Damir Pejcinovic sentenced to 8 years for worldwide jewelry heist

The reputed chief of an worldwide jewelry heist ring that netted much more than $13 million in “sophisticated” capers from Manhattan to Europe about much more than a ten years was sentenced to eight yrs in jail Thursday. 

Damir “Damian” Pejcinovic, who was raised in the Bronx but was dwelling in a multi-million dollar townhouse in the tony West Village right before his 2018 bust, was sentenced by using phone meeting by Manhattan federal court Decide Victor Marrero. 

Throughout the hearing, prosecutors painted Pejcinovic as a serial thief who led a crew of calculated burglars that cased jewelry retailers and broke into safes with electrical power resources and sledgehammers for the duration of their theft spree from 2006 to 2017. 

“For years this theft crew dedicated heist after heist immediately after heist with no getting caught,” Assistant US Lawyer Andrew Chan reported at the hearing. 

He then singled out Pejcinovic as the leader of the ring, urging the decide to impose a harsher sentence than those people of his co-defendants. 

“It was the defendant who resolved the place, when and how each individual burglary was likely to transpire,” Chan said. 

He included that Pejcinovic would often hold out in his automobile even though his cohorts pulled off the jobs and did the “dirty work” of breaking into safes, disarming alarms and swiping jewels, gold and items. 

Careers pulled off by the crew contain a 2016 New Year’s Eve Manhattan heist of $3 million in jewels and a different July 26, 2009 theft at a different Major Apple jewellery shop that netted the robbers some $850,000 really worth of goods, prosecutors stated.

They also stole $70,000 in jewels from a Beverly Hills retail outlet on Aug. 28, 2010, and $1 million from a store in Kansas City on Sept. 5, 2010, the indictment versus the crew stated.

At the time of his arrest, Pejcinovic experienced a blueprint of a jewelry keep in his multi-million dollar townhouse and analysis on his laptop computer about shops across the world, Chan included. 

Pejcinovic’s legal professional, Peter Quijano, downplayed the sophistication of the crew, calling them a team of burglars who pulled off “smash and grab” careers at their targets. 

“None of these burglaries were innovative. They have been nothing more than smash and get burglaries,” Quijano mentioned. 

He added Pejcinovic had a enterprise prepare to produce a system that would refurbish deactivated safes and protection units, but that a system was in no way created and never utilized in any of the burglaries. Instead, the crew utilized crude resources like sledge hammers and energy tools, Quijano reported.

“It never ever existed. It only existed in Damir’s thoughts,” Quijano claimed. 

He also downplayed Pejcinovic’s purpose in the crew, indicating he was mostly liable for casing targets and acting as a getaway driver — and questioned if the sum of the goods they swiped was truly much more than $13 million. 

“The loss figures are claimed by the jewelry stores by themselves. The decline which the jewellery shops would declare for coverage uses,” he explained. 

Pejcinovic spoke briefly at the sentencing, launching into a defense of the machine he wanted to build before his law firm reduce him off and spoke to him privately. When they rejoined the assembly, he mentioned he experienced practically nothing further to say.  

In handing down the eight-12 months sentence, Judge Marrero mentioned he took into account the seriousness of the offense, the length of the crimes and the sophistication used in the heists. 

Pejcinovic has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre given that his arrest in 2018. It’s unclear where he will serve his federal prison time.