London-Scotland Yard The gang is busted behind the largest home burglary in English legal history after a thief couldn’t resist sending a dick picture to an employee at a budget hotel.
The story began with a luxurious lifestyle on Instagram. Just before Christmas in 2019, Tamara Ecclestone– The model heiress, daughter of a former Formula One boss, is petite Bernie Ecclestone– She announced that she and her family were traveling to Lapland for holidays with a picture of her daughter Sofia in front of a private plane.
On the night of their departure, a gang of thieves broke into the family home located on a street referred to as Billionaire’s Row. The group managed to withdraw about $30 million in cash, watches, and diamonds from the property. That was despite the fact that a security guard had already caught three unmasked men red-handed around 11pm inside Ecclestone’s dressing room – known as “the basement” – after its six-inch steel door was left open. The robbers bypassed the guard and escaped from the stately mansion through the window.
The cops from the Met’s Flying Squad – the crack team that investigates burglaries in London – didn’t have much to do at first. Security cam footage from the property’s lawn showed the trio past a replica of the $12,000 main house Sophia is using as a playroom. Then CCTV pictures showed the group boarding one of London’s famous black taxis. Investigators proceeded to call 1,006 taxi drivers who worked in the area on the night of the robbery, asking if they remembered picking up a kit that matched the thieves’ description.
One of the drivers said he did, and provided the information that led the investigation to a budget hotel called TLK Apartments. Detective Constable Thomas Grimshaw visited the hotel in January 2020 and asked the receptionist if she remembered a group of young men staying there in mid-December.
The chances of remembering certain guests were low, but she told the detective that there was one group of potential suspects that she remembered very clearly indeed.
One group sent a colleague a series of lewd messages on an iPhone outside hotel hours – one of which was an ugly photo. The staff at the hotel even kept the man’s number as ‘eccentric’.
“Once I knew this, I felt we had identified the right group of people,” Grimshaw He told the BBC.
The hotel made a copy of his photo ID when he checked in, giving the police the first suspect in the case: a 23-year-old Italian named Yugoslav Jovanovic. Once his identification was obtained, police were able to piece together Yovanovitch’s movements after entering the UK, and found that his appearance matched that of a man caught on CCTV during burglaries at the homes of other celebrities, including a $70,000 burglary on a coach-owned property. Premier League Frank Lampard and a $410,000 job at the home of late Leicester City football team owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
The investigation eventually led to Yovanovitch’s arrest in Italy in October 2020 before being extradited to Britain in April last year. He and his companions Alessandro Maltese and Alessandro Donati – also arrested in Italy and extradited to the UK – pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burglary and were imprisoned in November 2021. The alleged mastermind of all the burglaries – known by more than a dozen aliases – is said to be still He lives as a free man after Serbian authorities refused extradition requests.
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