Five top heists

A master conwoman who swapped diamonds worth £4.2m worth for worthless pebbles under the nose of one Britain’s top jewellers is facing years behind bars.

Nicholas Wainwright, chairman of Boodles in Mayfair was set up by a gang who wined and dined the jeweller at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, pretending they wanted to buy $13m (£9.4m) of gems.

Romanian Lulu Lakatos, 60, targeted then posed as a gemologist and flew to London to examine the stones he offered.

At the crucial moment Lakatos arranged for a telephone call to take Mr Wainwright away and put the bag containing the diamonds into her handbag in front of another member of staff.

When she was told to take it out she made the switch and handed back the worthless pebbles.

Mr Wainwright was told what she had done when he returned and he demanded ‘Anna’ empty her bag – but the stones had been concealed and she was allowed to leave.

Later he listened in on his phone as one of the Boodles staff members opened the bag and gasped: ‘Oh my God, it’s pebbles’.

The most valuable of the gems, a heart-shaped diamond, was worth £2,215,138 alone.

Grey-haired and bespectacled Lakatos denied conspiracy to steal claiming the con was carried out by her sister who has since died in a car accident.

She wept as she was convicted by the jury at Southwark Crown Court after 9 hours and 19 minutes of deliberations.

Prosecutor Oliver Mosley said after the 10-to-two majority verdict was announced: ‘This was a conspiracy of the highest sophistication, believed to be of the highest value of its kind ever committed in this country.

‘Although it was a simple ruse, it was a highly sophisticated plan.’

Police likened the heist to the thefts portrayed in the Ocean’s Eleven movie franchise, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
Lakatos was part of a gang of grifters who had been travelling Europe trying to rip of banks and jewellers with her amazing sleight of hand.

Her sister Liliana walked off with the €400,000 on 15 October 2014 from AEK Bank in Oberhofen in Bern, Switzerland.

Liliana switched an envelope containing eight bundles of euros for a similar envelope containing worthless 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 a Lakatos but for some reason she was never arrested or charged.

Two years later Mr Wainwright was contacted by a man calling himself Simon Glas, who claimed he was Israeli.

‘He said he was interested in buying diamonds for investment and I had been recommended by a friend of mine called Jonathan Slater,’ said Mr Wainwright.

The jeweller found the offer ‘quite interesting’ and the two men arranged to meet in Monaco to discuss the deal.

He met Mr Glas at the world famous Hotel de Paris on 2 March, where he was flanked by two Russian associates, one of whom called himself Alexander.

‘He said he wanted to invest $13 million in diamonds and asked if we would take cash,’ Mr Wainwright said.

‘I said no, we can’t take cash for that as that is effectively money laundering, it has to be electronic.

‘I didn’t want to knock the deal on the head so I kept talking.

‘He said can I take 10 to 15 per cent cash, which I found slightly odd,’ said Mr Wainwright.

After the meeting, the potential buyers ‘left abruptly’ and Mr Wainwright kept communicating with “Alexander” to discuss potential gems to sell.

After they settled on seven items worth a total of £7,299,671, “Alexander” asked for his gemologist to verify the diamonds, which agreed was ‘fair enough’.

When ‘Anna’ arrived at the store on March 10 Mr Wainwright was ‘surprised’ by the fact she didn’t speak very good English, although the two conversed in French.

He watched her ‘like a hawk’ as she assessed the jewellery, placed it small blue opaque boxes, and then in a black lockable bag.

Mr Wainwright told the court: ‘This woman called “Anna” looked strange.

‘She didn’t look at the stones through an eyeglass, as a gemmologist might do, and she didn’t check their certificates.’

‘Alexander’ called Mr Wainwright but said he couldn’t hear him very well.

Assuming the bad signal of the basement was too blame, Mr Wainwright went up the staircase, leaving Anna alone with Boodles’ gemmologist Emma Barton.

‘When I came back four minutes later Emma looked quite a bit frightened,’ he said.

‘I asked ‘are you alright’ and she said that Anna had put the bag of diamonds in her handbag.

‘Emma said ‘I’m not happy’, she had them in her bag and took them out very soon afterwards,’ said Mr Wainwright.

He asked to search Anna’s bag, and she reluctantly agreed, but he saw no sign of a locked bag containing the gems.

‘I looked at the handbag for about ten seconds but I didn’t see the bag, so I assumed it was on the table.

‘In retrospect there were a lot of unusual things at the time but I didn’t realise it.’

Mr Wainwright added: ‘This woman called “Anna” looked strange.

‘Anna’ was most unattractive, she was overweight, 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.’

Ms Barton told the jury: ‘She came in wearing a camel coat.

‘When she took it off, she was wearing a very low cut black dress. She was wearing a hat very low-down, so I couldn’t see her forehead and she was wearing a pair of glasses with thick arms.

‘She didn’t use a loupe, a jeweller’s eye glass. As a first point of call, that is what you would generally do.

‘She had some gemmologist’s equipment that she brought with her, scales, an ultraviolet light, and a thermal conductivity probe.

‘She took each stone, weighed it, placed it under ultraviolet light, and used the thermal conductivity probe.

‘She didn’t know how to use her equipment very well. First of all, would never use the ultraviolet light under shop lights, you need a darkened room.

‘It did make me question the qualifications that “Anna” had.’

“Anna” also did not know how to use the thermal conductivity probe correctly, causing it to malfunction.

Ms Barton then gave “Anna” her probe to use for the rest of the meeting.

Ms Barton then told the jury what she did after “Anna” casually put the diamonds in her handbag.

She said: ‘I said “No, no, no, you can’t do that, please take them out of your handbag now, I have to see them at all times.”

‘She said: “It’s okay, don’t worry, it’s nothing to worry about.”

‘Then she took the bag out and placed it on the table.

‘Four million pounds worth of diamonds had been out of my sight.’

It was only when Lakatos had gone that the bag was opened in front of stunned staff.

A DNA profile was recovered from the pebbles which showed a strong link to Lakatos.

Lakatos and her four associates were out of the country within three hours.

Her two female associates, who left with the diamonds, have still not been identified.

Her two male associates, Mickael Jovanovic and Christophe Stankovic, earlier admitted conspiracy to steal.

Jurors watched CCTV footage of Lakatos checking into a hotel in north London on 9 March 2016, the day before the heist.

The same woman got into a grey Citroen car late in the evening along with Jovanovic and Stankovic.

The grey Citroen then was caught on CCTV stopping opposite Boodles, before returning to Cricklewood and dropping Anna off at the hotel.

After the theft Lakatos changed her clothes in a pub toilet and was recorded on CCTV at St Pancras Station, calmly walking through the gates into the international departure lounge at 1.55pm.

She produced her own passport, confident she could not be traced to the heist, before taking a Eurostar train to France.

Lakatos, who has Romanian and Hungarian citizenship, has a series of convictions for minor thefts in France dating back to 2002.

She was arrested in France on 24 September last year and extradited to the UK on 3 December.

But when she was confronted with the CCTV footage of her she told jurors: ‘It’s my sister.’

Lakatos, last living in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, France, denied but was convicted of conspiracy to steal between 15 February and 11 March 2016.

Jovanovic was jailed for three years and eight months for conspiracy to steal in June 2020.

Stankovic was caught and jailed in 2016.

Lakatos wept as she was jailed for five and a half years.

Iona Nedelcu, for Lakatos, said: ‘The theft could not have been successful without her.

‘Her co-conspirators were more trusted, because they left with the diamonds and took them out of the country.’

Her husband is in hospital in France after suffering a severe stroke in February, and is unable to move, speak, or communicate with their son who cares for him, the court heard.

The judge, Ms Recorder Emma Goodall, QC, told Lakatos: ‘This was a highly sophisticated and audacious offence in terms of planning, risk, and reward.

‘Ms Barton describes the effect of the offence on her personally, in that: “She felt disgusted and violated at what had occurred.”’

Lakatos sobbed as she was sentenced to five years and six months in prison.

Acting Detective Sergeant William Man of the 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.

‘However, due to the tenacious police work of the Flying Squad, involving painstaking analysis of a vast amount of evidence, we have managed to identify Lakatos and bring her to justice.

‘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.’

Earlier she had wept and shook uncontrollably in the dock as the jury returned its their verdict.