Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
A woman who secretly swapped seven pebbles for 4.2 million pounds (US$5.7 million) worth of diamonds has been sent to prison for her role in the audacious heist at a luxury jewelry store in London's tony Mayfair district.
Lulu Lakatos, 60, was sentenced Wednesday to 5 1/2 years in prison after a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London found her guilty of conspiracy to steal.
Lakatos was part of an international gang that fled to France after stealing the diamonds from Boodles on New Bond Street on March 10, 2016. The gems haven't been recovered.
"This was an audacious theft, carried out in plain view of experienced and professional staff at a renowned jewelers," Detective Sgt. William Man of London's Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement. "The meticulous planning and execution of this theft reveals to me that those involved were highly skilled criminals."
In the days leading up to the heist, the criminals held a series of meetings with Boodles staff on the pretense that they represented a wealthy Russian investor who was looking to purchase gems, police said.
Lakatos, who was born in Romania and lived in France, posed as a gem expert named "Anna" who then went to Boodles to value seven diamonds for the buyer.
After she inspected the gems, which included a 20-carat heart-shaped diamond valued at more than 2.2 million pounds, they were individually wrapped and placed in a locked bag that was supposed to be held in the jeweler's vault until payment was received. But when Boodles' own expert became suspicious the next day, the bag was X-rayed and the store discovered nothing but seven ordinary pebbles.
Lakatos had used a distraction to swap the bag containing the diamonds for an identical one containing the pebbles before it was locked in the vault, according to security camera video released by police.
After leaving the store, Lakatos handed the bag containing the diamonds to one of her female accomplices, before ditching the long coat, hat and scarf she wore as a disguise and boarding a high-speed Eurostar train to France.
She was arrested on a European arrest warrant last September and returned to Britain to stand trial.
Two men who worked with Lakatos previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and were sentenced to 3 years and eight months in prison. Police are still investigating the involvement of two other women.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.