Heaven security guard accused of rape ‘was not permitted to work in UK'
Morenikeji Adewole, 47, of Dartford, Kent, also gave a fake name to police when he was arrested following the alleged rape, Southwark Crown Court heard on Tuesday.
The defendant is on trial accused of raping the teenager in his car near the central London club in the early hours of November 1 2024, which he denies.
Jurors were previously told that the woman was visibly drunk and stumbling and that a person can be too intoxicated to give proper consent.
Adewole was in the UK on a five year tourist visa that did not allow him to work in the country, the jury heard for the first time on Tuesday.
It also meant he could not stay for more than six months at a time and he returned to Nigeria when those stints were up, jurors were told.
The defendant previously pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of an identification document with improper intention.
He was charged for having a false Immigration Residence Permit Identity Card under the name of Olusola Julius Alabi and a false SIA (Security Industry Authority) card with the name O Alabi.
The defendant had been employed at Heaven under the name Olusola Julius Alabi.
Officers discovered his real name through finger print evidence after his arrest, jurors were told.
Giving evidence, the defendant said he 'used a false ID to obtain work, to get a job' and that it was 'to make a living… to save for my partner – I'm the one who paid for the rent'.
He said he had come to the UK on vacation and later to find employment.
Asked why he gave officers a false name, he said: 'I was panicking, that's the name people call me at my work.'
At the time of the alleged rape he was living in an apartment with his partner and at work supervised three other Heaven security guards, the court heard.
He said he had met the complainant, who cannot be identified, months before the incident when she said hello to him by the club.
On the the night of the alleged rape she said 'hello uncle how are you', 'you look handsome' and later kissed him, he claimed.
Adewole, who wore a blue suit and tie, added that 'almost every night' at work he has 'interactions' that can include people trying to kiss him.
He said he told her to stop and she later asked him for water.
'I told her I can't go inside the club to get her water, but I have water in my car,' he added.
The defendant said he then took a work break and walked with the woman and her friend to his nearby Lexus and gave the friend water, which the complainant also drank.
He said the complainant needed the toilet and he went with her to a nearby tunnel, leaving the friend.
The teenager asked him to join her because 'the phone snatcher and the bag snatcher' operate in the 'dodgy area', he said.
CCTV showed the defendant and the complainant in the tunnel and Adewole claimed they kissed there.
Footage appeared to show her stumbling in the tunnel that was behind a shutter.
Prosecutor Marion Smullen said the complainant could be seen falling and asked Adewole why he did not radio for assistance.
He said the teenager had not fallen but she 'goes down' and that he would not contact welfare or a medic 'for this kind of falling'.
Adewole claimed that the teenager said she 'wanted sex from him' but that he told her this could not happen in the tunnel.
The defendant then collected his car and drove the teenager to nearby Adelphi Terrace.
He told the court he was wearing a hi-vis jacket with a body-worn camera, a walkie-talkie and an earpiece when they arrived.
It is alleged that he then raped her in the back seat of the parked vehicle.
Adewole claimed there was sexual activity but he did not have penetrative intercourse with the woman.
He removed his earpiece and camera but still had the radio on at that point, he said.
He added that the woman had earlier told him she was 25-years-old but in the car she said she was 19 and he 'stopped immediately'.
Asked why, the defendant said: 'I can't date someone below 25.'
He said he has a science degree and had previously been employed as a hydraulic and civil engineer, meaning he worked on construction and roadworks.
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Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Daily Mail
Is this London's most prolific shoplifter? Romanian mum of three, 20, who police say stole £300,000 of Boots cosmetics by hiding them in the secret pockets of her voluminous skirt
Were there a Guinness Book of Records entry for shoplifting, then surely Bianca Mirica would be in it. How much do you think she stole from branches of Boots across London – always Boots, always perfumes and cosmetics – in just six months between December 2023 and May last year? Answer: £120,000. At least that's what Mirica, 20, a Romanian mother of three, admitted to after she was finally caught, Southwark Crown Court heard this week. But Boots suspect the real figure, police sources told us, was a staggering £300,000 (£299,000 to be exact). You can buy a detached house in some parts of the country for less. One of the 30 thieving expeditions she was convicted of epitomised her modus operandi. The date was March 7, 2024, when she entered Boots in Hornchurch, East London, with a long, flowing skirt with hidden pockets, a 'spotter' to look out for – and distract – security guards, and her own key to open locked cabinets containing the most expensive brands – Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, for example. Value of items stolen: £16,867. Which must be something of a record in itself for the sheer number of beauty products stripped from a single store in one go. But the Hornchurch branch was not her only target. On her way there, she stopped off in Camden, not far from her home in neighbouring Haringey, where she helped herself to make-up and toiletries worth £7,729.93. March 7 was one of five separate occasions during her frenzied crime spree when multiple Boots outlets were hit on the same day. But there is a much bigger story behind Mirica, just one person, remember, working for one Romanian gang, operating in one city. The field is infinitely more crowded, with gangs, mostly run by Romanian organised crime networks, using women to plunder shelves on the High Street. They are part of a shoplifting epidemic which cost the retail industry £2.2billion in 2023 and 2024, an all-time record that equates to more than 55,000 incidents per day. Shocking but not surprising in the circumstances, because under-resourced police forces – the Met alone is set to lose 1,700 staff to help offset a multi-million budget shortfall in the coming year – are unable or unwilling to respond to such incidents. And in outlets up and down the country, it is standard practice for staff not to intervene either, for safety reasons, which means shoplifting has been effectively decriminalised in all but name. Hence the proliferation of serial perpetrators like Mirica. In her 'busiest' month, May last year, she turned up at 11 Boots outlets including the following: May 15, The Strand, (£335.95 of goods stolen); May 19, Haringey (£3,200); May 22, Kilburn (£691.33): May 24, Baker Street (£627.93); May 25, Islington High Street (£2,000); May 29, Regent Street (£4,386). Many native Romanians arrived in the UK after 2014 when restrictions on their right to work – following the country's admission to the EU in 2007 – were lifted. The vast majority contribute to the economy, working in sectors such as hospitality, agriculture and healthcare where it is sometimes hard to recruit British staff. Mirica, who came here around five years ago, was not one of them. She is from a Roma community in Valcea County, a region situated around 100 miles north-west of the capital Bucharest, where she was twice caught shoplifting – 'attempted aggravated theft' is the legal terminology in Romania – on a visit back to the country in 2023, our inquiries have established. Romanian law allows the prosecution of offences punishable by up to seven years in jail to be waived if the cost of proceeding to trial exceeds the gravity of the wrongdoing. The upshot was that Mirica, who is believed to have incurred a fine, was allowed to return to the UK to begin, or at least continue, her crime spree against Boots. The Roma have, rightly or wrongly, been linked to widespread criminality. And the issue of early marriage and early motherhood is an indisputable reality of life for Roma women, with 46 per cent marrying before the age of 18, the European Parliament was told in May, and one in three becoming pregnant in adolescence. Mirica herself is a product of that culture. The only reason she moved, or was perhaps sent, to the UK, it seems, was for the sole purpose of committing crime – and her children, if history tells us anything, would have been groomed to follow in her footsteps. Examples, after all, of Romanian kids being dispatched to rob and steal are not hard to find. Indeed, the annual crime survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) highlighted the 'grooming of underage children to undertake theft'. Mirica's oldest child is three, which means she was pregnant for the first time when she was 16. Her second is aged 18 months. Their welfare was the subject of 'intervention, by police and children's social services', a pre-sentence report revealed, after concerns were expressed about their living conditions and Mirica's associations with organised crime. Both are now being cared for by friends and relatives in Romania. Her third child? Mirica appeared with her baby – born on June 20 – in a video-link from HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where she was held on remand (in the mother and baby unit) before being jailed for 32 months, a prison term reflecting the fact that the judge had little sympathy with her, kids or no kids. Her criminal career provides a glimpse into the burden individuals like Mirica place on overstretched social services, the welfare system – and ultimately on taxpayers. Mirica claimed, through an interpreter, that the things she stole were for personal use – yes, the entire haul, enough to open her own shop. However, the carefully planned raids, including having a key to open cabinets ('universal' keys are available on the internet) pointed to a very different version of events. In fact, Mirica is understood to have operated with around four or five other girls, one of whom is just 16, according to court documents obtained by the Mail. She has three previous convictions, including one for stealing meat and dairy products from Sainsbury's. These resulted in several referral orders, which supposedly involved a programme of activities to address her offending behaviour, as well as a sentence of 16 weeks' detention, suspended for 12 months with a requirement to complete 80 hours of unpaid work. She finished only 40 and was sent nine enforcement letters for 'unacceptable absences'. Her attitude is confirmation, if any were needed, that soft-touch sentencing is failing. 'Your expressions of remorse should be treated with caution and may not be considered sincere,' the judge told her. 'I do not doubt you are sorry you are now in custody. But I very much doubt you are sorry you committed these offences.' Unsurprisingly, back in Haringey, where Mirica lived in a rented mid-terraced household of ever-changing men and women, just a short walk from Tottenham Hotspur football stadium, she is not remembered fondly. 'Mirica walked around with such arrogance in designer gear,' said neighbour James Mulqueen, 53. 'I am sure she was stealing it all.' Expensive brands, including £300 Dsquared2 jeans, could be regularly seen hanging out of a top floor bedroom window. Police were often called to the property, along with the council, because of anti-social behaviour, 'shouting and screaming' at all hours and children running amok. Up to six women were staying in the house at one time. 'Different men would arrive in flash cars, day and night,' Mr Mulqueen said. 'They were a nightmare to live next to. They had no respect for anything or anyone.' Another resident, a pensioner added: 'They were horrible, especially her. They used to shout abuse if I asked them to be quiet.' The circumstances surrounding Mirica's arrest are unclear. However, CCTV from stores around the country, especially where organised crime is suspected of being involved in shoplifting, is fed into an intelligence-sharing central hub at the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), based within the City of London Police, where facial recognition software is used to identify offenders. 'The majority of the organised crime gangs involved in shoplifting are Romanians,' said David McKelvey, a former detective chief inspector in the Met, who co-founded My Local Bobby, a respected private security firm which provides cover for a number of stores, as well as 24-hour patrols in residential neighbourhoods in London and Essex. 'There is only one reason they come here – to commit crime. They see the UK as rich pickings.' Sister company TM Eye, effectively a civilian CID made up of highly experienced retired detectives like Mr McKelvey, mount private prosecutions against shoplifters apprehended by My Local Bobby guards, who wear red caps and vests. The organisation has undertaken 1,200 such cases over the past 15 years. Most are against individuals – for example, drug addicts – but around 10 per cent have been against gangs, nearly all Romanian. 'They operate in the same way,' says Mr McKelvey. 'A man in an expensive vehicle like a Range Rover drops off the team, usually women, who target a particular area, before picking them up at the end of the day and moving on to the next area.' There are no end of examples. In August last year, three women were jailed for a £40,000 crime spree targeting make-up and beauty counters in East Anglia. A few months earlier, a Romanian shoplifting ring operating in York, including two women, were given prison sentences for stealing £1,282 of fragrances from Browns department store. Beauty products are coveted because of their small size, high value and the ease with which they can be resold. 'Retail crime is spiralling out of control,' said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC. 'Every day, criminals are getting bolder and more aggressive.' Satisfaction with the police is low, with 61 per cent of respondents who took part in the BRC's annual crime survey describing their response as 'poor' or 'very poor'. The largely untold story of the shoplifting epidemic, though, is that it is pushing up the price of everyday items. 'We are all paying for it, that's the point,' said Mr McKelvey. 'The retailers are still making big profits because they work out what their bottom line losses are due to shoplifting – 'shrinkage' they call it – and increase prices.' So, Bianca Mirica is effectively stealing from everyone.
Telegraph
28-07-2025
- Telegraph
Romanian ‘girl gang' member stole £120k of Boots cosmetics
A Romanian mother who stole perfume and cosmetics in a £120,000 shoplifting spree at Boots has been jailed for 32 months. Bianca Mirica, 20, admitted 30 charges of theft from branches of the high street chemist across London between December 2023 and May last year as part of an organised gang of female thieves. Mirica has three previous convictions for similar offences dating back to her arrival in the UK five years ago, Southwark Crown Court heard. She stole almost £17,000 worth of items in one thieving expedition at Boots in Hornchurch, east London, on March 7 last year. On another occasion she made off with 10 Yves Saint Laurent concealers, totalling £300. She previously admitted to 30 counts of theft relating to goods worth £119,318 stolen from Boots at locations across London including Islington, the West End, Kensington, Harrow and Haringey. Mirica, who has three children, appeared on a video-link from HMP Bronzefield with her month-old baby in her arms. She was assisted throughout the hearing by a Romanian interpreter at the jail. Ben Wild, prosecuting, earlier said the offences related to ' group shoplifting from December 2023 to May 2024'. He said: 'None of the goods were recovered, all of the goods relate to fragrances or cosmetics. Effectively, it involves groups of apparently Romanian females concealing the products in long skirts or pockets, distracting security.' The court heard that on the occasion of the most high-value theft, Mirica was 'clearly seen equipped with a cabinet key' used to access a number of expensive products that were locked away. Scott Tuppen, defending, said earlier that Mirica has three young children, one whom suffers from a significant heart issue. He claimed her husband provides a 'firm financial footing' for the family and referred to his client's 'remorse' for committing the thefts. Sentencing Mirica, Judge Sally-Ann Hales KC, said: 'You are now 20 years old. You were 19 when you committed these offences. 'The pre-sentence report indicates you arrived in the UK approximately five years ago. You have accrued three convictions for five offences – all are offences of theft or going equipped for theft. They all relate to very similar offences of shoplifting.' The judge said Mirica had been 'largely uncooperative' with police in interview following her arrest. She said Mirica 'denied involvement in a broader criminal enterprise' and claimed the goods were for 'personal use', which she ruled was 'patently untrue'. Judge Hales added: 'In short, you sought to minimise your offending and showed little if any insight into your behaviour. I very much doubt you are sorry for committing these offences. Over a period of six months, you've committed 18 organised and high-value thefts. 'You were brazen about it – walking into a store, clearing the shelves or a cabinet, and walking out.' Mirica, of Haringey, was given 32 months immediate imprisonment and will serve 40 per cent of the term at the mothers-and-babies unit at HMP Bronzefield before being released on licence. She appeared unmoved as she was sentenced. The court will consider an application for a criminal behaviour order against Mirica on Sept 8.
Daily Mail
28-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Romanian mother who went on a £120,000 shoplifting spree across London stuffing perfumes and cosmetics down her skirt is jailed for 32 months
A Romanian mother who shoplifted £120,000 worth of perfume and cosmetics from Boots by stuffing the items down her skirt has been jailed for 32 months. Bianca Mirica, 20, was part of an organised gang of female thieves who used various tactics to raid stores across London. One gang member would distract security while the others 'cleared the shelves' before simply walking out, Southwark Crown Court heard. And on one occasion, Mirica was spotted using a small key to open a locked cabinet filled with expensive products. Following her arrest the mother-of-three denied she was part of a gang and told police that all the make-up and perfumes were for personal use. But the she later admitted 30 counts of theft from branches of the high street chemist across London between December 2023 and May 2024, totalling £119,318. Mirica, who has three previous convictions for similar offences dating back to her arrival in Britain five years ago, snatched £17,000 worth of items in one raid on a Boots in Hornchurch, east London, on March 7 last year. And on another expedition the Romanian national took ten Yves Saint Laurent concealers worth £300. None of the goods she stole have been recovered, Ben Wild, prosecuting, said. Mirica appeared via videolink from HMP Bronzefield wearing a red t-shirt and rocking her month-old baby in her arms. Sentencing Mirica, Judge Sally-Ann Hales, KC, said: 'You are now 20 years old, you were 19 when you committed these offences. 'The pre-sentence report indicates you arrived in the UK approximately five years 6 November 2019 and 24 September 2024 you have accrued three convictions for five offences - all are offences of theft or going equipped for theft. 'They all relate to very similar offences of shoplifting.' The judge said the mother-of-three had been 'largely uncooperative' with police in interview following her arrest. 'You denied involvement in a broader criminal enterprise, you claimed that the goods stolen were for your personal use and that you made no financial gain. 'In short, you sought to minimise your offending and showed little if any insight into your behaviour. 'Your suggestion that you stole the goods for personal grooming purposes is patently untrue.' She added: 'Like the author of the pre-sentence report, I very much doubt you are sorry for committing these offences. 'Over a period of six months you've committed 18 organised and high value thefts. 'You were brazen about it. Walking into a store, clearing the shelves or a cabinet and walking out. 'Such offences can impact on morale of retail staff, and ultimately may result in loss of revenue being passed on to other customers by increases in prices.' Mirica's offending comes amid a surge in shoplifting, with the British Retail Consortium estimating shop thefts reached 20million last year, up four million on 2023. The cost to stores is estimated at £2.2billion. Mirica will serve 40 per cent of her sentence at the mothers and babies unit at HMP Bronzefield, which houses Lucy Letby and Constance Marten, before she is released on licence. Her two other children, aged three and 18 months, have been sent back to Romania to be looked after by friends and family.
