An armed robber and member of an international crime gang who flew into Britain to rob a London jewellery store at gunpoint was snared after a DNA hit on a German criminal database.
Lithuanian Rimantas Borisovas, 32, was starting a 12-year jail sentence today after he was convicted of robbery and possession of a firearm.
He was one of three men armed with a handgun and claw hammers who targeted Mappin & Webb’s flagship store in Regent Street in June 2014.
The gang smashed their way into the display case and grabbed £128,740 worth of Cartier watches before fleeing. However, Borisovas cut his hand on the glass of the case and police recovered a DNA sample at the scene.
The sample failed to match any on the UK database and as a matter of routine it was then circulated to European forces via Europol and Interpol.
The DNA provided a match with a sample held on the German police database where Borisovas had been convicted and jailed for five years in 2011 for a burglary offence involving the theft of high-value cars.
Borisovas was arrested after Essex Police were alerted by border officials that he was due to fly into Stansted from Poland in November last year. Met DNA tests confirmed the link to the robbery.
