According to a documentary, a group of burglars who stole £25 million worth of jewellery from the home of heiress Tamara Ecclestone were apprehended when one of them emailed a photo of his bare genitalia to a hotel employee.
While Miss Ecclestone, her husband, Jay Rutland, and their daughter Sophia were on vacation in Lapland, the burglars left a path of destruction through her Kensington house.
The four-person group had meticulously planned their raid on the £70 million West London house, but one of them made a vital error that cost them the opportunity to succeed.
As the group divided up the loot after a series of raids, which also included the London houses of late Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and former England footballer Frank Lampard, Jugoslav Jovanovic emailed a picture of his genitalia to a hotel phone number.
This was a crucial development in the investigation because when detectives looking for the offenders asked TLK Apartments staff if any of their guests had caught their attention, one employee admitted to having received the photo and saving the phone number it had originated from under the name “Weirdo,” according to The Times.
Detectives assert that this peculiar occurrence led them to request a copy of Jovanovic’s passport, which was left at the hotel, and served as the foundation for their identification and arrest of three other suspects.
In November of last year, Isleworth Crown Court sentenced Jovanovic, Alessandro Maltese, and Alessandro Donati to a combined 28 years in prison for the frightening raids. Daniel Vukovic, the alleged ringleader, is still at large and is believed to be in Serbia.
Who Stole Tamara Ecclestone’s Diamonds?, a BBC 3 programme, exposed the incredible facts of the raid, Britain’s largest domestic burglary, as well as the cops’ struggle to identify the perpetrators up until their lucky break.
The daughter of Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone, Miss Ecclestone, was interviewed for the documentary and expressed her worry at learning that one of the criminals is still on the loose, saying that her life would “never be the same again.”
The actual raid took place in December 2019, and the thieves entered into the garden before being captured on camera hiding behind a child’s Wendy House. To enter the home, the group then broke open a window.
They then ransacked her home, throwing Christmas decorations everywhere, pulling open numerous doors, wrecking every room in the house, and smashing furniture over the course of an hour, until a security guard startled them and the burglars fled when he went to investigate unarmed.
Miss Ecclestone called the gang “disgusting,” adding that now that she has seen the perpetrators’ faces, it is “sort of haunting.”
“It’s just an awful feeling knowing that kind of somebody has been wandering around your house and helping themselves to my most prized costly stuff.” I feel as though I will never be able to forget those faces.
“There is no doubt that our lives will never be the same because there is constant worry about the one thing—being secure in this house—that I never used to worry about.
I was concerned about a lot of different possibilities and circumstances. I simply know that there is one left, and dealing with that is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do.
She also disclosed that several of the jewellery pieces held special meaning for her, such as a bracelet Jay gave her after their daughter Sophie was born that had diamonds placed into it to form the name of their daughter.
Additionally, Slavica Ecclestone, her mother, handed Tamara a pair of diamond earrings that she had when she was in her 20s and had treasured ever since. Those earrings are no longer there.
They hold such sentimental worth for me that they are irreplaceable, she continued. The recollections of the most memorable times in my life are what hurt the most, thus [these] are the things that hurt the most.
Jay revealed in an interview with the BBC that “around 450 different items” were taken in all.
“The insurance policy excluded all of the jewellery and watches that were stolen.” Everything that was taken was worth slightly over £20 million in total.
When [the burglars] had been inside for an hour and had thoroughly searched every single room. The security guard hears a noise and investigates it; he doesn’t sound the alarm or arm himself with a weapon. He also doesn’t take any other action. He simply leaves to look into things.
He keeps walking upstairs, where he encounters the three burglars. He appears to be pursuing them downstairs, and at one point a fire extinguisher is attempted to strike him but misses.
And with all the luggage, the three trespassers are able to flee into the night.
Vukovic, the alleged ringmaster, is still at large and is believed to be in Serbia.
There have been attempts to extradite him, but the Serbian government has rejected these.
Vukovic, a citizen of Croatia, is known to Italian police under 17 additional aliases; the BBC speculates that his real name may be Alfredo Lindley. His criminal history dates back to 1995, and the BBC discovered that by 2017, he had connections to Milan, Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Zagreb through his multiple aliases.
According to Italian court documents, police have also connected Vukovic to the suspected 2009 burglaries of international footballers Patrick Vieira and Sulley Muntari.
The gang carried out three raids in West London over the course of just 13 days in December 2019, and the deceased Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City FC, and former Chelsea FC footballer and manager Frank Lampard, both 43, were also victims.
According to police, the group is thought to have committed similar crimes against well-known victims across Europe and had intended to carry out other raids on the wealthy and well-known in the UK.
Other possible victims, who were unaware of how near they came to being broken into as the thieves conducted reconnaissance missions and dummy runs, have not yet been identified by detectives.
Following their extradition from Italy, Jovanovic, Maltese, and Donati pled guilty to conspiring to commit robbery between November 29 and December 18, 2019 in connection with the three searches.
Jovanovic also acknowledged one count of attempting to convert illegal property between December 10, 2019, and January 31, 2020, as well as a conspiracy to launder money.
In November 2019, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison at Isleworth Crown Court, while Maltese and Donati received individual sentences of 8 years and 9 months apiece.
A police helicopter hovered overhead as the guys were transported to the court in West London under armed police protection.
Only a few of the £26 million worth of loot have been found; the remainder is thought to have been taken abroad.
On December 1, the Lampards’ Chelsea home was broken into while they were away, taking over £60,000 worth of watches and jewellery.
On December 10, the gang went after Mr. Srivaddhanaprabha’s Knightsbridge residence, which his family had turned into a shrine after his death at the age of 60 on October 27, 2018, in a helicopter crash shortly after takeoff from the King Power Stadium.
The TAG Heuer watch he was sporting when he left for Leicester that day was among more than £1 million in stolen property.
The thieves even opened a £500 bottle of Cristal champagne to enjoy during the robbery before celebrating with a £760 sushi dinner at the Zuma restaurant in Knightsbridge.
A Maltese burglar stole a pack of chewing gum from a vending machine at Victoria station as the gang stopped to buy coffee and pastries on their way to the final £25 million burglary at Miss Ecclestone’s home.
Later, CCTV footage from the Harrods department store revealed that Jovanovic and his uncle Vukovic had spent thousands of pounds there on luxury items and fake names had been used to sign up for loyalty cards.
Amazingly, detectives who were having trouble identifying the thieves were able to do so when one of the thieves sent a so-called “d**k pic” to a hotel’s after-hours phone.
Police who solved the notorious jewellery heist have disclosed how they apprehended Jovanovic after he sent a lewd photo to a hotel employee.
The receptionist at the TLK Apartments in St. Mary Cray, a low-cost lodging option, was questioned by Scotland Yard Detective Constable Thomas Grimshaw about visitors who stayed there in mid-December 2019.
She informed the detective, much to his surprise, about a man who had sent her colleague offensive messages on the hotel’s after-hours iPhone, including a purported “d**k pic.” His phone number was saved as “Weirdo.”
Det Con Grimshaw was able to identify Jovanovic by using that number, and he later apprehended the majority of the group responsible for Britain’s largest domestic burglary.