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The Provincial Court of Cáceres has sentenced Constantin Dumitru, accused of stealing 45 bottles of wine from the Atrio restaurant in the capital of Cáceres, which has three Michelin stars and three Repsol Suns, to four years and six months in prison, and Priscila Lara Guevara to four years in prison, as perpetrators of a particularly serious offence of burglary in an establishment open to the public.
They must also jointly and severally indemnify the insurance company Reale with 753,454 euros, which reached an agreement with the owners of Atrio for the value claimed, which also coincides with the price of the expert appraisal carried out on the wines that disappeared from the cellar of the famous restaurant in Cáceres.
The Provincial Court considers as proven facts that the two defendants, by mutual agreement and with the aim of obtaining an illicit benefit, decided that the woman would stay at the Atrio Hotel in Cáceres on 26 October 2021, a place they knew about because they had been previously planning the event on 1 June, 13 June and 12 August 2021.
The booking was made solely by the woman using a false passport and carrying only a rucksack which, when Priscila was caught by an employee who was carelessly grabbing it, she noticed that it had no weight whatsoever.
The judgment indicates that the man subsequently came to the hotel for dinner and to stay, without registering, at the hotel. After dinner in the restaurant located in the hotel, they went on a guided tour of the winery and then went upstairs to their room.
At around 2.10 a.m. the defendant called the reception desk, asking for a salad and repeatedly asking the only employee who was in the hotel-restaurant at the time how long it would take to be served.
🚩Así cometieron el robo, y huyeron del lugar, los dos presuntos autores del robo de vino en el restaurante #Atrio de #Cáceres
Una de las botellas data del año 1806 y está valorada en 310.000 euros, siendo un ejemplar único en el mundo pic.twitter.com/L30oUXehVe
— Policía Nacional (@policia) July 20, 2022
The reception employee, after refusing to make the order, telling her that he was alone and the kitchen was closed, and surprised by the request, given that they had dined on a 14-course tasting menu, at the defendant’s insistence agreed to the request, indicating that it would take at least 20 minutes to serve what was requested.
The employee went to the kitchen, at which point the accused took advantage of the situation and went to the reception desk where he took an electronic key with which he went to the cellar, but was unsuccessful in opening it because it was not the right key. The employee, after bringing up the salad, returned to reception.
The accused, seeing that the key did not open the cellar door, made a call to the woman in the room from the cellar door to re-entertain the receptionist.
Thus, moments later, the accused repeated the call to reception, this time to ask for a dessert, to which the employee again objected, finally agreeing to bring her some fruit.
The accused returned to the reception and took the master key number 27 from a box, opened the cellar with it and entered the tasting room where he took 45 bottles of wine which he put in a rucksack and two large bags with which he immediately went up to the room before the employee returned to the reception.
The defendants hurriedly left the hotel at around 5.00 a.m., the man carrying the rucksack on his back and the two bags with the bottles, in which he had placed four towels from the bathroom of the hotel room to prevent them from clinking together, and got into a vehicle, according to the proven facts of the sentence.
The sentence, handed down by the court of the Provincial Court of Cáceres, presided over by the magistrate Joaquín González Casso, is not final and can be appealed before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Justice of Extremadura (TSJEx).
It should be remembered that the trial for this robbery was scheduled for sentencing last Wednesday after three sessions in which 16 witnesses and four expert witnesses provided evidence, such as the DNA of biological remains found in the bathroom of the room where they stayed and which coincided with the accused, as well as the recordings of the security cameras or the control of the telephones that place them in the hotel on the night of the events.