A sex worker accused of assisting in the £25million Ecclestone raid mansion told jurors she thought the alleged burglar who brought her to London was a ‘sweet client’ who was there ‘for business.’
Romanian Maria Mester, 47, is accused of being one of the ‘supporting cast for the burglars who had travelled from Italy to break into the homes of three celebrities homes last December.
Mester, Savastru, along with security worker Sorin Marcovici, 53, and hotel concierge Alexandru Stan, 49, all deny involvement in the raids.
Mester is said to have been ‘inseparable’ from the alleged burglars after flying to London from Milan on December 7.
She and her barman son Emile-Bogdan Savastru, 30, were filmed on CCTV with the alleged raiders in the days before and after the burglary at the home of Tamara Ecclestone.
Isleworth Crown Court has heard she was arrested at Stansted Airport wearing a pair of stolen earrings on January 31.
She also posted a photograph of herself wearing one of the stolen necklaces on Facebook on 1 January, jurors have heard.
Mester burst into tears as soon as she entered the dock wearing a grey jacket and jeans.
Addressing Judge Martin Edmunds she said: ‘Can I thank you My Lord, that you made it a possibility after nine months for someone to listen to me.’
Mester told jurors she met two alleged burglars ‘four or five years’ ago in a Milan club, and continued seeing one of them three or four times a year as an escort.
She had never seen two of the other four alleged burglars until her trip to London.
‘On that day I came because the alleged burglar asked me to come and spend a week with him, I knew that he was a sweet client.
‘I thought “why not?” I knew that my son Bogdan was supposed to come back from Japan and I would kill two birds with one stone.
‘He said that he came here for business and if I would come to be with him and keep him company for one week.
‘He would pay me about four to six thousand euros, it depended.
‘If he would go shopping he would buy me something or if I told him that I see something which I like he would give me money to buy it.
‘He would show up, he would disappear.’
She said she planned to stay in London for a week, seeing escort friends she occasionally worked with and her son Bogdan Savastru in the last day and half.
Romania, Mester said she married Savastru’s father Gabriel when she was a ‘child’ aged 17 or 18.
She moved to Milan, Italy in 1997 for a ‘better life’ after the revolution and began working in a bar.
She said: ‘Because communism fell in our country, after the revolution everybody was dreaming for a better life.
‘I was dreaming of having a Ferrari and Lamborghini and a better lifestyle.
She wept as she added: ‘After being thirty I started working in a nightclub which had two different things, in the lap dancing I was dancing and in the night club I was a paid escort.
Jurors were shown photos she posted on escort websites to advertise her services.
She said: ‘They are international sites, sites in one country.
‘For meetings between men and women, the man is searching for a woman for adventures not a woman for his life.’
She is accused of bringing in her son Savastru to help organise the thieves’ stay in London.
Savastru was caught in possession of a Tag Heuer watch and Louis Vuitton bag, similar to one taken in the raid, and was planning to board a flight to Japan, it is claimed.
On 17 December she was filmed on a luxury goods spending spree at Harrods with a sister of one of the alleged burglars.
Three days before the Ecclestone burglary the thieves had made off with jewellery worth €600,000 and €400,000 in cash, from the Knightsbridge home of late Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha after smashing one of his safes with hammers on 10 December, the court has heard.
The burglars had made off with £60,000 worth of valuables from the Chelsea home Frank Lampard shares with television presenter Christine Lampard on December 1.
Mester, of no fixed address, denies three counts of conspiracy to commit burglary and concealing criminal property.
Savastru, of Wyllen Close, Bethnal Green, denies two counts of conspiracy to burgle and attempting to remove criminal property.
Marcovici, of Dagenham Road, Romford, and Stan, of Constable Gardens, Harrow, deny conspiracy to burgle.
Mester said the burglars are ‘idiots’ who ‘destroyed my life.’
Speaking through an interpreter, she said: ‘The first time I saw the idiots was the first time we went on the train and I asked “who are these two?”
‘He said they are two friends of his, associates.’
Leonard Smith QC, for Mester, asked: ‘Why do you call them idiots?’
Mester said: ‘Because I’m here in this situation. They have destroyed my life, how I can call them?’
She added she would only spend time with her regular client in the morning or at the end of the day, rarely when he was with the other men.
‘I was there as an escort, not a babysitter, my joy was when he would go away.
‘The little he was there the better, like any escort.
Mr Smith asked: ‘That’s normal?’
‘Yes, for every woman that does my work’
Mester denied knowledge of any of the burglaries prior to or during their occurrence, or of any stolen goods.
She said: ‘I learned about these burglaries, I found out from lawyers and here in court, what I can see now.
Describing the alleged thief who brought her to London, she said: ‘He wasn’t an alcoholic, he wasn’t a drug addict, he wasn’t violent.
‘He was civilised, educated and with good manners and from my point of view he was very generous.
‘Apart from money he would pay me and also give me presents.
She added: ‘He was coming and going, I was also coming and going.
‘I would wake up in the morning, I would go to the shopping centre at the back.
‘If he would go out I would go with him.
‘In London, if he didn’t have errands I would stay with him.
‘If he had business I would go in the shop.
On 8 December, a week after the raid on Lampard’s home she went to a restaurant in Ealing Common for dinner at a Serbian restaurant with Marcovici and two of the alleged burglars, jurors heard.
She said: ‘If you see them and you meet them they are extra civilised people, Marcovici is a pleasant character.
‘I told Sorin [Marcovici], I said if you want to be a driver so they don’t have to pay for a cab and they can pay you.
‘We also spoke about houses at the table, I’m not embarrassed to introduce Sorin to anybody.’
She said she couldn’t remember Marcovici texting her to say he couldn’t drive the alleged burglars again because he needed to work on his car.
Mester said she saw the alleged burglar as a ‘fat goose’ with a lot of money that she could take advantage of and blamed the necklace for ruining her life.
She told jurors she left the UK because that was all the alleged burglar paid for but that he called her and invited her back.
‘I was in Milan with my friends and he called me and he asks if you would like to return to London and of course I accepted because he told me to come to London and then that we would go on a holiday together.
‘I was thinking that holidays are coming up, that he was a fat goose and I thought that this was a good opportunity to get more money from him and more presents if possible.
‘He was a really fat goose, he didn’t bother me with his presence too much, he wasn’t aggressive, if I wanted to pay him attention to him before bed I would, if not no.
‘And that’s why I took advantage of the opportunity.
‘He always had money, a lot of money, boof!’
‘I would purchase something for myself and I would purchase something for him as well, to keep him sweet.
Mr Smith asked: ‘To fatten the goose?’
She replied: ‘As the goose was fattening me.
‘He told me that he works with construction or the construction business, he buys and sells but he never took me to any of his meetings.
‘He never entered into details in that I believed him because he was dressed elegantly.
Mester agreed that she returned on the 16th, and on the 17th December spent £2,580 in Harrods with a sister of one of the alleged burglars.
She was directed to a photo of herself wearing the necklace, she said it was taken on New Year’s Eve after the alleged burglar gave it to her on 26 December.
She said: ‘Here I’m a beautiful woman, now I’m a destroyed person.
‘I used to look like that.
‘He gave it to me as a present together with the earrings that I’m wearing in the photograph.’
Mester denied knowing that the items were stolen.
She tearfully told jurors how she pawned the necklace when she came back to London after hearing her son had been arrested.
Mester told the jury: ‘He didn’t board, he didn’t call.
‘I received a phone call at around 6 o’clock that Bogdan had been arrested.
‘I was troubled and was very agitated.
‘I sold that necklace, the necklace which destroyed my life with what I had, the following morning, I went to Milan airport.’
The trial continues.
ends
