When we say “Arsenio Lupine in a skirt”. Never was the name more correct for Lulu Lakatos, the 60-year-old architect of one of the most “brilliant” thefts. Developed 5 years ago, in 2016 in London, in a jewelry store in the city center where the woman, of Romanian origin but resident in France, scored a stroke with great “dexterity of hand” as defined by the judge of the court where the trial against the ingenious thief has recently begun. She managed to steal diamonds worth 5 million euros by exchanging them for pebbles taken from her garden after posing as an expert in precious stones.
Film plot
The whole plot of the story seems to come out of a movie. With a false name (Italian, she called herself Anna) she had managed to win the trust of wealthy Russian entrepreneurs who wanted to buy gems in the UK. She had convinced them they would make a deal by hiring her as a consultant, and she had succeeded in her intent. By the time she arrived at Nicholas Wainwright’s luxurious London jewelry store, she had put all her criminal wits to work. Having won the trust of the owner who trusted the credentials with which the woman had presented herself, she had practically, and literally, a free hand.
The theft
She could easily enter the highly armored vault where precious gems were kept, such as the seven million-dollar diamonds that had been proposed to her. Examined one by one with extreme attention, weighed carefully and then placed, wrapped in tissue paper, in a safety container complete with a lock, in a moment of (unforgivable) inattention of the jeweler, the female Lupine carried out the theft, with punctual dexterity seasoned with a pinch of imagination. The one used to put into practice the (almost) perfect crime. Taking advantage of the distraction of those who should have watched, he replaced the precious stones with common courtyard pebbles which, wrapped in paper, could realistically look like diamonds. Having accomplished the mission, the woman had gone away. When the deception had come to light, she had already left and lost her tracks, along with a respectable loot.
The process
The theft had been carried out with the help of two accomplices who had already been caught, had confessed and had been sentenced for criminal association aimed precisely at the theft. Lulu Lakatos, on the other hand, was a fugitive for all these years until last autumn when she was stopped in France where she lived. So a few months later she was extradited to the UK where she is now on trial.
For her the accusation is that of being the head of an international stolen goods organization, and of being an integral part of a conspiracy among “the highest possible in terms of refinement, planning, risk and pay”.