The mystery of the card for room 106 of the Atrio restaurant and other keys to a millionaire robbery

In the early morning of October 27, 2021, twice, someone tried to access the coveted cellar of the Atrio de Cáceres hotel-restaurant, which kept bottles of up to 350,000 euros.

There were two consecutive attempts, the first unsuccessful and the second successful, to open the door with two different magnetic cards.

One of those electronic keys was the one for room 106, where some friends of the cook Toño Pérez and the sommelier José Polo, the owners of the establishment, were staying that night.

This was declared before the judge last Monday by the night receptionist and this is confirmed by the hotel registry.

The second card used to enter, minutes later, in the tasting room —from which the large cellar is accessed— was the master key, the one that opens all the doors, even those of the safes.

This one did unlock the entrance.

A total of 45 bottles of wine, with a price on the menu of 1.6 million euros, were stolen, in what has already become one of the greatest robberies in the history of Spain.

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Lights and shadows in the robbery of the Atrio restaurant

Nine months later, on July 18, 2022, the Romanian-Dutch citizen Constantín Dumitru, 49, and his partner, the former Mexican Miss Priscila Guevara, 28, were arrested when they were crossing the border between Albania and Croatia in their car. .

The two, in prison since then, have sat on the bench this week accused of a robbery with force for which the Prosecutor's Office asks them for 4.5 years in prison.

Both have pleaded not guilty.

And of the stolen wine there is no trace.

According to what was stated by the hotel workers at the trial, both magnetic cards were in a semi-hidden box at the reception, "mixed with other similar ones to camouflage the master key, it being impossible to know which one it was, even as a hotel employee, you have to work at the reception to find out”, they agreed.

"I always carried that card with me, because I did a night check round at the hotel and I left it in its box around 11:30 p.m.," said the receptionist, who has worked at Atrio for 10 years.

No one has been able to explain how the thieves got it right, or why they first used the card for room 106, or why the card for the room occupied that night by some friends from the owners.

In three sessions and without, "due to technical problems", the images of the robbery recorded by the security cameras were projected, the trial was seen for sentencing on March 1.

About twenty witnesses paraded through the hearing room of the Provincial Court of Cáceres, including establishment workers, police officers, experts and one of the owners, the sommelier José Polo, who assured that he did not recognize "one hundred percent" the defendants, staying that night in room 107. The couple refused to testify until Dumitru, with the right to have the last word, approached the microphone and said: "That's what I wonder, where are the bottles of wine if I'm the thief?"

The court, chaired by magistrate Joaquín González Casso, must now assess whether the evidence provided is sufficient to indict them and whether they acted alone.

The defense, exercised by the lawyer Sylvia Córdoba, assures that there is evidence that "should be annulled" because the evidence (the original documents) was not included in the summary, but rather "mere screenshots and extracts of the proceedings carried out", as well as for understanding that some of them "are not sufficiently founded".

These are the key points on which the court will have to define itself before issuing its sentence:

The lawyer, Sylvia Córdoba and her attorney, Rocío Crespo, during the oral hearing of the Atrio trial. Carlos Criado (Europa Press)

The images.

There are barely five minutes of non-continuous black and white recordings, collected by different hotel security cameras, with a time lag, according to the police;

and in which neither the time nor the day of the recording is appreciated.

They could not be seen in the oral trial "due to technical problems."

In them, two people can be seen moving around the hotel premises, supposedly the early morning of cars.

The alleged thief, after a call from his roommate to the reception to ask for something to eat and presumably thus distract the receptionist, leaves room 107, on the first floor.

At 1:32 in the morning, glued to the wall, he heads towards the stairs, carrying on his back the small backpack that, as the only luggage, the woman was carrying when she checked into the hotel the previous afternoon.

The man, with a mask,

He enters the reception, then goes to the tasting room and makes a first unsuccessful attempt to open the door at 1:34.

Go back to the reception, return to the room and make a second successful attempt at 1.36.

The images do not show his entry into the warehouse, but the exit of the same person carrying two apparently heavy sports bags.

The hotel's magnetic cards.

The receptionist stated that he had the master card with him until 11:30 p.m., when he left it in his slot.

However, he later said that he returned to leave her in his place after preparing in the kitchen the salad that the client of 107 had asked for at dawn, presumably to distract him while his partner carried out the robbery.

It is understood that the receptionist took the master key to enter the kitchen and then returned it to his place.

But if he had it while he was preparing the salad, how could the thief have taken it to steal it in that amount of time?

Telephone interventions.

In one of the images, according to the statement of one of the investigators, the thief is seen making a phone call just at the moment when he almost ran into the receptionist.

The woman calls the front desk again later and asks for "some dessert."

The receptionist returns to the kitchen to prepare a plate of fruit and takes it up to the room, while the thief takes the opportunity to leave the master card in its place.

According to the police investigation, the phone with which the woman from 107 registered received a call around that time in the morning.

After the intervention of both lines, they verified that the numbers of both mobiles were in the name of the same person, a certain Daniel Florín Stanley, not registered in Spain.

The surprise came after the arrest of the couple in Croatia.

By launching Dumitru's fingerprint against European police files, "he was arrested for a similar act in Portugal in 2008 as Daniel Florin Stanley," an agent declared.

Dumitru and Florin were the same person.

The DNA.

Although the cleaner said that she entered the room and only removed the sheets and poured chemicals into the toilet until she was called to tell her not to continue with that cleaning, the Scientific Police agents managed to recover some remains of epithelial cells in the lid of the toilet "compatible with the DNA of the defendants and that of an unknown third person."

Car.

Since April there has been a Mercedes associated with Constantín Dumitru, although it is not a car owned by him.

They give him a fine in Madrid, the Civil Guard stops him going with his partner in a routine control, and the traffic cameras record the vehicle hours after the robbery at kilometer 218 of the NV in the Madrid direction.

In addition, there is a WhatsApp conversation between Dumitru and his daughter in which he asks her to return the vehicle and its keys to his owner on a street in the center of Madrid, where the police find him.

Light luggage.

The client of the 107 "only carried a small and light backpack," according to the hotel director.

The man, who arrived at 9:00 p.m. to have dinner with her, did not have any luggage, despite the fact that he walked out with three heavy backpacks on his back.

Did the girl carry those other bags in her backpack in which they allegedly managed to put 45 bottles of wine wrapped in towels?

The value of wine

One of the aggravating factors in this case is the great value of the stolen material.

However, the magistrate considered it "inconsequential" to know how the figure of 754,000 euros had been reached, compared to the 1.6 million euros that cost a letter.

Or the 1.2 million that winemaker Paco Berciano valued.

And the 6-7 million pesetas (about 40,000 euros) that he said the lot of a large part of the bottles stolen from José Polo had cost him at an auction in the year 2000.

The affected.

Once they received compensation of more than 754,000 euros, they did not appear as a private prosecution, and only the sommelier and co-owner, José Polo, has testified as a witness.

After the "traumatic" robbery, which has also provided them with unusual publicity, they have received their third Michelin star, have acquired another monumental building in the same central square of Cáceres to expand the hotel and have created a cultural foundation.