A €350,000 bottle of Chateau D’Yquem from 1806 was among the wines stolen from the Atrio Hotel in Cáceres, southwest Spain in October 2021 in a heist by Priscilla Guevara, 28, and Constantin Dimitru, 49.
A Spanish court jailed a couple on Monday, March 6, for stealing 45 bottles of wine worth more than 1.6 million euros ($1.7 million) from a hotel restaurant in what police called a “carefully planned” operation. It is reported by Insider.
As a result of the trial, the woman was sentenced to four years in prison, and the man to four and a half years. A married couple found guilty of burglary. The court also ordered them to pay €753,454 in compensation to the hotel.
A woman who is reported by the Spanish press to be a former beauty queen from Mexico has checked into a hotel using a fake Swiss passport.
Screenshot of the video showing the alleged perpetrators of the Atrio restaurant robbery
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Фото: Spanish Police/Handout via REUTERS
After dinner at the hotel’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, the couple was given a tour of the Atrio’s famous wine cellar, after which they retired to their room. At 2 am, the woman called the reception and asked the only employee who was working at that time to make her a salad. The receptionist initially denied the request because the couple were already eating the 14-course tasting menu, but eventually agreed because Priscilla kept pushing.
While a worker was preparing a salad, her husband slipped into the reception area and stole an electronic key that he thought would allow entry into the wine cellar, but he was wrong. While outside the wine cellar, Dimitru called his partner and told her to distract the worker one more time by ordering dessert as well.
“The accused returned to the reception and took from the box the master key No. 27, with which he opened the wine cellar, from where he took 45 bottles of wine,” the court said.
Police detained a couple on the border between Croatia and Montenegro
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Photo: Getty Images
Despite the fact that law enforcement agencies promptly began investigating the crime, it took several months to identify the perpetrators. Information was received that Dimitru is a citizen of Romania and the Netherlands and had previously been arrested in Madrid for stealing expensive wine from gourmet shops.
In January of this year, the couple reappeared in Romania, where the man changed his passport, after which they disappeared again. Their luck ended on July 19 when law enforcement stopped them at the border between Croatia and Montenegro as they tried to cross it.
Earlier, Focus wrote that the stallion Kadyrov worth more than half a million hryvnia was stolen in the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic froze the property of the head of Chechnya, including several horses, based on international sanctions. An unknown attacker kidnapped a thoroughbred horse, the cost of which is almost 400 thousand crowns.
It was also reported that a Chinese man robbed a gas station, and then hid in a cave from the police for 14 years. Liu Mouf, along with two accomplices, robbed a gas station, but the cash register that day was only $23. The police soon detained the accomplices, and the Chinese decided to hide safely in order to avoid the same fate.
