Police and justice jointly put an end to five years of looting in Monaco palaces. After lengthy methodical research to finally identify the thief, it was an Irish national who appeared before the criminal court. He is accused of seven acts of theft and attempted fraud in the spas of the Fairmont, Monte-Carlo Bay, Métropole and Thermes Marins hotels, between January 1, 2016 and July 31, 2017. Without leaving any traces, but with an important loot!
He had stolen several watches from prestigious brands, the most expensive of which cost $47,000. Glasses, pen, luggage, ring, coat, wallet and other effects, each of the manufacturers’ signatures makes you dream! Tickets also for some 20,000 euros in cash. Without forgetting the use of four bank cards, which will remain silent to distributors due to incorrect codes.
Monaco, an “easy” destination
So is this Belfast resident, just 40 years old, a luxury fanatic? Above all, it’s a way to survive when you are an electrical engineer by training, unemployed after being made redundant, and the father of a child with your partner. Where to find money so easily and quickly? “In Monaco,” he told the judges. “I knew that this expedient was not an easy affair. But there is so much wealth here… I sold watches in Spain and the rest a little everywhere at a third of an estimated value. Essentially to live, because I no longer worked. I have been incarcerated for seventeen months, certainly with benevolent guards…”
A mowing globetrotter
From the box, this character does not give in to any convention. He even accepts to suffer from it with resignation. “I started flying in Dublin, Germany… I want to turn the page. Start fresh.”
President Jérôme Fougeras Lavergnolle, however, insists on his journey as a mowing globetrotter. “You also committed misdeeds in a gymnasium in Cap-d’Ail, in the Alpes-Maritimes, in France, in Switzerland… You were convicted in Nice and Grasse. Then in Boulogne for receiving stolen goods. In Monaco, as as a customer and under a false identity, you visited the men’s locker rooms, away from the cameras. But before discreetly observing the codes made by the subscribers when dropping off their belongings…”
Theft to “maintain your family with dignity”
The man, caught, was then incarcerated in the remand center on January 5. “If this individual, considering himself recognized, had not fled to the Fairmont spa, immediately specifies the substitute Maxime Maillet, he would still continue his misdeeds in this haven of security where no one is suspicious. What audacity to go up to the rooms in order to enrich himself to the detriment of people vacationing in the establishments. He put the Public Security investigators in conditions worthy of a detective film, with the cooperation of the French gendarmerie to arrest him. He is not finished with justice. France is waiting for him. Just like Ireland, the United Kingdom, Switzerland. When you have committed offenses for twenty years, you have to ask for four years!”
The defendant’s lawyer will try everything to obtain a reduction in the sentence. “A difficult youth,” assures Me Maeva Zampori, “with the loss of his parents at the age of 15, and the obligation to juggle foster families. When he becomes a father, he wants to raise a lot of money for maintain his family with dignity. The theft is an opportunity to achieve this goal. Today, take his awareness into account. As for the civil parties, they have been largely reimbursed. My client is insolvent.
This article is originally published on monacomatin.mc
