Seven Patek Philippe watches and 400,000 euros ($408,000) in cash were stolen. Detectives saw a familiar face on security cameras: Jovanovic.
Thieves and support group
The police case was divided into two parts.
They would go on to try to identify four men who were believed to be the robbers.
But also four others who had allegedly been the “support group”, that is, those in charge of logistics: booking taxis, hotels, flights, etc.
Jovanovic entered the UK on November 30 with Croatian Daniel Vukovic, 39. They both checked into the hotel in St Mary Cray that day.
On December 18, they left the country: Jovanovic to Milan, Vukovic – who was with a woman named Maria Mester – to Belgrade.
image source, Met Police
Images captured by the home’s security cameras showed a man similar in appearance to the one seen in Jovanovic’s documents.
Detectives got another lead when they were able to identify Jovanovic and other men taking a train hours before the robbery.
London Victoria, the end of the line, became a place of interest, so officers began searching through the station’s cameras.
Jovanovic and Vukovic were seen getting off a train. Shortly following, the couple was seen leaving the station with two other men.
EuroPol helped to identify them: the Italians Alessandro Donati and Alessandro Maltese.
Images from the station would throw up another clue. Jovanovic was seen shaking hands with a fifth man and walking with him. The police followed his movements and realized that he had used his bank card to pay.
It was Mester’s son, Emil Bogdan Savastru, who had flown to London from Tokyo on December 12 and left in early January for Milan.
Mother and son were considered to be part of the “support group” along with two Romanians, Alexandru Stan and Sorin Marcovici.
The first arrested was Savastru, at London’s Heathrow airport. He was carrying a Rutland Louis Vuitton bag and a Srivaddhanaprabha Tag Heuer watch.
image source, Met Police
The suspects were filmed in a cafe at a train station.
Learning of his son’s arrest, Mester returned to the UK. She was immediately arrested at the airport; she wore a pair of earrings that resembled Tamara Ecclestone’s. It was not possible to be sure that they were exactly the same, but the designer who made them said that only three pairs had been made.
Mester’s Facebook photos showed him wearing a necklace similar to a custom-made one Rutland bought for his wife in Los Angeles.
Both she and her son told a court that the articles they had been given them and denied knowing they had been stolen.
It also turned out that Savastru had used his bank card to pay for an Airbnb that Jovanovic, Vukovic, Maltese and Donati lived in for a few days following the Ecclestone assault. Savastru had also booked most of the flights.
In November 2020, Marcovici, Stan, Savastru and Mester went on trial charged with conspiracy to rob.
I have an idea
Mester’s defense was that she was an international escort and had met Vukovic as a client in a Milan bar years before. In December 2019, she tells her, he asked her to accompany him to London and paid her thousands of euros. Mester said she had no idea Vukovic or the men she was with were carrying out high-level robberies.
“For me, Vukovic was like the goose that lays the golden eggs, like all the other generous clients,” he told the BBC. “I didn’t see anything wrong with that fool!”
After being acquitted, she said: “I am 100% innocent of these robberies”. He added that the police had never proved his guilt or that of his son.
image source, Met Police
Emil Bogdan Savastru was arrested at London airport.
Stan told the court that a friend had asked him to help some Italians who were new to London and needed help with a car and getting around. He had met them for coffee and exchange numbers. He insisted that he didn’t know what they were doing.
“Everything, all the evidence once morest me shows that I might not be involved,” Stan told the BBC.
Marcovici, a childhood friend of Mester’s, also maintained that he was an innocent man caught up in something he had no idea regarding.
In January 2021, all four were found not guilty. But that was not the end of the story.
convicts
The police took Mester and his son Savastru to trial on other matters.
Mester was convicted of not allowing police access to her phone, while Savastru was convicted of an unrelated charge of possession of counterfeit bills.
image source, Met Police
Alessandro Maltese, Jugoslav Jovanovic and Alessandro Donati were arrested in Italy and extradited to the UK.
And finally, the detectives might catch to three of the thieves who fled abroad.
Donati and Maltese were arrested in Milan and then extradited in the fall of 2020. Jovanovic was arrested on the Italian coast of Santa Marinella, near Rome, in October 2020. He fought hard once morest extradition, but was brought to London in April of 2021.
All three pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob and were jailed in November 2021.
But there is still a man on the run, who is believed to be the mastermind of the robberies.
Mystery man
His true identity remains a mystery.
During court hearings he was named as Daniel Vukovic, a 39-year-old Croatian citizen.
A BBC investigation found that Italian authorities knew him under 17 other identities.
Italian court documents seen by the BBC indicate that his real name is Alfredo Lindley, a Peruvian citizen born in Miraflores, Lima, in 1981. He has a criminal record dating back to 1995.
Police also linked him to the alleged robberies of international soccer players Patrick Vieira and Sulley Muntari in 2009, according to court documents.
A man whom the Italian press has dubbed “the Lupine of real life”, pointing out that he might be living in Serbia.
The BBC found one more identity: According to his Serbian government-issued ID, his latest alias is Ljubomir Romanov.
Attempts have been made to extradite him, but the Serbian authorities have rejected them.
As for the stolen jewelry, detectives say the watches, necklaces, earrings and rings were not melted down. They maintain that one day diamonds will surface.
In the meantime, as Detective Andrew Payne, who worked on Operation Oakland, puts it: “It’s a buried treasure”.
image source, Getty Images
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