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BBR thieves toast £1.5m heist with Moët
Thieves who broke into the warehouse of Berry Bros & Rudd and stole £1.5 million worth of wine popped open bottles of Moët Champagne during the heist to celebrate.
In what is believed to have been an inside job, thieves broke into the merchant’s cellars in Basingtoke, Hampshire, in the early hours of April 26, stealing around £100,000 worth of wine. That figure now sits at £1.5 million, according to reports by The Daily Mail. Among the wines stolen were vintages from Chateau Latour, worth up to £1,000 a bottle, and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild.
A hidden security camera inside the building is said to have been “adjusted” so that it would not capture the raid, a camera that even staff who had worked at the warehouse for years did not know existed. The gang then used power tools to cut a 4 foot square hole in the wall before crawling under laser beams to get to the most valuable wines.
According to The Daily Mail, the gang piled up crates to reach the most valuable vintages, passing boxes of wine worth £5,000 each to the ground before passing them through the hole and into their van. The audacious crime was made even more brazen by the fact that they popped open bottles of Moët to toast their success.
A source is reported to have told The Daily Mail: “They knew which way the CCTV cameras were facing and either avoided them or climbed a ladder to move them and the hole in the wall was cut in the perfect place. It was only inches below the laser security beam. You could not have picked a better spot.”
“That’s impressive inside knowledge”, the source continued. “There are thousands of bottles inside, but they knew where to look. What I find staggering is that they then had a party to celebrate.”
Hampshire Police said an “investigation is ongoing”, but that no arrests had been made.
A spokesman for Berry Bros & Rudd said: “We continue to work with the police and our security advisers to prevent any incidents from happening again, and have further reinforced the already high levels of security and monitoring at our facilities.”