A pair who stole a shipment of wine from a Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant worth $1.7 million will receive a four-year prison term.
According to a court decision handed down on Monday and seen by CNN, the Mexican woman and her boyfriend, a Romanian-Dutch national, departed the renowned Atrio restaurant in Caceres, western Spain, with 45 bottles of wine concealed in luggage bags and wrapped in hotel towels to prevent breakage.
The heist happened on October 27, 2021, and it was meticulously planned, according to the police.
Two bottles from Chateau d'Yquem, a French winery, were included in the haul. One from 1806 cost €350,000 ($371,000) on Atrio's wine menu, and the other was from 1883 and cost €45,000. According to the information given in the decision by the three-judge board at the Caceres provincial court, numerous other bottles from well-known vineyards were from vintages in the 1990s and 2000s.
Did you read this?
According to a court official, the couple's names are still unknown owing to privacy concerns on Tuesday.
The couple had made three trips to the eatery months before the robbery. The woman used a phoney Swiss passport to check into the nearby Atrio small luxury hotel, on the night of the heist.
Afterwards, her boyfriend came up but didn't say hello. The court revealed that they then enjoyed a 14-course supper there, followed by a tour of the wine cellar.
The woman called the front desk around two in the morning and asked for a salad from room service and dessert. The front desk was unstaffed after the clerk, who claimed to be by himself at the hotel, finally complied with the demands. It was when the woman's boyfriend opened the wine cellar using an electronic key he had stolen from the front desk.
The court said the couple left the hotel with the stolen bottles at about 5 a.m. and drove off. According to the authorities, they were taken to police custody in July 2022 near the border between Montenegro and Croatia.
Although no wine has been found, the restaurant has received €753,000 in compensation from its insurance provider.
The guy and lady were each given a four-year prison term for armed robbery by the court. They were also mandated to pay €753,000 in damages.
Atrio is now listed as a three-star restaurant in the Michelin guide. Nevertheless, when the burglary happened, it only had two stars, a receptionist at the neighbouring Atrio modest luxury hotel told CNN. The proprietors of the eatery, she claimed, had declined to comment on the verdict.
The decision said the couple could appeal their punishment to a higher court.
