TODAY marks the third anniversary of the sentencing of an unlikely criminal duo who orchestrated a staggering €1.75 million wine heist from a Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant.
The Provincial Court of Caceres handed down prison terms to a 52-year-old Romanian-Dutch career criminal and his 31-year-old lover, a former Miss Mexico, on March 6, 2023.
Their target was Atrio, a luxury restaurant and hotel complex in the beautiful Estremadura city of Caceres.
During the summer and autumn of 2021, Constantin Dumitru and Priscila Guevara paid repeated visits to the premises to meticulously rehearse their crime.
The elaborate plot was set in motion when Guevara checked into the hotel, which costs €550 a night, using a fake Swiss passport.
Staff immediately grew suspicious of the glamorous guest because her only luggage for the stay was an entirely empty backpack.
On the night of the robbery in October, the beauty queen deployed a bizarre distraction tactic by making loud, insistent demands for room service.
Workers found it highly unusual that she was demanding salads and fruit be brought to her room when she had just finished a lavish 14-course tasting menu.
In the ensuing confusion as staff rushed to cater to her late-night whims, Dumitru managed to steal the master key that he had previously observed them using.
This gave the career criminal direct access to the restaurant’s legendary wine cellar.
Knowing exactly what they were looking for, he loaded the woman’s backpack and two carrier bags with 45 bottles of priceless vintage wine.
The haul included a single bottle of 1806 Chateau d’Yquem, which was listed on the menu with an eye-watering price tag of €350,000.
To ensure their escape was silent, Dumitru stole towels from the hotel room to wrap the glass bottles so they would not clink together.
The pair then vanished into the night, slipping out of the hotel at 5am carrying bags that were now full to bursting.
They were finally apprehended several days later while trying to cross the border from Croatia to Albania on a European arrest warrant.
At trial, the thieves stood no chance against the mountain of evidence collected by the Policia Nacional.
Detectives had matched deoxyribonucleic acid, commonly known as DNA, left in the hotel room to the suspects.
They also presented closed-circuit television, or CCTV, footage showing the couple fleeing the scene long before dawn.
When arrested, the pair were in possession of large quantities of cash and could not explain where it had come from.
The judge ordered immediate custody, sentencing Dumitru to four-and-a-half years and Guevara to four years behind bars.
They were also ordered to pay compensation of €750,000 to the devastated restaurant owners.
Tragically for wine lovers across the globe, the stolen bottles had already disappeared by the time of the arrest and have never been recovered, having almost certainly been ‘fenced’ on the black market to unscrupulous private collectors.
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