The first arrested was Savastru. Police had been monitoring his movements and knew he had booked a one-way ticket to Tokyo on January 30, 2020.
On the day he checked in at Heathrow Airport, plainclothes officers followed him out of the terminal, where he sat down to have a cigarette.
As Savastru sat down, the detectives waited for him to open his cell phone, which would allow them to view his search history, contacts and bank details. As soon as he did, they made their move and arrested him, successfully physically seizing his unlocked phone.
She was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag belonging to Jay Rutland and a Tag Heuer watch belonging to Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
He later told the jury he was under the impression the items had been left to him as a gift. He had no idea they were stolen.
After learning of her son’s arrest, Mester flew back to the UK the next day from Milan. She was immediately arrested at Stansted Airport while wearing a set of earrings resembling Tamara Ecclestone’s. It was not possible to be sure that these were the exact same earrings, but the designer who made them said that only three pairs were made and one was sold to Tamara.
Photos of Mester on Facebook showed her wearing a necklace similar to a rare custom necklace bought by Jay Rutland for his wife in Los Angeles.
She would tell the court the jewelery was a gift and denied knowing it had been stolen.
Savastru and Mester were charged and while in custody, police continued to learn more about the thieves’ whereabouts in London.
The day after the attack on Mr Srivaddhanaprabha’s home, Jovanovic made a reservation for five people at a sushi restaurant near Harrods. The bill for the meal was £760.
They were also photographed strolling in Harrods. On December 17, four days after the burglary at Ecclestone’s home, Savastru opened a Harrods Rewards account and spent £580 on Christian Dior cosmetics. His mother splashed out more than £1,000 on Louis Vuitton and Loro Piana menswear, £810 on Hermes goods and £635 on designer shoes.
Jovanovic and Vukovic were also photographed in Harrods – it turned out they were turned away from buying £8,000 worth of goods because they only wanted to pay in cash.
It also emerged that Savastru used his bank card to pay for an Airbnb in Chelsea where Jovanovic, Vukovic, Maltese and Donati lived for several days after Ecclestone’s attack before leaving the country. Savastru had also booked most of the flights in his Starling Bank account.
In November 2020, Markovici, Stan, Savastru and Mester appeared at Isleworth Magistrates’ Court charged with conspiracy to steal.
Mester’s defense was that she was an international escort and had met Vukovic as a customer in a bar in Milan years earlier. In December 2019, she says, he asked her to accompany him to London and paid her thousands of euros. Mester said she had no idea Vukovich or the men he was with were committing high-profile thefts.
The jewelry found on her by police when she was arrested, she said, were gifts given to her by Vukovich for her services and for her birthday. She denied knowing the jewelery was stolen.
“For me, Vukovic was like a golden goose like all the other generous customers,” she told the BBC. “I saw nothing wrong with that fool!”
She also said that Vukovic gave her spending money while she was in London.
After being acquitted, she said: “I am 100% innocent of these thefts.” She said the police never proved her guilt or her son’s.
“They only brought what they wanted to court.”
Her son Savastru told jurors during the trial that he was acquainted with two of the alleged thieves in December 2019 but was unaware of their alleged criminal dealings. He declined to be interviewed by the BBC.
Stan told the court he was asked by a friend to help some Italians who were new to London and needed help with a car and getting around. He had met them for coffee and they exchanged numbers.
Later, on December 1, he received a call asking for his address. On the night the Lampards were robbed, Jovanovic and Vukovic arrived at his home – although he insisted he had no idea what they were up to. One of them was cut and told Stan they didn’t want their wives to see they had a fight so he gave them some clothes and booked them an Uber back to St Mary Cray.
“Everything, all the evidence against me shows that I cannot be involved. I couldn’t,” Stan told the BBC.
Markovici, a childhood friend of Maria Mester, insisted that he was an innocent man involved in something he had no idea about. He agreed to her request to drive Vukovic’s friends around west London. But he says he was told the men were going to a construction site to get tools.
He says he mistook a message sent to him in Italian telling him to bring a burner or torch — cannello da taglio — with the Romanian agnello da taglio, or “cutting of lamb,” and that he interpreted it as a reference to barbecue.
He stopped driving the men into a pay dispute.
“I was accused of conspiring to burglarize high profile people from the UK. High society people. I’m innocent and so are the police [knew] I was innocent from the beginning.”
None of the four were said to have been present at the homes that were robbed, but prosecutors say each of them helped the gang in some way.
However, in January 2021, the four were found not guilty of conspiracy to steal.
But that wasn’t the end of the story.
Unexpectedly, Stan, who used to live in Harrow, contacted the BBC to share his story.
He told reporters that he was now homeless and had lost everything. During the 2021 Beast from the East winter storms, he stayed in Markovici’s car.
“I lost everything, my home, my job,” he said. “My whole life turned upside down.”
Police took Mester and her son Savastra to court on other matters. Mester was convicted of denying police access to her phone, while Savastru was convicted on an unrelated charge of possessing counterfeit currency.
And in the end, the detectives managed to bring back three of the thieves who had fled abroad. Donati and Maltese were arrested in Milan and later extradited in autumn 2020. Jovanovic was arrested on the Italian coast of Santa Marinella – just outside Rome in October 2020. He fought his extradition hard but was later deported in the UK in April 2021.
All three pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob and were jailed in November 2021 under heavy police escort from Belmarsh.
Police in Italy told the BBC the gang lived in northern Milan in a Roma camp.
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