Sixty-Year-Old Woman Found Guilty of 'Integral Role' in £4.2m London Diamond Heist

2 年前

A 60-year-old women was on July 28 found guilty of having played an “integral role” in the 2016 theft of £4.2 million worth of diamonds in London, and sentenced to five years and six months’ imprisonment.

Lulu Lakatos, from France, stole the diamonds from Boodles, a luxury jeweller on Bond Street. According to police, she was part of an “international organised gang” who planned the heist. They posed as “a wealthy Russian investor” looking to purchase gems, engaging with the store in a number of meetings.

This culminated, police said, in a meeting between Boodles and a gemologist named “Anna” – played by Lakatos – where she would inspect the gems.

This footage first shows Lakatos surveilling the store on March 9 2016, the day before the theft, accompanied by two men, according to police.

The following day, March 10, Lakatos, now dressed as Anna, arrived at the store to inspect the seven diamonds, accompanied by a member of staff. After the inspection, they were placed into a locked bag “to be stored with Boodles until confirmation of the payment had been received.”

The next stage of footage shows Lakatos placing that locked bag into her handbag. The member of staff challenges this, but Lakatos was able to create a delay, speaking French and thereby producing a “language barrier”. In that window, she switched the locked bag with a “duplicate one already stored within her handbag containing seven pebbles of the same weight.”

Lakatos then left the Boodles store, and CCTV captured her transferring the bag holding £4.2 million worth of diamonds to two unidentified women. She fled the country within three hours of the theft, but was arrested in France in September 2020 and extradited to the United Kingdom.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said Lakatos was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to steal. They added that the diamonds had not been recovered. Credit: Metropolitan Police via Storyful