[imagesource: Getty]

Remember that guy who broke into the Queen’s bedroom?

Turns out he was a pretty sophisticated criminal compared to 37-year-old Adamo Canto (below), who recently appeared in the Westminster Magistrates Court.

Between November 11, 2019, and August 7, 2020, Canto used his catering assistant job at Buckingham Palace, where he’d worked since 2015, to lift a few items.

The plan, it seems, was to sell them unnoticed. Not on the dark web and not to private collectors, but on eBay.

His first mistake was stealing the items, and his second mistake was using a very public platform to try and flog them.

Canto scored more than £7 700 (roughly R159 000) offloading around 37 Royal items. But, as the court heard, the valuables were actually worth upwards of £100 000 (more than R2 million).

I bet he’s kicking himself now that he’s having to pay those legal fees.

He was caught, per Metro, after police recovered a “significant quantity” of the missing items from his room at Royal Mews in the palace.

Apparently, he had taken advantage of the lockdown, during which he had been given extra cleaning jobs, giving him access to parts of the palace that he would normally have been barred from.

Simon Maughan, prosecuting, said: ‘One of the complainants had located the medal on eBay having been sold on May 27. It was an account called AdamoSalvatori123 which was tracked to Mr Canto.

Image: PA

Canto admitted stealing a Companion of Bath medal belonging to Vice Admiral Master Tony Johnstone-Burt, the Master of the Household, which was sold for £350 on eBay.

Vice Admiral Johnstone-Burt said in a statement that he first realised the medal was missing when he went to find it because he had to wear it to the Queen’s Trooping the Colour on June 13. He was later told by palace staff that the medal was for sale on eBay on an account linked back to Canto.

He managed to pocket 77 items in total apart from the medal, including official signed photos of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate), and the Duke of Sussex (Harry), alongside a royal state banquet photo album of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the UK.

Canto also stole a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) medal from the locker of former British Army officer Major General Richard Sykes, which was given to him by the Queen in 2010.

Canto topped it all off by posting a TikTok video of himself dancing outside Buckingham Palace miming the lyrics of ‘Consider Yourself’ from Oliver Twist. Countless other clips show him dancing with photographs of the Queen and Prince Philip in the background.

He’s clearly not the brightest criminal.

District Judge Alexander Jacobs released him on conditional bail and sent the case to Southwark Crown Court for sentencing at a later date.

Canto is facing a jail sentence.

I’m sure the Queen is not amused.

[source:metro]