The first person to be arrested was Savastru. Police had watched his movements and knew he had booked a one-way ticket to Tokyo on January 30, 2020.
That day he was checked in at Heathrow Airport, plainclothes officers followed him outside the terminal, where he sat down to take a cigarette.
While Savastru was sitting, detectives waited for him to open his cell phone, which would allow them to check his search history, contacts and bank details. As soon as he did, they made his move and arrested him, physically grabbing his open phone.
He was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag by Jay Rutland and a Tag Heuer watch by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
He later told a jury that he had the impression that the objects had been left to him as a gift. I had no idea they had been stolen.
After learning of his son’s arrest, Mester returned to the United Kingdom the next day from Milan. She was immediately arrested at Stansted Airport, while wearing Tamara Ecclestone-like earrings. It was not possible to make sure they were exactly the same earrings, but the designer who made them said that only three pairs had been made and one had been sold to Tamara.
Mester’s Facebook footage showed him wearing a bespoke weird-like necklace bought by Jay Rutland for his wife in Los Angeles.
She told a court the jewelry was a gift and denied knowing it had been stolen.
Savastru and Mester were charged and while in custody, police continued to find out more about the time of the thieves in London.
The day after the attack on the Srivaddhanaprabha house, Jovanovic made a reservation for five people at a sushi restaurant near Harrods. The lunch bill was £ 760.
He was also photographed spending heavily on Harrods. On 17 December, four days after Ecclestone’s house was stolen, Savastru opened a Harrods Rewards account and spent £ 580 on Christian Dior cosmetics. Her mother spent more than £ 1,000 on Louis Vuitton and Parrot Piana men’s clothing, £ 810 on Hermes items and £ 635 on designer shoes.
Jovanovic and Vukovic were also photographed in Harrods; it turned out that they had been refused the purchase of goods worth £ 8,000 because they only wanted to pay in cash.
It also turned out that Savastru had used his bank card to pay for an Airbnb in Chelsea, where Jovanovic, Vukovic, Maltese and Donati lived for a few days after the attack on Ecclestone before leaving the country. Savastru had also booked most flights to his Starling Bank account.
In November 2020, Marcovici, Stan, Savastru and Mester were tried in Isleworth Crown Court on charges of conspiracy to steal.
Mester’s defense was that she was an international escort and she had met Vukovic as a client in a bar in Milan years before. In December 2019, he says, he asked her to accompany him to London and paid him thousands of euros. Mester said he had no idea that Vukovic or the men he was with were carrying out high-end robberies.
The jewels the police found for her when she was arrested, she said, were gifts Vukovic gave her for her services and for her birthday. She denied knowing the jewelry had been stolen.
“To me Vukovic was like a golden goose like all other generous customers,” he told the BBC. “I didn’t see anything wrong with this fool!”
He also said Vukovic had given him money to spend while in London.
After being acquitted, she said, “I’m 100% innocent about these robberies.” She said police had never proved her or her son’s guilt.
“They brought to court just what they wanted.”
His son Savastru told jurors during the trial that he had been presented to two of the alleged thieves in December 2019, but that he was unaware of his alleged criminal proceedings. He refused to be interviewed by the BBC.
Stan told the court that a friend had asked him to help some Italians who were new to London and needed help with a car and to get around. I had met them for coffee and exchanging numbers.
Later, on December 1, he had received a call asking for his address. The night the Lampards were robbed, Jovanovic and Vukovic had arrived at his home, although he insisted he did not know what they had been doing. One of them was cut off and told Stan that they didn’t want his wives to see that they had been fighting, so he gave them clothes and reserved an Uber for them back in St Mary Cray.
“Everything, all the evidence against me shows that I could not participate. I couldn’t, ”Stan told the BBC.
Marcovici, a childhood friend of Maria Mester, insisted that he was an innocent man trapped in something he had no idea. He had accepted his request to drive Vukovic’s friends through west London. But he says he was told the men were going to a construction site to pick up some tools.
He says that he confused a text sent to him in Italian in which he told him to carry a torch to cut or blow -cannello da taglio- with the Romanian lambello da taglio or “lamb cut”, and that he had interpreted it as a reference to a barbecue. .
He stopped leading men in a dispute over pay.
“I was accused of conspiracy to steal high-profile people from the UK. People from high society. I am innocent and the police [knew] I was innocent from the beginning. “
None of the four were said to be inside the homes that were stolen, but the prosecution’s case was that they had allegedly helped the gang in some way.
However, in January 2021 the four were found not guilty of conspiracy to steal.
But that was not the end of the story.
Suddenly, Stan, who had lived in Harrow, contacted the BBC to share his story.
He told reporters he was now homeless and had lost everything. During the winter storms of the “Beast of the East” of 2021 he had ended up staying inside Marcovici’s car.
“I lost everything, my house, my job,” he said. “My whole life was turned upside down.”
Police took Mester and his son Savastru to court for other matters. Mester was convicted of not letting police in on her phone, while Savastru was convicted of an unrelated charge of possessing counterfeit tickets.
And finally, detectives were able to recover three of the thieves who had fled abroad. Donati and Maltese were arrested in Milan and later extradited in the autumn of 2020. Jovanovic was detained on the Italian coast of Santa Marinella, on the outskirts of Rome in October 2020. He fought hard against his extradition, but then went be deported to the UK in April 2021.
All three pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and were jailed in November 2021 under a strong Belmarsh police escort.
Italian police told the BBC the gang had lived north of Milan in a gypsy camp.