May 29, 2018 12.16 pm This story is over 76 months old

Gainsborough jewellery thief fined £36k

They used a young child to break into the shop.

Bruno Nikolik. Photo: Lincolnshire Police

A thief involved in stealing high value jewellery from a Gainsborough store has been ordered to hand over assets of £36,000 or face further time in prison.

Bruno Nikolik, who acted as a lookout during a distraction theft from Stanley Hunt Jewellers in Marshalls Yard was originally jailed for two years in July last year after admitting theft.

Judge Simon Hirst, sitting at Lincoln Crown Court, ruled that Nikolik benefitted from crime by £36,279 and ordered that the money be paid over within three months or Nikolik faces a further 12 months in prison.

The judge ordered that £16,500 of the money should be paid as compensation to Stanley Hunt Jewellers.

At a hearing last year the Crown Court heard that Nikolik was one of two men who targeted Stanley Hunt Jewellers in Gainsborough’s Marshall’s Yard shopping centre.

The second man snatched a diamond necklace and five diamond rings from the shop’s display window after a small boy was used to open a security door.

Nikolik, 30, who also uses the surname Nikolic, was identified by police and arrested, but the man who actually took the jewellery has never been traced and the jewellery disappeared.

Michael Cranmer-Brown told the court: “It was the day that the Christmas lights had been switched on at the Marshall’s Yard shopping complex.

“At 8pm when the lights were switched on there were a great many people in attendance.

“There were a number of members of staff working in the shop that evening.

“This defendant together with a man he was working with was able to carry out a sophisticated theft of high value items that were on display.

“The two of them used a child who was with them effectively to carry out the task of leaving the door insecure so that another offender could enter the area and take what he wanted.

“They used the child so that if the alarm went off it would just look like a child doing something he should not have been doing. When the child’s work is done there was a hug between the two men.

“The other man then goes in and enters the secure area. The door is opened for a few seconds and he is able to select the jewellery.

“This defendant is not the male who shows the young child what to do.”

Nikolik, of St John’s Terrace, Gainsborough, admitted a charge of theft as a result of the incident on November 18 2016.