Robbers who stole £500k worth of jewellery jailed

Two men who carried out a £500,000 armed jewellery robbery at the Mappin and Webb boutique at Gleneagles Hotel have been jailed.

At the High Court in Edinburgh Richard Fleming, 42, and Liam Richardson, 30, were sentenced to 18 years and 11 years and four months respectively.

The pair were part of a gang that stole 50 Rolex watches from the jewellery store armed with hammers, a machete and a pistol.

The men were arrested after detectives analysed “tens of thousands of hours” worth of CCTV recordings and studied mobile phone records, which placed Fleming and Richardson at the crime scene.  

When sentencing the pair Judge Lady Carmichael described Fleming as a “danger to the public”.

She said: “You took hammers, a machete, and a self-loading pistol, or an item that resembled one, to Gleneagles Hotel in order to commit a robbery. In the course of about two minutes in the hotel, you had taken Rolex watches worth in excess of half a million pounds from the Mappin and Webb jewellers there.

“There was CCTV footage which illustrated very clearly how staff and guests fled in fear as you entered the hotel masked, armed and dressed in dark clothing. They clearly had no way of knowing whether or not the firearm was a genuine one. The robbery was an act of serious, premeditated criminality which involved significant advance planning, with a visit to the hotel some weeks before by you.”

She added: “Criminal behaviour of this nature will not be tolerated, and requires the imposition of a substantial period of imprisonment.”