sneaky

THIS is the shocking moment sneaky jewel thieves distract a driver at a petrol station and steal £2 million from his car boot.

An organised crime group targeted the jewellery salesman as he was travelling from Sussex to Kent last year.

6

6

6

Three of the group have now been jailed after they followed the man to a petrol station in Wrotham, Kent, before puncturing one of his tyres in January 2024.

The victim had been working in Brighton selling jewellery to several businesses and was carrying precious items worth around £2.25 million.

The CCTV footage shows the moment the thieves start following the salesman.

He was tracked by Edgar Ardila-Ruiz, Monica Diaz and Edward Florez-Ortiz and closely tailed his vehicle back to Kent.

When the man stopped at a petrol station in Wrotham, Florez-Ortiz punctured one of his tyres.

The man drove away but was forced to turn back and headed to an air pressure machine after noticing his tyre was flat.

While at the machine, the footage shows Monica Diaz distract the salesman by attempting to engage him in conversation.

Meanwhile, Ardila-Ruiz can be seen at the rear of the car snatching a bag of jewellery from the boot.

The CCTV footage recovered from the garage showed the suspects fleeing in a silver Toyota Corolla.

All three thieves were part of a gang responsible for other offences across the country including areas in London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire.

Ruiz and Diaz were later arrested on February 11 after attempting to steal from another travelling salesman near Bolton, Lancashire.

The victim had alerted police after he noticed a black BMW was following him.

Local officers ran checks showing Ruiz was wanted for the theft in Wrotham while Diaz was also recognised from the petrol station CCTV.

They both pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court after they were charged with conspiracy to steal, and theft from a motor vehicle.

6

6

Ruiz and Diaz, both of no fixed address, were sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

Florez-Ortiz, from Islington, London, was identified as a third suspect and separately convicted at Chelmsford Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to theft and criminal damage.

He was jailed for six years and will undergo future extradition proceedings after he was sentenced to three years for another jewellery theft in Belgium in 2021.

All three will also now be the subject of a financial investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act to claw back any criminal gains they may have made.

Detective Constable Leo Graham said: “Our investigation uncovered a wealth of evidence showing how all three offenders initially followed the victim on foot, before tailing his car.

“They waited patiently for the perfect opportunity to prey upon him and a later examination of his car led to the recovery of a metal item which had been inserted into the tyre by Florez-Ortiz.

“Ardila-Ruiz and Diaz were thankfully caught just weeks later, after following another salesman hundreds of miles away from Kent.

“These sentences are welcome, as it is clear they were part of a bigger network of organised criminality targeting victims throughout the country.”

6

Family travel guru Jen Carr, has taken to TikTok to share a “sneaky” travel hack that could save you some money on your next summer holiday with the kids

A savvy travel expert has shared a little-known hack for bagging a cheap last minute family holiday.

Jen Carr, known as @thetravelmum on TikTok, took to the social media platform to share “sneaky little tip” for navigating the Jet2 website to find the best possible price.

She demonstrated how to locate a hard to find calendar, which is where the search for your next bargain holiday begins.

Jen explained: “When you get to this page, you want to go to ‘edit search’ and here you can put in the airports you can travel from (try to include as many as possible), the dates you want to travel, the size of your family, then you can have a look at the calendar and find the cheapest dates for that month.

Once you’ve selected a holiday destination, Jen recommends sorting the prices from low to high, before deciding whether you want to view the prices by per person or total for the whole family. Then simply browse away.

Jen’s tips come as holidaymakers have been advised to avoid taking part in the popular ‘airport theory’ trend, as dozens of travellers have missed their flights after showing up to the gate too late.

A new TikTok trend has taken social media by storm, where travellers ignore the airport advice of showing up to the airport hours before their flight. Instead, passengers are showing up 15 to 20 minutes before their scheduled boarding or departure time.

Even if you’re only carrying a cabin bag, it’s still generally recommended to arrive at the airport 2-3 hours before an international flight, and 1-2 hours before a domestic flight.

As long as you have a digital boarding pass and your suitcase has the permitted measurements and weight, you shouldn’t have any issues breezing through security. But there’s one thing you should know.

Social media users have posted videos of their attempts to make it to their flights on a shorter timeframe, but this has led to some missing their flights, the Daily Mail reported.

TikToker @momlifewithtiff, whose name is Tiffany, documented the moment that she and her husband almost missed their flight by trying out the challenge. She wrote: “Definitely do not recommend trying the airport theory. Will certainly be getting to the airport 2 hours early from now on.”

Posting different snippets from the stressful situation, she filmed from the moment they got stuck in security whilst boarding had already begun, to begging people to cut in line, and finally, being the last two passengers to board the plane before the doors closed.

In a similar situation, another TikTok user @jenny_kurtzz, known as Jenny, said that she found out the plane had left without her showing up at the gate at the time of departure.

Unfortunately, in these circumstances, there isn’t anything that the airline can do.

When this happens, passengers have to book another flight at their own expense. However, this can change depending on the circumstances and their status with the airline.

It’s important for passengers to understand they must arrive at the gate at least one hour prior to departure time. During this hour, passengers board the plane. The departure time is the slot planes should take off, not when boarding begins.

READ MORE: Yo-yo dieter, 66, looks ‘unrecognisable’ on dog walks after four stone weight loss

The competition for prime sunbed spots in popular beach destinations has been ramping up in recent years. One TikTok video shows how Tenerife tourists are now trying to game the system.

Tenerife tourists have gone to new, drastic measures to ensure the best spot for their sunbed in crowded areas. While somewhat savvy, the move has been deemed “pathetic” after a video of the tactic made the rounds on social media.

Sunbed wars are not a new phenomenon, in tourist hotbeds across Greece, Spain and Italy, tourists have had to get creative to secure a spot by the pool or on a beach. As tourist numbers rise along with safety concerns, leaving your towel and few non-essential belongings to reserve your spot is no longer a strong option.

But a recent video posted to TikTok shows guests at a hotel in Playa de las Américas, Tenerife, have adapted with a new strategy. In footage uploaded by the account @holidaybestbits, guests can be seen waiting by an empty pool area during the early hours of the morning.

READ MORE: Spanish police to slap sunbed hoggers with £200 fine and take tourists’ clothes

The guests appear to be standing still in designated spots in a bid to ‘reserve’ a space for one of the sunbeds being unloaded onto the area. The video even captures one guest helping unload a sunbed into where he was standing.

In the comment section of the video, people largely condemned the move. One person wrote: “Pathetic really. F*****g grown ups,’ while another said: “This is why I no longer take these types of holidays”.

A third declared: “Never ever have I been on holiday and had to do that. May this kind of holiday never find me.” One viewer said this is not a new tactic and has been going on for a while: “Ha ha – we went there in 2019 and that’s what the done thing was then too!!”

Hotels have tried to address the growing issue over the years, that has only been exacerbated by mass tourism to beach destinations. One innovative approach by the Olympic Lagoon resort in Ayi has been to assign guests a sunbed for the duration of their stay, though this may not be feasible for all hotels.

Hotel staff in major resorts have also begun to crackdown on ‘sunbed hogs’ by hiring bouncers. Police in the popular Costa Blanca resort of Calp have taken to removing sunbeds, towels, parasols and any other belongings placed on the sand before 9.30am.

Tourists and locals who breach the ban will have to pay to retrieve them from a municipal depot and face a penalty charge of €250 (£210).

A council spokesperson wrote on X: “This measure prohibits the indiscriminate occupation of the public domain, especially the beach, with items such as chairs, hammocks and parasols at the start of the day. These bad habits make it difficult to clean the beaches.”

Sunbed hogs don’t just take up space, but they ruin the experience of other beachgoers. One Australian couple found that greedy holidaymakers were spoiling their time away in Bali, but they got revenge in the end.