A former Buckingham Palace employee has admitted to stealing items worth up to $130,000 from the royal family

Advertisement
A former Buckingham Palace employee has admitted to stealing items worth up to $130,000 from the royal family
A former employee stole items from the Queen's official London residence.Victoria Jones/WPA/Getty Images, Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
  • Former Buckingham Palace catering assistant Adamo Canto has admitted to stealing items from the royal residence and selling them on eBay.
  • The stolen items, which were worth up to $130,000, included a signed photo of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and a photo album of Donald Trump's state visit to the UK, according to BBC News.
  • Canto pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court to three counts of theft between November 11, 2019 and August 7, 2020.
Advertisement

A former Buckingham Palace employee has admitted to stealing items worth up to £100,000 ($133,534) from the royal residence and selling them on eBay.

Adamo Canto pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court to three counts of theft between November 11, 2019 and August 7, 2020, BBC News reports.

Canto stole the items — which included signed photographs of Prince Harry and Meghan and Prince William and Kate Middleton — when he was working as a catering assistant at the Queen's London home.

He sold 37 of the stolen items on eBay, including a state banquet photo album with pictures of President Donald Trump's visit to the UK and a Companion of Bath medal which belonged to the Master of the Household, the operational head of the royal household.

The current Master of the Household, Vice Admiral Master Tony Johnstone-Burt, said in a statement to the court that he realized the medal was missing when he was required to wear it for Trooping the Colour, the Queen's annual birthday celebrations. Palace staff members later informed him it had been stolen and sold online.

Advertisement

Other items were stolen from staff lockers, the Duke of York's storeroom, the palace gift store, and the Queen's Gallery store. Canto made a total of £7,741 ($10,332) from the items he sold online.

The former palace employee's role was changed to include more cleaning during the coronavirus pandemic, which meant Canto gained access to offices and other areas of the palace that he wouldn't have otherwise been permitted to be in.

Canto will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court at a later date, according to BBC News.

It is not known whether the Queen was at the palace when the theft took place. While Buckingham Palace is Her Majesty's official home in London, she also spends time at other residences across the UK.

She spent the Christmas period at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk last year, and then stayed at Windsor Castle during the UK's first national lockdown earlier this year.

Advertisement

It isn't the first time the palace has faced a security breach. In 1982, an intruder named Michael Fagan successfully broke into the palace on two occasions. Fagan was able to scale the palace gates, climb up a drain pipe, and climb through a window into the palace, where he wandered around without being detected.

The second time he broke in, he was able to get into the Queen's bedroom, an incident which was portrayed in the fourth season of the historical drama "The Crown."

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson confirmed the report when contacted by Insider, however they declined to comment. Westminster Magistrates' Court did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

{{}}