[imagesource: Google Street View]

A 60-year-old Romanian woman who pretended to be a gem expert is on trial for allegedly swapping diamonds worth £4,2 million (around R84 million) for garden pebbles in order to steal them from a luxury London jeweller.

The British court heard how Lulu Lakatos used “sleight of hand” at Boodles in London’s fashionable Mayfair area in March 2016, managing to take seven diamonds on behalf of a group of wealthy Russian buyers.

The diamonds included a 20-carat heart-shaped diamond valued at over £2,2m, and a three-carat pear-shaped pink diamond worth £1,1m, Sky News reports.

Under the disguise of ‘Anna’, Lakatos acted as if she was valuing the seven diamonds before placing them into a locked bag, which was given to the jewellers until the money for the sale had been transferred.

But Lakatos had apparently swapped the bag for another identical one packed with garden pebbles instead, all while Nicholas Wainwright, chairman of Boodles, was present, per ABC News:

Wainwright met with Lakatos in his shop’s basement, along with his own diamond expert Emma Barton.

As soon as Wainwright left the room to take a call from the alleged buyer, Lakatos put the padlocked purse containing the gems in her own handbag, Barton told the jury.

It was a bit of a long con, with Wainwright having first met an interested buyer who wanted to invest in high-value diamonds weeks before.

Following further discussion in a Monaco hotel room, Wainwright agreed to the sale, and the subsequent meeting with Lakatos.

It was only the next day, when Boodles’ own gem expert found the bag full of pebbles, that they realised their precious gems had been stolen:

The court was told that Lakatos transferred a purse-like object from her handbag to the handbag of two unknown women, who had been browsing in the nearby Ralph Lauren and Cartier stores before discarding her hat and scarf and changing her clothes in a pub toilet.

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

All six of those allegedly involved were out of the country within a matter of hours.

Prosecutor Philip Stott said “the diamonds had been stolen by the defendant by sleight of hand” and that:

“The conspiracy in which she is alleged to have played an integral and central part was one of the highest possible sophistication, planning, risk, and reward.”

Lakatos was arrested in France, where she lives, and then extradited to the UK to stand trial.

While the two men involved, Christophe Stankovic and Mickael Jovanovic, have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal, Lakatos has denied her charges.

The trial is ongoing.

[sources:skynews&abcnews]