Gem thief swapped diamonds for pebbles in £4.2m London heist

Lulu Lakatos posed as a gem valuer to gain access to the diamonds worth £4.2m

A woman has been found guilty of stealing diamonds worth £4.2m from a jewellers by swapping them with pebbles using "sleight of hand".

Lulu Lakatos, 60, posed as a gemologist who examined the stones from Boodles in central London on behalf of a Russian investor in March 2016.

Lakatos inspected seven diamonds before replacing them with small pebbles, Southwark Crown Court heard.

She was found guilty of conspiracy to steal on Wednesday.

Prosecutors said it was the highest-value theft offence of its kind ever committed in the UK.

The seven diamonds, including one worth £2.2m, were to be placed in a padlocked purse and held in the New Bond Street store's vault until funds were transferred.

The diamonds have never been recovered.

Boodles in central London believed it was selling diamonds to a Russian named Alexander

But CCTV footage from the family firm's basement showroom captured the moment the purse was put into Lakatos's handbag and switched for a duplicate in seconds using "sleight of hand".

Boodles boss Nicholas Wainwright had briefly left to talk on the phone to apparent Russian buyer "Alexander", whom he had met over lunch at Monaco's Hotel Metropole.

A gem valuer, "Anna", had been instructed by Alexander to examine the stones before they were put in a locked bag to be held by Boodles until the jewellers received the funds.

The court heard Anna was in fact Lakatos.

Lakatos inspected seven diamonds before replacing them with small pebbles

Lakatos examined and weighed each of the seven diamonds before individually wrapping them in pre-cut tissue paper and placing them inside opaque boxes.

"When the examination was complete, the boxes were placed into a zippable purse-like bag, which was then padlocked shut," prosecutor Philip Stott told the jury.

The prosecutor said Lakatos placed the locked bag inside her own handbag when Mr Wainwright went upstairs.

"It seems it was swapped for an identical locked bag," Mr Stott said.

The court heard Lakatos discarded her hat and scarf and changed her clothes in a pub toilet, switching her dark coat for a light one, assisted by another accomplice.

She then used her own passport to leave London on the Eurostar, the court heard.

Lakatos was arrested in France on a European arrest warrant in September last year before being extradited to the UK.

The court heard Lakatos changed her clothes in a pub toilet before fleeing the country

Romanian-born Lakatos, from Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, has three previous convictions for theft in France.

Lakatos claimed Anna was her late younger sister, Liliana Lakatos, who had confessed to using Lulu Lakatos's passport to commit the crime months before she died in a car crash, aged 49, in Romania in October 2019.

Liliana Lakatos was wanted in Switzerland for an almost identical plot, where an envelope containing 400,000 euros (£340,000) was switched for a duplicate filled with paper.