Pair are found guilty over £1.1m luxury watch robbery that saw distraught shop manager kill himself after bosses accused him of not putting up a fight
Three members of the gang who grabbed £1.1million worth of luxury watches from a tragic shop manager who later took his own life are facing jail.
Oliver White, 27, was restrained with cable ties during the raid at 247 Kettles store in Kew Road, Richmond, on May 25 last year.
Kyle Mehmet, 40, and Michael Holmes, 34, were today found guilty of conspiracy to rob and will be sentenced at a later date alongside Mannix Pedro, 37, who was convicted of the same offence earlier this year.
Junior Kunu, 31, who was also on trial, was today cleared of conspiracy to rob after he claimed the heist was staged.
Salesman Mr White was so devastated by allegations that he did nothing to resist the raiders that he killed himself the following day in the woods where he had played as a boy.
Seventy uninsured watches, including a £30,000 Rolex Sky Dweller, were taken while the business owners, Conor Thornton and Joe Riley, were in New York.
They flew back to London for an 'intense' meeting with Mr White the next day, attended by a third businessman, Fred Sines, also known as Fred Doe.
Watch dealer Sines, 37, was handed a suspended jail sentence earlier this year for trying to sell the £4.8million gold toilet which was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019.
He is the son of multimillionaire caravan magnate Maurice 'Fred' Sines - who has been accused by Irish authorities of being an ally of the notorious Kinahan organised crime clan.
Jurors heard claims 247 Kettles was run by Maurice and Fred Sines as a 'front for organised crime' and £100,000 bounties were placed on the heads of the robbers.
Mr White offered the owners the £14,000 he had been saving up to put a deposit down on a flat with his girlfriend Alana Dredge to compensate for the stolen jewellery.
Oliver White (pictured), 27, was restrained with cable ties during the raid at 247 Kettles store in Kew Road, Richmond, on May 25 last year. He later took his own life
Kyle Mehmet (front) and Junior Kunu (back) are seen during the heist at the jewellery store in Richmond . Mehmet was found guilty but Kunu was cleared
The total value of the watches that were taken is approximately £1.1million
Jurors were shown CCTV of the Rolex raid but footage of the meeting with Sines and the owners the next day has gone missing.
Mr White then travelled to the woods in Shepperton, where he grew up and took his own life.
Mehmet had tied up and held Mr White in a headlock while Kunu swiped the watches, including a Rolex Sky Dweller. Holmes took part in a 'dry run' at the shop two days before the raid.
Kunu was cleared of conspiracy to rob after he claimed the heist was staged, Mr White was in on it and therefore no force was used.
He said he was offered £5,000 to put the watches into a bag and if it had been a genuine robbery Mr White could have hit the panic alarm.
Businessman Mannix Pedro, 37, was 'closely involved in the planning and execution' of the raid and supplied a stolen Audi as one of several getaway cars. He was convicted of conspiracy to rob by a jury earlier this year.
He had denied any involvement in the plot and said he was in a gym with his girlfriend two days earlier.
Pedro also claimed it may have been an inside job and said: 'The people I am worried about is Fred Sines, the Kinahans, the cartels, the people saying they are going to kill people on behalf of 247 kettles.
'Rumour on the street is they robbed themselves.'
Mehmet claimed he took part in the robbery because he owed £190,000 to 'serious criminals' who he referred to as 'the firm'.
Mr White had been restrained with cable ties during the raid at the 247 Kettles store (pictured) in Richmond, west London, on May 25 last year
Jurors heard claims 247 Kettles was run by Maurice (left) and Fred Sines (right) as a 'front for organised crime'
Fred Sines, also known as Fred Doe, was handed a suspended jail sentence earlier this year for trying to sell the £4.8million gold toilet which was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019
He believed it was an 'inside job' but when he learnt there was a £100,000 'bounty' on his head he fled to Turkey with his wife and children.
Mehmet returned to the UK and was arrested in March this year.
Holmes was also arrested in March.
Mehmet and Holmes, who was also arrested earlier this year, denied but were convicted of conspiracy to rob by the jury.
A fifth suspect, Michael Ashman, is still on the run.
Judge Philip Shorrock said he will sentence all three men on a date to be fixed.
Mr White had prepared trays of watches for Kunu and Bowrage to view believing they were genuine customers on May 25.
'Suddenly they stood up and started grabbing the watches,' said Ed Brown, KC, prosecuting.
'Mr White described how one of them grabbed his hands to stop him moving and pinned them across his chest and then had his hands bound using zip ties.
'He was then put in a headlock.
'Having done so they left, leaving him in shock and with visible reddening around his neck and wrist.
'When he was spoken to by the police he still appeared shocked and that he was still processing the events.
'He was however doing everything to help the police and to recover any watches they could.
'None of the watches have been recovered and for reasons that will become clear they were not insured.'
Ms Dredge said in a statement read to the court that the accusations that Mr White was in on the raid 'broke him'.
She said it was 'clear he loved the work' at 247 Kettles.
'Even whilst we were on holiday and at weekends Olly would be working and trying to close deals with his clients.
After the raid she said Mr White was 'really shaken up.'
He didn't want to talk about what happened, he hated the fact the video had been posted online,' she said. 'He just said he wanted a cuddle.'
Ms Dredge said Sines had pressurised her boyfriend after the robbery. 'He asked Olly if he wanted to meet him, Joe and Conor in Shepperton.
'As he left he said he felt really sick and I said to him that he didn't need to go, but he insisted on going anyway. Olly for was gone for about an hour from about midday until 1pm approximately.
'When he walked through the door he didn't want to talk to me about the meeting.'
Sines had suggested 'he didn't put up much of a fight' and 'had something to do with it'.
She said Conor 'agreed he might have had something to do with the robbery and Joe also said he didn't know what to think, and couldn't look Olly in the eyes.
'When Olly told me this I could see that it broke him as they were two of his best friends who he thought were meant to have his back. They were saying now they didn't trust him.
'I said these were meant to be your friends and he said 'yeah, I thought so too.'
She said Olly was told to attend another meeting: 'As Olly was getting dressed I was upset - I said to him I was sorry this had happened to him. Olly told me he loved me and he left in the car.
'Olly messaged me at 5pm or just before saying 'I love you' and then a kiss. I replied saying I love you and that I hope you're OK, what's the latest?
'There were a few messages back and forth - I ended up calling his work phone and his personal phone. I knew something wasn't right.'
Pedro was arrested a few days after the robbery driving a black Audi SQ5.
He was released on bail and arrested again as he tried to fly out on a one way trip to Marseille with a false passport with a false name.
Kunu was arrested on 5 June. He had altered his look, cutting his hair and trimming his beard.
Pedro's phone was seized and on it was a voice note from a man saying: 'I want everything'.
He adds: 'The box and papers for the Kettles [watches] are in there.'
He also said: 'Don't play with them when you are in there,' 'All the money 155k', 'bare jewels,' 'Cartier bracelet,' 'the dweller,' 'Sky Dweller' and 'I want everything'.
Pedro told the court suggested there were shadowy characters involved 'putting hits on people' and said there were £150,000 bounties on the heads of Kunu and Mehmet.
He added: 'One person who has committed suicide, but we do not know it is suicide.'
At that point a male member of Mr White's family yelled from public gallery: 'Don't you say that'.
Pedro said: 'The truth will incriminate people, and put people's names into something I do not understand. I am not going to do that, that's not how I was raised.
'Rumour on the street is they robbed themselves. They gave the go ahead whether or not Olly knew.
'Someone gave him the go ahead to not press the panic alarm, to wait. If you are panicking for your life you'd press the panic button.'
Mr Brown asked Pedro: 'Are you suggesting Olly White was killed?'
Pedro said: 'I don't know. What type of company, legit business starts putting money on people's lives.
'How do you know 247 Kettles don't launder money to criminals.'
Sines was one of the investors in 247 Kettles and Pedro claimed his associates put the bounties out on Kunu and Mehmet.
Rupert Bowers, KC, for Holmes told the court was 'a criminal enterprise with Fred Sines and his father behind it?'
Mr Riley replied: 'No, not at all.'
Mr Brown confirmed during the trial Mehmet, Kunu and Holmes have been issued with 'threat to life warning notices' by police after bounties were placed on their heads.
Kunu, of Mitcham, south London, Mehmet, of North Road, Rotherham and Holmes, of Sheffield, all denied conspiracy to rob. Pedro, of Cobham, Surrey, also denied the charge.
