Cleaner at five-star hotel who stole £365k of jewellery jailed

Cleaner at five-star Hilton hotel in London’s Park Lane who stole £365k worth of jewellery from wealthy tourists for crime gang sobs uncontrollably as she is jailed for more than five years

• Sabrina Rova, 23, said ‘I’m sorry’ when she admitted burglary and fraud in court

A cleaner at a five-star hotel in London’s Park Lane who stole £365,000 worth of jewellery from wealthy tourists while working for an organised crime gang wept uncontrollably today as she was jailed for more than five years.

Romanian national Sabrina Rova, 23, stole items including a Cartier watch, a pair of Cartier earrings worth more than £22,000, a Rolex Oyster watch worth £17,000 and Dior pearl earrings, and swiped credit cards for shopping sprees from guests staying at the Park Lane Hilton near Buckingham Palace.

The mother-of-two was able to access guests’ rooms in hotels and grab valuable items in July and September last year. 

She claimed she gave some of the stolen gems to her partner, but police have been unable to trace him.

Rova had sobbed in court and said ‘I’m sorry’ when she admitted burglary and fraud at the Hilton, including taking £187,000 of jewellery, last November. She wept again when she returned to court to admit two more burglaries, one of jewellery and watches worth £179,000, and a further count of fraud.

Wearing a yellow top and grey scarf, she cried as she was jailed for a total of five years and eight months at Southwark Crown Court.

Judge Nicholas Rimmer said: ‘A person’s hotel room ought to be their home from home and as such their sanctuary of peace. You shattered that sanctuary for your victims.

Sabrina Rova, 23, (pictured) from Romania, worked at the Park Lane Hilton. She stole £365,000 worth of jewellery from wealthy tourists while working for an organised crime gang

‘You abused your role as an employed cleaner of each of those hotels, a role you had cynically secured on each occasion to perpetrate your crimes. In reality there is little to distinguish for each of these hotel burglaries in terms of your actions.

‘I have no doubt you targeted those hotels because you thought the guest’s rooms were more likely to contain valuable items. You left after each offence never to return, and I find you were enthusiastic and a repeated participant in an organised burglary scheme.

‘On occasion you equipped yourself for burglary; for instance, the empty belt bag you entered the Hilton Hotel guest room with. You did that in order to fill it with the items you stole which we can see on CCTV.’

Alex Matthews, prosecuting, had said the cleaner was working for an ‘organised crime group’ when she carried out the thefts.

‘This is a spate of a targeted series of burglaries at high end hotels. The Crown is clear that this is part of a wider group of targeted organised offenders.’

Rova wept uncontrollably today as she was jailed for more than five years. She said ‘I’m sorry’ when she admitted burglary and fraud at the Park Lane Hilton, (pictured) including taking £187,000 of jewellery, last November

Ms Matthews read a victim impact statement from Gracia Matata, who was staying with her mother at the Other House apartments.

‘She relates how unsafe she now feels as she states that this person not only stole from us, they opened our suitcase, which is the biggest invasion of privacy you can imagine.’

The prosecutor added: ‘The items are not recoverable as Rova gave them to her partner. The person listed as her partner does not show up on police indices. He has no trace.’

The items stolen by Rova totalled £365,792, the court heard.

Edward Carey, defending, said: ‘Ms Rova is a 23-year-old mother of two with no English and living in poverty which makes her very unlikely to have been behind the plan of these offences.

‘If it had not been her, it would have been somebody else. She is not profiting from these high value goods. She receives the bank cards and uses them to buy relatively very low value items very soon after the burglary took place.’

Rova, of Blenheim Road, Walthamstow, admitted three counts of burglary and two of fraud. She will be released on licence after serving half of her total sentence of five years and eight months.

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